Gourmet calls this Pork Chops Saltimbocca. After reading Wikipedia’s entry on Saltimbocca, I’m not convinced this dish is true to it’s heritage, but hey—I’ll give Gina Enriquez the benefit of the doubt.

To make a long story short, I wasn’t impressed with this dish. It’s a downright shame because the Fontina and the prosciutto were excellent quality and freshness; they were both bought late yesterday afternoon at the lovely Giuliano’s Delicatessen and Bakery. The cheese, which I’ve never sampled before today, was soft, creamy, and rich. The prosciutto was sliced paper-thin and neither too moist nor too dry. Unfortunately, the sage was not at peak freshness, and the pork chops were garden-variety Albertsons bone-in thick cut. Still, one would think that putting these four ingredients together would not be so underwhelming. But before I criticize the recipe, let me offer a few critical remarks about my own technique.

1. With so few ingredients, it's crucial to obtain high quality materials. So next time spring for quality pork chops from a good butcher. Oh—and don't forget the really fresh sage!
2. Despite oversearing one side, the pork inside was cooked perfectly.

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I discovered a recipe from Emeril which brought back fond memories of thin sliced beef from KTA in a soy sauce marinade. (The butchers eventually stopped offering the thin slicing service; it’s a time-consuming process to keep the meat and knife sufficiently cold. Continue reading for more commentary on this subject.) I’m not sure I would call the recipe “Korean.” It sounds more like an American bastard child of grilled thin sliced beef teriyaki over sticky white rice and ground pork lettuce wraps with crunchy rice noodles.

Anyway, the only part of the dish I made word-for-word was the chile sauce. For the marinade, I just threw the ingredients together with a “Oh that looks about right.”

A few helpful hints for next time:

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2 poblano chiles
2 anaheim chiles
4 sesame seed buns
4 slices of provolone cheese
1.32 lbs 82% lean ground beef formed into 4 patties, with a small indentation in the middle of each patty
kosher salt
garlic powder
onion powder
fresh black pepper

The Procedure:

1. Season the patties with salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder to taste.

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Fresh lemongrass stalks at the farmer’s market inspired this attempt at a classic Asian dish. I used Charles Phan’s recipe on Food and Wine as a springboard for whipping together my own creation, which was scaled up and done more or less by taste rather than with measuring instruments.

The Procedure:

1. Wash 4 lbs of chicken breast in cold water, then pat completely dry. Cut chicken into small bite size pieces. Put peanut oil in the Calphalon Everyday Pan and heat until ready to fry. (Heat Setting: 8 ) Then add enough chicken to cover the bottom-but no more-and season with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. Cover the pan for a few minutes to minimize splatter. Use a plastic spatula to scrape the chicken from the bottom, then switch to your slotted spoon and remove the chicken from the pan. Continue frying the rest of the chicken in batches, being sure to add peanut oil as necessary to prevent excessive sticking. Do not clean the pan between batches!

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This recipe from Diary of a Foodie is an excellent starting point for a mole. I followed the instructions with a few important changes:

1. It was impossible to obtain the prized (and rare) chilhuacle negro. As a substitution, I used pasilla negro chiles.
2. I used ancho chiles (essentially dried poblanos) instead of mulatto chiles, also known as ancho negro.
3. The variety of chipotle chile to be used was not specified in the original recipe, but I used morita chipotles.
4. Since I used pasilla negros in place of the chilhuacle negros, I did not follow the directions, which called for an additional four pasilla chiles.

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