Sautéed Pork Loin in Tangy Orange Sauce

I've wanted to make pork loin for a long time, but never have, probably because it was never on sale. I finally decided I didn't care anymore and picked this recipe out of the my meat book I got for Christmas. The pork here is a cut from the center loin and I put it through a herb rub of basil, rosemary, oregano, garlic salt, pepper and tarragon. Tarragon wasn't actually in the recipe, but I never get to use it very much, so I just threw it in there. The pork was then panfried on both sides, and cooked covered for just a few minutes. The meat book laments continously about how pork is universally overcooked, promising that trichinosis is killed at 137 F, and therefore slightly pink is ok, but I still may have gone a little too far, as I didn't see any pink at all.

The leftover drippings were used to make the pan sauce, which was supposed to consist of onion, orange juice, lemon juice, orange marmalade, and chicken stock. However I have a rather annoying habit of making up a grocery list so I don't forget anything, then forgetting to take the list with me. Therefore when I got to the store I was left to the mercy of my memory, which as you may guess from the previous sentence, has some gaps. Luckily I had some chicken bouillon, which I added to boiling water to replace the chicken stock. In anycase, the onions were sautéed in the drippings, then all the other ingredients added and the sauce boiled and reduced. At the very end I added some corn starch to thicken it some.

In the end I'm glad I decided to splurge, for though the pork lion may have been cooked a little longer than necessary, it wasn't dry, and the orange sauce turned out wonderful. I have enough pork to cook it again tomorrow night, so I can take another shot at getting the cooking time down.

Plus now I have extra orange juice, which I love to drink, but never buy, because well, you can guess.

Chicken Brocccoli Penne

This is pretty similar to a couple of other things I've posted earlier. The only significant difference is the addition of the broccoli. Broccoli does better in cool weather so is actually more abudant in the winter. I didn't cook the broccoli any before the whole thing was set to simmer in chicken broth, and it might have done a little better had it been so, or at least simmered longer. I think broccoli tastes almost bitter when it's raw. In anycase it was still good, which is fortunate because I'm going to be eating it for three days.

London Broil.....kind of

London Broil isn't actually a cut of meat. Rather it's a method of cooking used to prepare a top round steak. The method became so common that now you can see cuts of top round labeled london broil instead. As you may guess London Broil normally involves broiling, so I'm reluctant to call this such, as I in fact did not broil this steak at all. In anycase, I've made this once before, but that was before I had an cast-iron skillet. Like the last time I made a marinade of olive oil, soy sauce, lemon juice, worcestershire sauce, and other fun things. A slight schedule hitch actually caused the steak to be marinated a full 72 hours, but longer is better right? Then I proceeded to quickly sear the steak on both sides, managing to set off the fire alarm while I was at it. I was aiming for medium rare, but I think I overshot it a little bit, probably because I let the steak rest in the iron skillet, which keeps its heat much longer than aluminum. Anyway the marinade did an excellent job, as this turned out quite flavorful and juicy.

Bolivian Fare

Pique: Bite-sized chunks of beef served with green peppers, tomatoes, locotoes, and onions over a bed of fry-cut potatoes in a beer sauce, all topped with an egg.



Brownies: Well they were supposed to be anyway. Much of Bolivia is at a high altitude and therefore requires some adjustments in baking. Generally a reduction in baking soda or powder, an increase in the liquid paired with the flour, and a decrease in sugar is suggested. For other cooking just remember that water boils are a lower temperature as the altitude increases, meaning an increase in cooking time is required.


So why does water boil at a lower temperature at higher altitude? (sorry can't resist)

Entropically, it's favorable for the liquid molecules to be in the gaseous phase. However at temperatures lower than the boiling point, the energy it would take the individual molecules to break free from the intermolecular forces holding the liquid together would be greater than than the entropic gain from going into the gas phase. Thus the boiling point is when these two factors are equal. Remember that the liquid isn't just up and turning into a gas, there is a required energy input, but that is equal to the entropic gain by switching to a gas at the boiling point.

So at higher altitudes the pressure is lower, thus there is a greater entropic gain than at lower altitudes, thus the equality between the energy and the entropy occurs at a lower temperature.

Anyway if you want to calculate the boiling temperature of a pure liquid you can use this equation. You'll need to know the atmospheric pressure.

Saltena: Simliar to a meat pie, it contains beef or chicken in the middle along with peas, other vegetables, an olive, and a quail egg. It also holds a lot of juice, and to be correct you have to eat it with your fingers without spilling any. I couldn't.

