Pot o' Neck Bones: Make Your Own Ramen

It wasn't that long ago that I was a college kid, subsisting mainly off of Hot Pockets, Easy Mac, and heaping late-night bowls of cereal. What's a skillet? Is that the one you put the bacon in?

And now here I find myself making ramen again. But stay with me! This is a good one.

Let's start with the ingredients. The style of ramen I made has a tonkotsu (pork bone) broth. I actually arrived at this recipe by way of pork bone. I recently subscribed to a new delivery service in Baton Rouge, and I'll be partnering with them regularly to whip up some seasonal and delicious things. Indie Plate is a pipeline to all that's fresh, seasonal, and delicious. Not just vegetables either! The site traffics in meat, fish, pantry goods, and more, all from local farms and artisans, for a small flat delivery fee too.

Ordering online, I'm at a much lower risk of loading up my cart with things I don't need or won't use in time. And I won't shop just for one recipe, which I am sadly prone to do. If you're in the area, I surely recommend it. And if you're not a Baton Rouge reader, fingers crossed that you've got something similar in the area—otherwise, start clamoring!

Back to pork neck bones: I found them on Indie Plate's site and, since I'd never made my own pork broth before, I was intrigued. And the recipe grew from there. Onions and carrots, summer vegetables for a stir-fry, leaf lard for the vegetables and frying the egg I set on top of the ramen. All from Indie Plate. I rounded up the rest from the neighborhood grocery once I had firmed up my ingredient list.

Most pork neck broth recipes I found involved simmering for about twelve hours. While I definitely wanted the punch of slow-roasted flavor, I was concerned with leaving the burners on, and I haven't yet used the crockpot I have in my closet. So when I found this alternative take from Seattle Magazine, I was relieved.

Let me take you through my adaptation—as well as the stir-fry I served on the side.

Pork bones from Iverstine Farms

A little more of my bounty from Indie Plate

Loveably ugly heirloom carrots

Roasted pork bones

Tonkotsu Ramen and Summer Vegetable Stir-Fry

Yield: 2 servings ramen and stir-fry; 2 cups of broth left-over

Ingredients:
For pork broth:
4 small meaty pork neck bones (I used a 1.26 oz. package, but ideally would have used more)
3/4 cup water and 4 cups water, divided
1/3 of a white onion, not chopped or sliced, just segmented
2 medium carrots, stemmed and chopped
Kosher salt
Soy sauce

For ramen:
2 cups Pork Broth
1 package Top Ramen noodles (seasoning packet discarded)
1 egg
2 inches leaf lard, diced
Sliced scallions (for garnish)
2 teaspoons sesame oil
Pulled pork from roasting pork bones

For summer stir-fry:4 inches leaf lard, chopped
1 medium zucchini, sliced
3 grape tomatoes, halved and chopped
One fourth an onion, sliced
Sesame oil


Method:
For the broth:
1. Preheat the oven to 400. Place the pork bones in a large, high-sided roasting pan. Roast for 70–90 minutes, turning the bones over halfway through, until bones are browned all over.
2. Immediately after removing the pan, pour 3/4 cup water inside and use a wooden spoon to scrape up the browned bits. Transfer bones and liquid to a large stockpot.
3. Add four cups water, onion, and carrots. Bring to a boil and then simmer for two hours. Then cool to room temperature (about an hour).
4. Strain out the solids and set aside. Refrigerate the liquid overnight (I placed it in two mason jars.) Pick the meat out of the bones and refrigerate it in a separate container with carrots and onion. Discard the bones.
5. The next day, as you prepare to make your ramen, bring two cups of the broth to a simmer and season with kosher salt and soy sauce to taste.

For the ramen:
1. Add noodles to simmering broth and cook for 3–4 minutes. Meanwhile, heat up chopped leaf lard in a medium non-stick skillet over medium-high heat, rendering fat. Fry egg—seasoning with salt and pepper—until white is set but yolk is still runny.
2. To serve, ladle noodles into each bowl, draining excess broth. Top with fried egg, scallions, reserved pork from neck bones, and a drizzle of sesame oil. Serve!

For the summer stir-fry:
1. Heat up a large skillet to medium-high. Add chopped leaf lard and cook for five minutes, pushing down on lard to render fat. Set aside lard.
2. Add zucchini, tomatoes, and onions to skillet, drizzle with sesame seed oil, and cook, stirring, until golden brown.
3. Serve alongside ramen.

