Swedish Meatballs

It's been a crazy month for us.  We just moved into a new house and haven't been cooking much lately.  But in the midst of unpacking I decided I needed to cook something. This recipe isn't complicated, but it's time consuming.  Better suited to a Sunday afternoon than a weeknight when your kitchen is filled with boxes.  But the final product is worth it, and it makes enough for at least two meals. 

I love the way the meatballs turned out and I'd definitely use this method again for any kind of meatball. The beef and pork together make a very tender meatball.  Swedish meatballs are spiced with allspice and sometimes ginger and/or nutmeg.  Well, the allspice hasn't yet made it out of my packing boxes, but I had a little tin of pumpkin spice and it worked great!  Pumpkin spice meatballs! 

The gravy contains lingonberry jam, and it's extra tasty to serve a little extra jam on the side.  

Here's what you need for 55 meatballs!

Slow Cooker Pot Roast

I've made pot roast in the crock pot before and it is still, by far, my most popular post ever.  That version had a lot of liquid, as do most pot roast recipes I've seen.  But this recipe from Martha Stewart has only a few tablespoons of liquid.  I turned it on before work and, to be honest, I worried all day that it would be all dried out when I got home.  But slow cookers are magical things.  Lots of juices came out of the roast and made a lovely jus that kept the meat moist and was delicious over the meat.  

Here's all you need:

Pork Roast with Cider Gravy

I'm really enjoying pork roasts lately.  They are easy to cook and as long as you serve them with a tasty sauce, they're always moist and delicious.  A 1.5 to 2-pound pork roast serves us dinner plus lunch the next day with enough leftovers for another meal, like pork fried rice.  

I roasted this pork in the oven with mushrooms and onions, then made a pan gravy by adding cider, mustard and honey.  Here's what you need:

1 boneless pork loin centre roast

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 large onion, sliced

250g cremini mushrooms, quartered
3/4 cup apple cider or apple juice
1/3 cup Dijon mustard
1/4 cup honey
1/4 tsp ground cardamom and/or nutmeg

Guinness Pot Roast

This was our St. Patrick's Day dinner.  I wanted to make something with Guinness so I adapted this Epicurious recipe for short ribs but used pot roast instead.  I loved the curry spice mixture and the beef turned out beautifully.

I'm attending the Food Bloggers of Canada conference in April and a nice perk is getting to try out some new products.  Nordic Ware sent me some cookware to try.  This braiser pan looks similar to my beloved enameled cast iron pot, but is a little shallower and much, much lighter.  The interior is non-stick and the pan is light enough to easily lift out of the oven even when full.  It worked great for this recipe.  

Roast Pork with Marsala Chestnut Sauce

This meal was not difficult or labour intensive to make, but it sure was a pain to shop for!
It is based on this recipe from Chatelaine, which looks complicated but really it is as easy as any Sunday roast, and the sauce is incredible, with or without the chestnuts. After dealing with chestnuts, I'd go without next time.

The problem started when I tried to find Marsala, an Italian fortified wine, at the liquor store.  Unfortunately, I asked for Madiera, a Portuguese fortified wine, which they did not carry.  I don't know why or how I conflated them in my mind, but I came home empty handed and looked at the recipe again to find it was Marsala I needed.  Now that I've made the recipe, I probably could have substituted Madiera or even Port which I do have on hand, but how was I to know?

The next ingredient to give me trouble was the chestnuts. We have a nut allergy in the house but it hadn't been tested on chestnuts.  After some research I found that chestnuts are not really related to nuts and rarely cause reactions in nut-allergic people (this is all Google wisdom, so I don't recommend taking this chance if you have any doubts.)  We agreed to taste the chestnuts and see how it went.  That turned out fine in the end.  But first I had to actually find the chestnuts.  

The recipe called for 3 100g packages of peeled, roasted chestnuts.  I looked in every section of the supermarket I could think of - fresh vegetables, canned fruits and vegetables, frozen foods, speciality foods, olives, ethnic foods, jams, and on and on but all I could find was chestnuts in the shell.  It may have helped to know what peeled packaged chestnuts looked like.  Now I've seen them online in jars and vacuum sealed, but at the time I had no idea.  So I bought chestnuts in the shell and Martha helped me roast and peel them.  

