I found another blog titled Yellow Ribbon Diary. (Mine is distinguished by use of the word "The") She even has a button with the title attached. I never figured out how to make a button. I wonder if we both spontaneously came up with our shared title on our own? I wonder if she has read mine.
So, Keith is not suppose to eat very much red meat. The last time I went shopping I got a lot of pork, chicken, etc. Yesterday I decided to try cooking the ham steak. Ham steak seems to be quite popular around here; indeed, all pork products are. In the meat department of the local Krogers there is a display counter perennially dedicated to country cured ham, whole or sliced.
Each time I pass it I am vaguely tempted to buy one by whispers of it's legendary deliciousness, but am stopped by the remembered episode of "Good Eats," which featured this particular meat product. In it, it took Alton Brown days just to reconstitute the ham. And he did it in a cooler, if I remember correctly. And then he cooked it for hours on top of that.
Far too labor intensive. Even though I do have all day, theoretically, to cook, I don't actually want to spend all day cooking. Or days, as the case may be. Hence the ham steak.
Having never cooked a ham steak before, I googled recipes for it and my eye caught a recipe for a cherry sauce. Keith likes a fruited ham, usually with pineapple, but cherry seemed appealing too. I decided to try it.
The original recipe calls for one (12 oz) jar of Bing cherry preserves, which I didn't have. What I did have was one (21 oz) can of cherry pie filling. I figured that would do well enough. It also called for a tablespoon of red wine vinegar and a fourth of a teaspoon each of cinnamon and nutmeg.
Intriguing, no?
I opened the can of pie filling, put half in my small saucepan and split the other half between two Corning ware ramekins, to make a dessert with later. I knew that half of twenty one ounces is about ten and that's less cherry preserves than called for in the original recipe, so I should have reduced slightly the amount of vinegar called for as well.
However, I was too curious about how the vinegar would taste and put in the entire, trembling tablespoonful of the stuff. I also threw in a half a can of pineapple pieces, on a whim. In went the spices and then, on impulse, I put in an eight of a teaspoon of ground cloves. The ground clove, I have discovered, is not a spice to be taken lightly. It is a potent and potentially ruinous spice that can create almost as much heat in it's own way, as ground red pepper.
I already knew all this, but I thought that an eight of a teaspoon would surely be the right proportion for the sauce, just to pep it up a little.
Well, my first taste disabused me of this notion right away. I can't really describe the taste of the sauce well. Pungent, perhaps, would be the word. Sharp and sour would also apply. Pushing culinary panic aside, I calmly thought through my options. Sweetness was the right application for too much vinegar, so I had merely to pick the right sweetener.
I had honey, white and brown sugar and molasses at my disposal. Honey immediately jumped out, honey ham being a classic. So I gauged out about two tablespoon's worth with a butter knife and plunked it into the sauce. It almost immediately dissolved.
My next taste was heaven. There was the heat of the cloves and cinnamon, the smooth sweetness of honey and cherries, as well as the complicated flavor produced by the now tamed vinegar. And the color! It was a red worth of a King George VIII, redolent of blood, velvet, rubies and absolute decadence. The color had completely drenched even the pineapples in scarlet madness.
It was rich, but maybe too rich. It was too late to back down. I smeared the glistening stuff liberally over the unsuspecting pork and popped the whole thing into the oven at three fifty for half an hour.
I turned then to the cherry dessert. Since I had a little of the sauce left over, I mixed some of the spiced cherries in with the original in the ramekins, and sprinkled dark chocolate chips over top.
I made a crisp out of some butter left on the counter from the other day when I had been gripped by an irresistible urge for cinnamon toast. I mixed the butter with a small handful of oats and a small handful of brown sugar, threw in a little cinnamon, because why the heck not? That got dribbled on top of the chocolate chips and the ramekins went in the oven as well.
Voila. A super unhealthy, cherry inspired dinner was bubbling away. To offset all this unhealthiness, I set out a salad and cut up a sweet potato to boil. I thought fleetingly of perhaps seasoning the sweet potato with honey or molasses or even garlic, but I knew instinctively that we had more than enough seasoning elsewhere in the meal and adding more would just be ridiculous at this point. Besides, I knew Keith liked plain boiled sweet potato. It actually is quite good that way.
The ham had come out of the oven by the time Keith got home and his eyes got wide as saucers when it saw it in all its royal rubiness on the stove top. The red food coloring from the cherry pie filling has sunk down into the meat, staining it as red as a candied apple. All that sweetness was cut through by the rich fattiness of the pork.
It was really quite good but Keith kept asking nervously if this was healthy for him to eat. Which is all my fault for constantly yammering away about healthy food choices. Apparently he's been listening.
I ate the dessert later, but the spices had overwhelmed the cherry taste. It needed a lot of whipped cream. The crisp with the chocolate underneath was delicious though.
Now my mission, if I choose to accept, is to figure out a way to use the rest of the meat for today's dinner.
That cleaning for one hour a day strategy is so efficient that today my options are: clean the windowsills, organize the closet in the spare bedroom, clean the basement or steam clean the upstairs. I've polished, dusted, mopped, vacuumed, and spit shined every other surface or area available to me. And really, I think that's just too much.
Here's a sample of the language out of "The Federalist Papers":
"It is not yet forgotten that well-grounded apprehensions of imminent danger induced the people of America to form the memorable Congress of 1774. That body recommended certain measures to their constituents and the event proved their wisdom; yet is is fresh in our memories how soon the press began to teem with pamphlets and weekly papers against those very measures. Not only many of the officers of government, who obeyed the dictates of personal interest, but others, from a mistaken estimate of consequences, from the undue influence of ancient attachments or whose ambition aimed at objects which did not correspond with the public good, were indefatigable in their endeavors to persuade the people to reject the advice of that patriotic Congress. Many, indeed, were deceived and deluded, but the great majority of the people reasoned and decided judiciously; and happy they are in reflecting that they did so."
Whew.
It's like listening to the waves on the ocean. I wish I had a vocabulary like that.