Crispy Smashed Potatoes and Prosciutto-Wrapped Green Beans: Steak Sides

When faced with a big, juicy steak—and before that, the thought of searing that baby to perfection—it can be all too easy to eschew sides...and reason and composure. Steak!!

But if you're able to pull yourself together, delicately blot the drool from your mouth, and spend a little more time in the kitchen, you'll end up crafting a hearty and oh-so-satisfying square meal.

It's like having this one fantastic dress that you want to wear all the damn time—and then you take it to new heights with killer heels and one of those statement necklace thingies (probably not the best example, as I spend most of my time barefoot and not-very-bejeweled.) But you see what I mean.

Let's get to the food.

The green beans are easy to tackle. Quickly blanched, cooled, wrapped in proscuitto, and then browned on each side among minced garlic (with lemon juice squeezed over).

The potatoes I love because they're a slight twist on your usual potato recipe. You get the crispiness of fries or roasted potatoes, the spread and inner texture of mashed potatoes, and the cracked-open aromatics of a baked potatoes. Steak 'n potatoes—there's a reason why it's a thing.

Boil, smash, season, and roast.

Crispy Smashed Potatoes and Prosciutto-Wrapped Green BeansYield: 2 servings

Ingredients:
For the potatoes:
4 potatoes
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon herbes de Provence
Salt
Pepper

For the green beans:
4 oz. green beans
2 slices prosciutto
2 cloves garlic, minced
Juice from one lemon

Method:
For the potatoes:
1. Place potatoes in a large saucepan, covered by at least two inches of salted water. Bring water to a boil and cook for about 10 minutes until very tender (test with fork). Strain water from potatoes and cool under running water. 
2. Preheat the oven to 400. Once potatoes are cool to the touch, carefully smash them while keeping the potatoes intact. Place on a foil-lined baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt, pepper, and herbes de Provence.
3. Roast for thirty minutes, rotating the pan halfway through, until potatoes' edges are golden brown and crisp.

For the green beans:
1. In a medium saucepan of salted boiling water, blanch green beans until they turn bright green. Transfer beans to a bowl of ice water to stop cooking.
2. Divide green beans into two bunches. Wrap with prosciutto.
3. Heat a grill pan to medium-high and add minced garlic, cooking till golden. Use tongs to place green beans in the grill pan. Squeeze lemon juice over each bunch. Cook for seven minutes, using tongs to flip over halfway through. Once flipped, squeeze lemon juice over the beans again.

Implied: your steak is searing to perfection. Put all together and serve!

Buttermilk and Bacon Grease Cornbread

Ya know, I've spent the entire twenty-five years of my life in Louisiana, but this dish—more than anything—hammered home that I'm a Southern girl.

There's a lot to love about the South. I eschew the camo and pick-up trucks. But the food...my God, the food.

We're having a potluck at work tomorrow, and I opted to do another Test Kitchen: Creole crawfish and tasso chowder from New Orleans' The Bombay Club. For my addition/enhancement, I went with this cornbread, sourced from Local Milk, the most gorgeous blog I've seen in a while. I don't have natural light in my kitchen—nor do I have that blogger's photography skills. But I'll be damned if I didn't turn out a delicious product. So I'm sure you will too.

So render your bacon, whisk your dry ingredients, pre-heat your cast-iron...and brace yourself. Delicious bread is coming.

Cornmeal mixed with bacon grease—so golden.

Buttermilk Bacon Grease Cornbread (adapted from Local Milk)
Yield: 1 10-inch skillet of cornbread

1 1/4 cup cornmeal
3 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3 tablespoons bacon grease (I rendered this from two slices fried, which also greased the skillet for the cornbread)
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup buttermilk
1/4 teaspoon baking soda, made into a slurry with a bit of water

1. Pre-heat oven to 425. Once bacon is fried, place skillet into oven while it is heating.
2. Whisk together cornmeal, flour, salt, and baking powder in a medium mixing bowl.
3. Use hands to mix in bacon grease until mixture has achieved a sandy texture.
4. Stir in eggs and buttermilk well. Add in baking soda slurry and combine completely.
5. Pour mixture evenly into heated cast-iron and bake for twenty minutes, until top is golden-brown.

Maple-Glazed Pork Chops

Quick post tonight! It's been way too long since I blogged, but I've got some neat ideas of what to write about here next. They linger above me tantalizingly, like a mobile above a baby or anything that vaguely dangles above my cats. Just waiting on payday, and then I'll dig in--(ha ha ha.)

