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Recipe: vietnamese grilled lemongrass pork (thit heo nuong xa)

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My wonderful friend, Jennie, lives in New York City and has a great post with links on how to help with relief efforts as the city tries to recover from Hurricane Sandy. If you are so inclined, please click on over. Thank you! xo

And a reminder to please GO AND VOTE on Tuesday if you haven’t already voted! Thank you, again!

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We set our clocks back Saturday night and the morning felt much brighter when we woke up. Of course, come sunset (and it came fast and early) Kaweah was already petitioning for her dinner two hours early. Jeremy dreads the overall shortening of the daylight hours and I think he makes it worse by counting the days. He told me this evening that it will be six weeks until the shortest day of the year and then another six weeks to get back to the amount of daylight we have right now. Well, yes – this is how it works with the Earth and the Sun. I accept the reduced daylight hours as long as there is some snow in the deal. I want my snow, please. If we get another repeat of last year’s lame snow season, I’ma gonna spit.

But before sunset jumped to 5:00 pm (and I’ll not complain since my girlfriend in Alaska is dealing with far more drastic diurnal shifts), we put our 5-6pm time slot to good use. On our 20 year smoochiversary, we went to Frasca for dinner, because it’s Jeremy’s favorite restaurant in Colorado. Who am I to tell him no?

brussels sprouts, duck prosciutto, pickled turnip salad (jeremy had pumpkin soup)

polenta-stuffed pasta with rabbit and chanterelles

my pork four ways: tenderloin, belly, bacon with spaetzle, and sausage

jeremy’s beef four ways: ribeye, marrow, beef cap, and carpaccio

fig hazelnut frangipane tart (me), pumpkin upside down cake with caramelized pecans (jeremy)

And we enjoyed the last of the evening walkies with Kaweah. For the next few months they will have to be afternoon walkies. We have some nice local trails around our neighborhood that have seen improvements over the years. I love trails so much. LOVE them. We were delighted to see another extension of a Boulder Parks and Open Space trail network finished. Kaweah was happy to give it the sniff down too.

yay! new trails!

and home in time for the last colors of the day

on the horizon

As I have indicated (read: complained), we haven’t had a whole lot of snow yet. When I say snow, I mean enough snow to last the winter and spring. The trails we slogged through last week are now dry or have a thin layer of ice at best. It’s been sunny and warm. Ahhh, shoulder seasons… So instead of sulking about, wishing for ski season to start already, I sulk about and run the trails. And I’m sulking and grilling. Actually, I’m not really sulking, because this Vietnamese grilled lemongrass pork (thit heo nuong xa) is crazy good.

pork shoulder, garlic, shallots, lemongrass, oil, pepper, brown sugar, dark soy sauce, fish sauce

roughly chopped garlic, shallots, and lemongrass with light brown sugar

pop the garlic, shallots, lemongrass, and sugar into a blender or food processor

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: shiso spicy tuna tempura (dragon scales)

It was getting a little ridiculous. My friends had moved into their new house in Boulder several months ago and I still hadn’t been by to pay them a visit. Summer was pretty cray cray and fall is even more so. If not now, then when? It’s not like I’m the only person who is busy – they are busy too. Everyone is busy. I guess what makes friends so special is that an hour spent together in the midst of all the busy recharges you and leaves you with a warm fuzzy glow for several days.

beautiful family in their wonderful new home

Their adorable baby is no longer a baby but an adorable little boy. Nichole and Luke have put so much work into their house on their own (like laying new plumbing to rearrange their kitchen – whoa!). It was really exciting for me, a DIY-wannabe, to see what two resourceful and creative DIY people can do! Then Nichole said, “Wanna see the garden?” How she finds the time to work, raise Mr. Cutiepie (my nickname for him), remodel the house, AND garden, I just do not know. All that while remaining her hysterically funny and sassy self to boot.

