The Gravy Train

et tu, anchovy paste?

Part of the routine of living overseas means saying goodbye to dear friends who are moving on to other far-flung destinations.  It's sad every time someone moves, but the upside is that we inherit all sorts of food and kitchen items that wouldn't otherwise travel well.  Most of the time, we get things we'd use anyway, like balsamic vinegar or grapeseed oil or imported chocolate.  Other times, it's more of a head-scratcher, like anchovy paste.

I actually adore anchovies.  One of my favorite food memories of the past few years is discovering the amazingness of fresh anchovies cured in just a little olive oil, lemon juice and salt.  We had them on the Amalfi Coast during spring, and even today I can still practically see those little fish jumping into my mouth.  That's how fresh they were.

It's taken me a few months of tinkering around with anchovy paste on occasion (in marinara sauce, with eggs, as flavoring for stew) to finally figure out what the hubby and I like using it for: Caesar salad.  Now, I'm not a fan of Caesar salad normally.  For me, Caesar salads are often overdressed with thick, heavy dressing, like a wet blanket.  Ick.  

All that changed last week when I made just a little bit of Caesar dressing with the anchovy paste and added tomatoes and cucumbers to the salad to absorb a little more of the dressing.  It turns out that homemade Caesar dressing is awesome, and the anchovy paste gives it depth of flavor without the fishiness you'd expect.  To top off our salad, I grilled some chicken seasoned with lemon zest, salt and pepper, and we made wraps out of the salad.  By just using around 1/2 cup of dressing, we were able to make two giant wraps.

Yum.

Caesar Salad Dressing

1 cup light mayo
1/4 cup finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
juice from half a lemon
1 tablespoon dijon mustard
2 teaspoons Worchestershire sauce
1 teaspoon anchovy paste
1 large clove of minced garlic
2 tablespoons water

Whisk together all ingredients except water.  Gradually add water to make dressing less chunky (add more if needed).  Yields 1 1/2 cups, but only use 1/4 to 1/2 cup for a 2-person serving of salad.

new comfort food, old tricks

Sliced pork tenderloin over creamy parmesan grits and wilted baby spinach, topped with fiery sweet barbecue sauce

Things are really on the up and up for us here at Gravy Central lately.  The Gravy Baby turns 5 months old today, and he's averaging between 11-13 hours of sleep a night, which means that the hubby and I have a little bit of time in the evenings to wind down and catch up with each other.  It also means that I'm not bleary-eyed and dazed during the day, and I find myself with the time and energy not only to tote a 20-pound adorable sack of potatoes all over town, but I'm also trying to cook new dishes in the kitchen again. 

Above, left: grits on a spoon; above right: roasted pork tenderloin resting after roasting

Last week, I was really in the mood for comfort food, so I roasted a pork tenderloin with a fiery and sweet barbecue sauce from the Lee Brothers, my favorite Southern cookbook.  I paired it with creamy Parmesan grits and a bunch of sauteed baby spinach and plated everything all together so it became one cheesy, creamy, spicy, sweet and crunchy pile of goodness.

As we were winding down and recounting our day to each other later that night, the hubby told me that it wasn't the meal he was expecting to come home to that night (read: I'm so glad you didn't make me a big salad for the third night in a row), but it totally felt comforting and right.  I took the compliment, but at the same time, it's hard to feel wrong about indulging in cheesy grits.  Those are good anytime, in my book.

Fiery Roasted Pork Tenderloin (adapted from The Lee Brothers Southern Cookbook)

1/3 cup bourbon (I love cooking with Bulleit Bourbon, but really any will do)
1/3 cup water
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon finely grated fresh ginger
1 jalapeno pepper (the original recipe calls for habanero, but I have a hard time getting habaneros in my neck of the woods)
1 teaspoon finely grated garlic
2 3/4-pound pork tenderloins
3/4 cup sorghum molasses (I used regular molasses, but I think dark brown sugar would've worked fine as a substitute as well)
1/4 cup ketchup
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon olive oil

Combine the bourbon, water, vinegar, ginger, chile and garlic in a bowl.  Add the pork tenderloins and turn to coat.  Marinate for one hour, turning every 15-20 minutes.  Preheat oven to 450 degrees (around 225 degrees Celsius).  Remove pork from marinade, brushing off excess.  In a saucepan, pour excess marinade and reduce by 1/3rd.  Add ketchup and molasses and simmer until thick.