Tonight, though, I thawed these pork chops found in my freezer and hunted about for a simple yet delicious pampering for them. Ultimately I chose a spiced maple glaze and a pan-searing, oven-roasting method, inspired by a Cook's Illustrated recipe.

First, I preheated the oven to 325.

In a small bowl, I mixed together the maple syrup, ground cinnamon, ground cloves, and cider-vinegar.

I set the bowl aside and then heated two tablespoons of sunflower oil over medium-high in a heavy-bottomed skillet. I sprinkled my chops with salt and pepper, and then added them to the skillet once the oil had just begun to smoke.

The chops browned quickly, taking about 2 - 3 minutes on each side. I used my tongs to make sure the edges became well-browned too. Once everything was nicely Snooki-ed up, I took the chops out of the pan and laid them to rest on a conveniently proximal plate.

Then I lowered the heat under the skillet to medium and added the bowl of maple madness. It immediately bubbled up and I waited till the sweet foresty aroma reached my nose before I moved the skillet off heat and returned the chops.

I turned the chops over a few times until they were fully coated in the syrup mixture, and then I placed the skillet in the oven for 35 minutes. Twice during this time period, I reached into the oven (first opening the door) to turn the porkchops over and recoat them in the glaze.

Then I removed the skillet from the oven and removed the porkchops, letting them rest for 15 minutes to retain optimum temperature. Ideally, they come out of the oven at 135 degrees and end up at 145. Don't poison yer-selves, ya hear?

Meanwhile, I let the maple syrup gel slightly in the skillet for five minutes before pouring it over the meat. After fifteen minutes, I sliced and served (with a side of steamed broccoli tossed in a garlic vinaigrette, to balance things out.)

Maple-Glazed Pork Chops

2 pork chops (each a little less than 1/2-lb)
Kosher salt
Ground black pepper
2 tablespoons sunflower oil
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
1 pinch ground cloves
2 tablespoons cider vinegar

Serves 2.

Rosemary-Cured Pork Tenderloin, Green Beans Almondine, and Pan-Roasted Fingerling Potatoes

 (Disclaimer I'm adding halfway through the writing of this blog: I have here and henceforth used many parenthetical clauses to just douse this post in honesty and overwhelming disclosure.)

In general, I tend to get absorbed with the main dish and forget to even make a side. But that was not the case last night (mainly because Andy chose the sides and he is far more detail-oriented than I could ever be.) And these sides were perfect, complementing flavors and all that and just elating my belly (as much as a very, very fully belly can be light and buoyant.)

To begin with, I brined my pork tenderloin. This should be done twelve-hours ahead of time, but I did not have twelve waiting hours in my arsenal, so I contented myself to seven--not an issue with a fairly small tenderloin, but with larger cuts you might want to plan ahead better than I did.

For a 2lb pork tenderloin, you should use one gallon of water, 1 cup of salt, and 1/2 cup of sugar. Since I was using a 1.5-lb cut, I used 3 quarts of water, 3/4 cup of salt, and 3/8 cup of sugar. Math! Hey! (punch fist in air enthusiastically--it's direly important to the recipe.)

I then added a tablespoon of dried rosemary to the bowl (note: I placed my tenderloin and brine in a large bowl) and covered it. I shook the covered bowl and placed it in the refrigerator. Then I went about my daily life (I watched Toddlers & Tiaras.)

An hour or so before dinner, I preheated the oven to 500. Then I removed the pork from the brine and patted it dry. For seasoning, I rubbed the tenderloin with brown sugar, dark corn syrup, fresh rosemary, Hungarian paprika, and 1 chopped shallot. I placed the pork in the roasting pan and topped it with four whole cloves of garlic.

 For the perfect pork roast, the pork needs to be cooked 5 1/2 minutes per pound (so in my case, it was 7 minutes and 45 seconds. This is my excuse for doing number puzzles all the time at work. I need the math skills to properly feed myself, ya heard?) Once the time has passed, DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN, SO HELP YOU. Just keep it nice and tightly closed and let the pork finish cooking itself for an hour. It works wonders!

I waited about thirty minutes before I started in on the side dishes. I rinsed and trimmed the green beans, then boiled them in a medium pot of salted water for about 6 minutes, after which Andy transferred them to a bowl of iced water to cool down. For the potatoes, I placed them in a medium saucepan, covered the potatoes with water, and then brought the water to a boil and let it simmer for 8-10 minutes.