What I didn't realize is that, once peeled, the chestnuts need to be kept in an airtight container. So they dried out a bit waiting for the pork to cook, resulting in a less appealing texture than they should have had.  Next time I'd just leave them out unless I could find the peeled version in the store.  

Anyway, aside from those little missteps, this was an amazing-tasting recipe and pretty simple overall.  Here's what you need:

750g to 1kg boneless pork-loin roast
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp dried sage
1 tsp olive oil
1 1/4 cups chicken broth
1 tbsp grainy Dijon mustard
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp maple syrup
1/4 cup dry Marsala
1 tbsp cornstarch
300g peeled, roasted chestnuts, roughly chopped (optional)

If you've bought chestnuts in the shell, you'll need to roast and peel them.  First make an X-shaped slice in the outer shell without cutting through the nut. The shell is an odd texture, like a plastic yogurt cup, not like a hard nut.

Once sliced open, place the chestnuts in a 350 degree oven for about 25 minutes.  They'll open slightly as above.

Peel the outer shell and the inner skin from the chestnuts.  Get them into an airtight container and then, just before serving, chop them up for the sauce. 

Preheat the oven to 475 degrees. 

Now for the pork. This is a pork loin roast that was deeply on sale. This cut is often on sale in my local grocery stores.  This was about 750g, enough for 4-6 servings.

 Mix the garlic powder, sage, salt and pepper in a small dish.

And rub over the pork roast covering all sides.

Heat an oven-safe pan over medium high heat.  Add the oil to the pan and then the pork roast, fat side down.  

Brown all sides for about 1 minute each.

Then place the pan in the oven and roast for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 325 degrees and cook for about 25-30 minutes until it reaches 150 degrees in the centre.

I needed a couple of tries to get to 150. It was about 30 minutes after reducing the heat.

Remove to a plate and cover the roast with foil, or I like to use a large, stainless steel bowl inverted over the meat.

Now the sauce.   Take the mustard, maple syrup and soy sauce...

And add it to the hot pan along with the chicken stock and bring to a boil over high heat.  Be careful with this pan, the handle will be hot!  Boil, whisking, for about 5 minutes until the liquid is reduced a bit.  Reduce heat to low.

Mix the Marsala with the cornstarch in a small dish.  Add to the pan and let it simmer for 2-3 minutes until thickened.

Turn off the heat and add the chopped chestnuts to the sauce.

Slice the pork.

And serve over mashed potatoes, smothered on the Marsala chestnut sauce.

I served this with garlic kale.

The pork was juicy and the sauce tasted incredible.  The chestnuts add a nice texture but they're not essential.  I highly recommend trying this with or without them.  

Batch Cooking - Roast Chickens

Even with just the two of us I find it helpful to do large batch cooking sometimes to save time and feed us for many meals.

I found a deal on whole chickens so I got two!

I roasted the chickens with vegetables and made a pan sauce for the first meal, then used the leftovers for other meals throughout the week.

You can just as easily do this with one chicken (or three if your pan's big enough!), but here's how I did two.

Two plump chickens. These are about 3 pounds each.

I also love to roast fennel with chicken.  

Put a little oil in the bottom of a roasting pan.

Core the fennel.

Slice the fennel, not too thin, and toss it in the roasting pan.

Add some carrots and an onion, quartered.

This roasting pan has a V-shaped rack which works well to let air circulate around the chickens, but you can just drop them on top of the vegetables if you don't have a rack. That's what I always did before I got this pan.

Rub the chicken all over with some olive oil, salt and pepper.  Sprinkle some salt and pepper inside as well.

You can also stuff half a lemon and some herbs inside.  I used sage, rosemary and thyme.

I also like to sprinkle paprika over the chickens.  It gives a nice golden colour as it roasts.

I cook the chickens breast-down for the first half hour.

Then flip them over, breast side up for the last hour or so.  

This allows the skin to crisp up on both the top and bottom.

Once the chicken is done, remove the birds and the vegetables from the pan and cover to keep warm.

The other nice thing about this pan is it can straddle two burners to make a sauce.  Sprinkle a tablespoon of flour over the pan juices.  

Then whisk in some chicken stock. Let the sauce bubble for a few minutes to thicken up.  You can strain it into a gravy boat if you're fancy...

... or just pour it over your chicken and potatoes.

We each had a drumstick and half a breast and there was tons of chicken left over for lunches and dinners later in the week.