Heat an ovenproof skillet over high heat.  Coat pork tenderloins with olive oil and sear until browned, about 3-4 minutes per side.  Pour sauce over pork and immediately slide into oven, baking for 15-20 minutes or until a thermometer measures the internal temp between 145-150 degrees Fahrenheit (note: the Lee Brothers recipe doesn't say when to pull the pork out of the oven, but I find that using a meat thermometer for roasting meats to be absolutely essential to ensuring the perfect doneness).  Let pork rest for 10 minutes, then carve against the grain into thick slices.

Creamy Parmesan Grits

1 1/3 cups stone-ground grits
4 cups water
1 cup finely grated Parmesan
1/2 milk
2 tablespoons butter
salt and pepper to taste 

Rinse grits, removing husks that float to the top.  Place in a small saucepan and add water.  Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring frequently, and reduce heat to a low simmer immediately after the grits and water reach a rolling boil.  Continue simmering for 15-20 minutes until water is almost completely absorbed into the grits, then add butter and milk.  Simmer an additional 5-10 minutes until the grits are creamy and thick; add salt and pepper to taste.

Sauteed Baby Spinach

1 clove garlic, minced
3/4 pound to 1 pound baby spinach, rinsed and shaken dry
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper to taste 

Over medium-high heat, saute garlic in olive oil for about 1 minute.  Add spinach and saute until just wilted.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Serve immediately.

 

saucing the night away

The setup at the annual American Association shrimp boil

I'm a sucker for large food gatherings involving propane tanks and large outdoor cooking apparatuses, and so when I found out that part of my responsibilities as an American Association of Malaysia board member would be overseeing the AAM's annual shrimp boil, it seemed like the universe was telling me that I did something good and right, and that I was being rewarded with such a gig.

making friends with salad

At the hubby's first poker night last week, which I'm now referring to affectionately as Meatball Tuesday, I made a companion salad at the last minute, fearing our new friends might confuse me for my inner, much chubbier alter ego.  The salad was your basic garden variety, with soft leaves of butter lettuce and freshly sliced tomatoes from the Genting Highlands (a part of Malaysia that, as far as I can tell, grows vegetables simply because it's one of the cooler climates in the country and is also known for its casinos).  To make it a little fancier, I scrounged around in our refrigerator and settled on making a yogurt-based salad dressing with lime and cilantro.  The dressing was last-minute but turned out to be the surprise hit of the evening.  I guess you can make friends with salad, after all.

deep in the heart of ampang

No matter where I am from this point forward, a part of me will always live in Austin, Texas, where I went to law school and made some of the best friends of my life.  And, sweet pajamas, how I love the food there.  It's a wonder that I came out of there with a degree, considering all the time I spent philosophizing about breakfast tacos and barbecue.

Friends here in KL have told me that you can get just about anything you need if you know where to look, but my socks were knocked off when I stepped into Ampang Grocer in my neighborhood the other day and found the entire range of Stubb's barbecue sauces, straight from Austin, staring back at me.  Quelle surprise! 

But then I started wondering -- what crew of corporate cowboys over at Stubb's got together and said, "You know who I think needs some of our finger-lickin' good sauce?  Malaysia."  Fueled by my curiosity and hoping for an earth-shattering blog post, I got in touch with the management at Stubb's to let them know that their sauces are being sold to the masses of Kuala Lumpur, and asked them if they'd determined that Malaysians were part of their target market. Unfortunately, the restaurant is now a separate entity from its sauce production company, so all they could offer was a name and a contact number for their distributors.   For the past couple of weeks, I've gotten in touch with the distributors every way I could think of, and the response has been...silence.

Well, I tried.  For now, it's just nice to know there's a little piece of Texas I can get to, right down the jalan (street) from my house.

kou cuisine: a belly full of jelly

Here in Malaysia, I love the local weekday breakfast of kaya (coconut jam) with butter on toast accompanied by a strong black cup of local kopi (coffee).  My renewed appreciation for this toast-and-jam breakfast led me inside this little jam shop in Bali, a purveyor of delicately sweetened preserves made from local fruits harvested from Bali and Java, including pineapple, guava, passionfruit, tangerine and mango.