Andy removed the green beans from the iced water and patted them dry. Then he melted 2 tablespoons of butter in a medium saucepan and added the slivered almonds. Once the almonds had turned golden (3 minutes with frequent stirring), he added the remaining three chopped shallots and stirred them until they turned translucent. Then he added the dried beans, tossed the mixture to coat, and let them cook and heat through for five minutes.

Mmmm, look what this guy can do.

Once the potatoes had boiled, I rinsed them under cold water and then sliced each fingerling in half. I seasoned the halves with salt and pepper. Then I heated a medium skillet to medium-high heat and added the bacon. After a couple of minutes, I introduced the sliced onion. While the bacon cooked, I made sure to press down on it often with my spatula in order to better render the fat.

After the bacon had crisped and the onions turned translucent, I added the garlic and rosemary and cooked them for one minute.

Meanwhile, the pork had come out, but I just wrapped it on foil (garlic included) and let it hold its horses (or whatever pork would hold--wild boars?? Like the ones that terrorized the family in Old Yeller?) on the counter.

I then added the fingerling potatoes to the pan and roasted them for three minutes, then flipped them and let them sizzle for another 2 and a half minutes.

Then I sliced the pork, plated everything, took my pictures, and poured two glasses (or coffee mugs, whatever) of Pinot Noir. Bon appetit!

Pork Tenderloin
1.5-lb pork tenderloin
3 qts. water
3/4 cup salt
3/8 cup sugar
1 tablespoon dried rosemary
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon dark corn syrup
1 shallot, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, chopped
4 whole garlic cloves

Green Beans Almondine (adapted from Saveur)
1 lb. green beans
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup slivered almonds
3 shallots, chopped


Roasted Fingerling Potatoes (adapted from Food Network)
1 lb. fingerling potatoes
Salt and pepper
3 strips hickory-smoked bacon, diced into 1/2-inch pieces
1 small onion, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon minced garlic
3 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary

Roast Pork calypso style

So last night was the first time in a few days that I didn't have to work too late, so of course I had to cook. The dish I chose to tackle was a roast pork tenderloin from Bon Appetit. The calypso part refers to a Caribbean flair added by ginger, allspice, and orange juice, among other elements.

I began my preheating the oven to 500. I treated my tenderloin with a rub of shallots, bay leaves, salt, allspice, and ginger, plus a hefty portion of black pepper. 

To roast the pork, I placed it in a roasting pan and took the advice of a friend from work: roast for 5 1/2 minutes per pound of meat, then turn off the oven and let it sit for the next hour. It will cook itself to perfection!

While the pork took care of itself, Andy and I prepared the salsa. I steamed the corn and sliced the hearts of palm while Andy seeded and diced the tomatoes. We then minced the red onion and chopped up the cilantro. Black beans were included in the recipe, but we somehow lost track of these between the checkout line and home. No matter though! It was delicious without. In fact, I think the starchiness of the beans would have thrown off the rest of the flavors, but venture forth however you please.

To top it off, I added olive oil and fresh lime juice plus a generous grinding of coriander seed.

As the pork finished up, I combined orange juice, shallots, light brown sugar, minced fresh ginger, bay leaves, and all spice in a small heavy saucepan and simmered it for about ten minutes until it formed a syrup, coating the spoon as I stirred the mixture. I then seasoned it with salt and pepper.

Once the pork was done, I removed it from the oven and sliced it up.

Ay, there's the rub.

Finally, I lined each plate with spinach. I placed a mound of salsa in the center. Then around the edge of the plate, I alternated slices of pork and avocado then drizzled these with the syrup.

Voila!

Rub:
3 shallots, chopped
2 bay leaves, crumbled
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3/4 teaspoon ground allspice
3/4 teaspoon ground ginger
2 3/4 lb. pork tenderloins

Syrup:
1 1/2 cups fresh orange juice
1/4 cup minced shallots
3 tablespoons (packed) light brown sugar
2 tablespoons minced peeled fresh ginger
2 bay leaves
3/8 teaspoon ground allspice

Salsa:
1 15-oz can black beans, rinsed, drained (optional)
1 10-oz package frozen corn, thawed, drained
1 7/5-oz can hearts of palm, drained, cut into 1/4-inch rounds
2 large tomatoes, seeded, diced
1/2 red onion, minced
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1/4 cup olive oil
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 teaspoon ground coriander

Salad:
Fresh spinach leaves
2 avocados, halved, pitted, peeled, sliced crosswise