nichole picks red shiso for me

When Nichole said she had red shiso, I did a blink-blink and then a double take. Shiso? Ever since Jeremy and I went to The Lobar in Crested Butte for my birthday, I’ve been wanting to recreate the dragon scales appetizer we enjoyed. It was made with shiso leaves, and the only place I knew of to purchase shiso leaves is on the far side of Denver in Aurora (H-Mart). That’s a drive in sucky traffic that I didn’t want to make. And here was my friend asking me if I would like some red shiso from her garden! Love that girl.

lovely shiso without driving to denver

I’ve only ever had shiso in or with sushi. My favorite sushi chef, Fumito, in South Pasadena would tell us that it is good for your health. When I’ve purchased shiso leaves at H-Mart in the past, they were labeled as sesame leaves or Perilla and they were huge, like as big as my extended hand. These shiso leaves were smaller and a gorgeous purple color, and talk about local sourcing. Now we’re cooking with gas! Here’s what you’ll need to make dragon scales:

shiso leaves, maguro (sashimi grade tuna), mayonnaise, sriracha (not pictured: masago and togarashi)

tempura batter: flour, egg, ice water, baking soda

tempura dipping sauce: mirin, soy sauce, dashi, sugar

The reason the masago (capelin roe) and togarashi (Japanese chili seasoning) aren’t in the picture is because I forgot to buy them. I wasn’t expecting to make this and scrambled at the last minute to get what I needed based on memory. But I do recommend including those in your recipe should you decide to make this (and really, you should).

mixing the tempura batter

make the spicy tuna

stir in the sriracha

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: porcini mushroom tempura sushi handroll

To summarize my weekend: my feet hurt. But it’s the good kind of hurt! We hiked three fourteeners (it’s what Coloradoans do for fun – summit 14,000+ ft. mountains): Mounts Democrat, Cameron, and Lincoln. It started out well enough, but as the morning progressed the winds got crazy insane and wildfire smoke from I-don’t-know-where hung in the air like a bad smog day in Southern California.

hello pika, you’re so cute you are

first summit of the morning: mount democrat

third summit of the morning: mount lincoln

mounts cameron (far left) and democrat (left of center) in hazy conditions

On the way home from the trailhead, we swung by the store to get more green chiles for roasting. MOAR!!! It used to be that we relied on the kindness of my in-laws who live in Southern Colorado or my aunt who lives in New Mexico to grace us with a few bags of frozen roasted green chiles at the end of summer. But fresh Hatch green chiles began to arrive in our local markets a couple of years ago every August and I’ve been hoarding them ever since. The Boulder Whole Foods has in-house roasted chiles ready to go, but I rather like the idea of roasting my own. It’s fun and it smells like the end of summer. Those of you who know that smell of roasting green chiles – you know what I mean…

covet thy green chiles

roasting on the grill – our neighborhood smelled fantastic

the ever hopeful kaweah is just hanging out because she associates the grill with steak

On Sunday morning, the air seemed to finally be clearing of that nasty, smokey haze. So we went for a trail run. I am not a runner. I don’t really enjoy running. The longest run I’ve ever done is 10 miles and that was in graduate school because we were always looking to diversify our suffering. Trail runs are different. I don’t love them, but I do enjoy them. I managed just over 10 miles, which I haven’t done in twelve years! It seemed like a good end-of-summer thing to do for, you know… getting ready for ski season. This, this is why my feet hurt.

Something else that has come to an end for me is my porcini foraging for the year. I think there are still some out there, but I unwittingly booked up my schedule and that’s that. Last Thursday, Wendy and I set off in the dark at 5:30 am for our final day of foraging together this season (she will, no doubt, continue to scour the mountains until the end of August). In the car, we tossed ideas back and forth on different ways to enjoy fresh porcinis. I had a small bag of bouchons to finish up before leaving town, so I welcomed this brainstorm session.

let’s make sushi: anago sauce, sushi rice, avocado, masago (flying fish roe), porcinis, nori

mixing ice water and egg for tempura batter

**Jump for more butter**