Truncha a la portuguesa - I am not generally not a big fan of fish, but sitting in a little restaurant on the shore of sparkling Lake Titicaca that specializes in trout, it would just be wrong not to get it. The only options in ordering the trout was how they fried it, and mine came with onions and tomatoes, though I'm not completely sure what they fried it in. In any case, it was excellent, and may cause me to reevaluate my opinion of fish.

Traditional bolivian meal in the area surrounding Lake Titicaca: Fried trout, something like sardines, chicken, boiled eggs, corn, potatoes, and beans. I didn't eat they sardines; they were looking at me.

A little bit of miscommunication at an ice cream place. In the top photo my brother tried to order a cappuccino milkshake and instead got a strawberry milkshake(the default flavor) and a cappuccino.

In the bottom photo my father ordered an ice cream coke expecting some akin to an ice cream float. Instead he got just what the name said, ice cream, and a coke.

Llama!: This is probably not a traditional method of preperation, but the fact that it's llama makes up for it. It tasted similar to beef, but kind of gamey.

T-bone steaks: This was one order of steak. One. Other than that, how different how can cooked cow meat be?

Fettuccini Carbonara

Spaghetti Carbonara was probably my favorite meal growing up. I remember my father would always fry the bacon. On the few occasions he attempted to do the whole meal by himself, all the bacon ended up clumped at the bottom of the pot =P. So this dish is simliar, with fettuccini instead of spaghetti, and a little bit more of a sauce. The traditional meat to use in carbonara is actually guanciale, which is unsmoked pig cheek. Yummy.

Chicken Farfalle with a Creamy Cheese Sauce

I was having trouble deciding what call this. The chicken and the farfalle(bowtie pasta) were pretty straightforward, but what about the sauce? My last food post mentioned that I had delayed a recipe because it had heavy cream in it. This is it. So it's similar to an alfredo sauce, but I'm feeling reluctant to call it such. First off I found out that the original alfredo didn't have any cream in it at all, it was simply butter and cheese. Secondly, the only cheese in alfredo is parmesan. Since I have had both success and failure with these kinds of sauces before, I decided to ditch the pure parmesan in favor of a mixture of cheeses that I thought would melt easier. The results were very satisfactory. The sauce thickened beautifully with only the cheese, though I had cornstarch standing by, and by the end I was liberally licking it off the spatula. With a pint of heavy cream, several tablespoons of butter, and 6 oz. of cheese, it probably took a year off my life, but it tasted good.

Canticle of the Turning

“Among times there is a time that turns a corner and everything this side of it is new” –Tinidril (Perelandra) – C.S. Lewis

Traditionally I’ve always thought the Christmas season was just too long. I’m not sure when it started, but at some point I began to figure that more than a month was too much. I just didn’t get why it deserved to be commemorated so long. From my point of view, it seemed silly to celebrate the birth of Christ without celebrating his death. Yet it seemed we had a whole month just celebrating His arrival, an event I saw taking most of its meaning from the fact that it was necessary to lead to the cross. Basically, lent made sense to me, while advent did not. I didn’t think we needed both.

This year however, my thinking has been reversed, thanks in a large part to C.S. Lewis. I’ve been convinced that my previous characterizations had been based on a view that was not big enough. From an Earthly point of reference, it’s easy to see how the Resurrection might seem to trump the birth of Christ. His birth is, by worldly standards, admittedly miraculous, angels filling up the sky, stars flying through the heavens, and of course the virgin birth. But the end is something we’ve all see before, a crying baby. Even the most radical element of it, the virgin birth, yields a familiar occurrence, a pregnant women who will give birth after 9 months. The fact that we’ve removed a condition that was necessary for the event to occur is often just classed as kind of strange. I had never thought of it as one of God’s great miracles.

The Resurrection on the other hand is a stunning reversal the primary constant of life. From our Earthly reference frame this is completely revolutionary, a man was dead, in the grave, and now he’s walking around. This is something you can’t miss, something you can’t forget. It was this thinking that led me to the idea that Jesus’ death overshadows his birth in importance.

But thanks to Lewis, I saw I needed to take one more step back and observe both the Natural and the Supernatural, instead of just gauging the impact on the former. In this sense the Resurrection loses most of its clout. A great miracle to be sure, but Jesus wasn’t the first man to be raised from the dead. What made it different? The fact that He was God. The same thing happens with His death. Common by any standard, it draws its significance from the fact that He had led a sinless life. How was that possible if every man was bound to sin? Because he was not just a man, He was God. We seem to be going somewhere here. Heading back towards his birth, the angels, stars, and even the virginity of Mary at conception is nothing really ground-breaking from our new reference frame. God could have done all that for any child he wished. What makes this one so special? He was God.

With our new point of view, everything seems to be pointing back to one event, the Incarnation of Christ. All of the miracles of the Gospels derive their meaning from this happening. And how does this occurrence look from our new frame? Well you can tell me. The omnipotent, omniscient, timeless, necessary being, creator of all that is, self-existent in His own right, epitome of beauty, embodiment of justice, essence of love, manifested himself in a human nature to do what no other human could, for the purpose of redeeming His creation that was in constant rebellion to Him. Now that is beyond revolutionary. When you have the broader point of view you start to see that the story isn’t about you. It’s about Him, from beginning to end.

The Incarnation of Christ is so fundamental, so earth-shattering, so far-reaching, that everything in the universe points to this one event. At Genesis 3:15 we’re already looking forward to it, and at Revelation 22:14 we’re still looking back. The monks made no mistake when they chose the birth of Christ to be the benchmark by which we measure time. Lewis allegorically refers to it as the “corner of time” in his novel Perelandra. I think it’s the perfect label. So much more eloquent than “turning point”, it suggests that things are completely different, perpendicular, ninety degrees off. The Incarnation is the climax of a meta-narrative that has been being written since time began. When I came to this realization I could only use one word to describe it, beautiful, utterly beautiful. It is as if every sunrise, every symphony, every mountain range, every meteor shower, every child’s laugh, is an attempt to reflect how excessively beautiful what He has done from beginning to end is.

So what does this have to do with the Christmas song “Canticle of the Turning”? We sang this song for our advent celebration at church today, and each of the four stanzas has a reference to the world turning. I just love it because it picks up on what I’ve just been talking about, that the birth of Christ is center of all history. The song itself is from Mary’s point of view, taking text from the Magnificat, found in Luke 1:46-55. The lyrics are different from what you might expect in Christmas song, “Let the fires of your justice burn!” But put yourself in Mary’s shoes. Gabriel shows up and tells her that she will have a son that will reign on the throne of David. So Mary is thinking of the Davidic covenant, that his kingdom would last forever, and of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, the stone that grew into a mountain. With the Jews under Roman rule, you might imagine what she first thought her son might be like.

Moreover, old testatment prophecy predicts the coming of Christ as well as his judgment and the times after it. The text in the song picks up on that as well. At this point Mary may be thinking that her son would be a ruling King. If so, she’s not wrong, she just doesn’t realize that God has an older covenant to fulfill first, the Abrahamic one, the promise that he would be a blessing to all nations. And luckily for all of us, God has been spending a long time allowing the full number of gentiles to come in.

But without further ado, my favorite Christmas song for this year:

Canticle of the Turning

My soul cries out with a joyful shout that the God of my heart is great, and my spirit sings of the wondrous things that you bring to the ones who wait. You fixed your sight on your servant's plight, and my weakness you did not spurn. So from east to west shall your name be blest. Could the world be about to turn?

My heart shall sing of the day you bring. Let the fires of you justice burn. Wipe away all the tears, for the dawn draw near, and the world is about to turn.

Though I am small, my God, my all, you work great things in me,And your mercy will last from the depths of the past to the end of the age to be. Your very name puts the proud to shame, and to those who would for you yearn, you will show your might, put the strong to flight, for the world is about to turn.

My heart shall sing of the day you bring. Let the fires of you justice burn. Wipe away all the tears, for the dawn draw near, and the world is about to turn.

From the halls of power to the fortress tower, not a stone will be left on stone. Let the king beware for your justice tears ev'ry tyrant from his throne.The hungry poor shall weep no more, for the food they can never earn;There are tables spread, ev'ry mouth be fed, for the world is about to turn.

My heart shall sing of the day you bring. Let the fires of you justice burn. Wipe away all the tears, for the dawn draw near, and the world is about to turn.

Though the nations rage from age to age, we remember who holds us fast: God's mercy must deliver us from the conqueror's crushing grasp.This saving word that our forebears heard is the promise which holds us bound, 'Til the spear and rod can be crushed by God, who is turning the world around.