Christmas Pork Wellington

With Christmas so close to Thanksgiving, another turkey dinner seems out of the question after a solid week or two of non-stop leftovers. Our normal go-to meal for Christmas dinner is a beef salt roast, which takes a large cut of beef and literally encases it in the large grain kosher salt.

This year it was time to try something a little different however, as we decided to use up a pork loin we had in the freezer and make a pork version of the traditional beef wellington. Here we've cut the pork loin in half down the middle and we'll only be using the right half, saving the left side for another dinner the next week.

We got some amazing Wild Tree seasonings as a gift that Christmas morn from my mom, and we used the rancher steak rub to coat the sides of the pork loin.

To start the wellington cooking process, first get a few tablespoons of oil piping hot in a pan at medium-high heat. When the pork loin goes in it should start sizzling like crazy.

Each side is cooked for a few brief minutes to ensure the outer edges are all golden brown before the actual baking in the oven begins.

Don't forget about the end pieces though! Here Megan is holding the loin in place with tongs to ensure the top and bottom sides also get browned.

After the browning here's our perfect loin waiting to be coated in veggies and wrapped up in dough.

Normally a wellington would be coated in liver pate, but we wanted to go a vegetable route instead and decided on mushrooms and onions.

After being chopped up, the onions and mushrooms are cooked in the same skillet that is still coated in a glaze of delicious pork flavor.

While the vegetables soften, Megan lays out two sheets of puff pastry. Rather than making our own we just went with store bought, and you can find these in the frozen section of the grocery store, usually near the whipped cream or frozen fruit.

The cooked vegetables are laid down as a bed for the bottom side of the loin on the puff pastry, then also spread by hand on top so it sticks better.

Both the top and bottom should be well coated with the onions and mushrooms.

The dough is then wrapped up on all sides to completely cover the meat and filling.

The dough is scored with a knife and then brushed with melted butter.

After about half the baking time here's how the dough starts to take on the golden brown hue. We don't want it to go too far and become black however, so for the second half we'll cover the pan in tin foil.

And here's the perfectly flaky and golden baked dough after the wellington comes out of the oven.

The wellington is sliced into a series of pieces about an inch thick.

Here's each slice, and you can see one of them lost its dough covering, revealing how the coating/filling looks as well.

A plate of our prepared Christmas dinner features two pieces of wellington, mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, and a crescent roll.

This will be our last post of 2012 - see you next year for more ways to make fantastic pork dinners, new and innovative takes on pasta classics, and a storm of European world tour entries! Happy New Year!

Chile Pork And Garbanzo Burritos

While our daily cuisine draws inspiration from many different cultures (and not just during our culinary world tour!), spicy south-of-the-border inspired food is a staple that makes frequent appearances both in breakfast and dinner. Recently Megan and I tried out a new recipe simply called "Chile Pork," which blends together several hot peppers for a scalding, yet delicious, rice and meat style meal.

This particular dish calls for chilis in adobo sauce, which you can read about in more detail at our pepper comparison guide if you aren't familiar with these devilish canned peppers. It's simple to control the spicy level in this dish: for ridiculously scorching hot use the whole can, for very hot use all the can but remove some of the seeds, for medium use most of the can and remove a good portion of the seeds, or for more mild only use one or two and remove most or all of the seeds. The remainder can then be used by adding into breakfast skillets or mixing into pork or turkey burgers for some fun heat.

Along with the chilis in adobo sauce we're also cooking up poblanos and jalapenos in a large cooking pan. We aren't using a skillet, as we'll need that for the meat and later the pan will be filled with the pureed peppers.

During the initial cooking we're adding in a few extra ingredients for a more complex taste that mixes a little sweet with the hot: in go diced onion, raisins, and some orange juice.

While the pepper mixture is boiling we take this massive pork shoulder and first cut it into two equal parts, as we're only going to need half for this dish (the other half was used for a one-pot style bake, which will be covered soon!)

Here Megan is cutting the pork into about one inch strips.

The strips are first browned in a skillet with a few teaspoons of vegetable oil...

...until we get to about this color on all sides.

When the pork is nearly done browning through we also throw in a few handfuls of diced green onion.

As the pork cooks, we then poured the previous pepper mixture into a blender and pureed until reaching this smooth consistency shown below.

The browned pork and green onions are carefully moved from the skillet to the blended pepper sauce.

Once all the meat is added everything gets mixed through and then simmers until all the flavors come together.

The sauce reduces over time until we get this chile sauce smothered pork, which is spooned over a bowl of rice.

Mix together (and possibly throw in a few tablespoons of sour cream if you made it too hot!) and you've got a fantastic chile pork bowl ready for consumption.

With all that pork we obviously couldn't eat everything that night, so this meal gets stretched out across two different dinners. We're going to use the leftovers for burritos, but for a twist we're going to heat up some garbanzo beans in a small skillet.

Here we've reheated the chile pork (now even spicier the next day after it's sat in the fridge - so keep that in mind when cooking) along with the rice. To complete the ensemble we've got salsa and some shredded cheddar.

For our burritos we cover a flour tortilla in a layer of sour cream and spoon on the chile pork and rice.

Top with shredded cheese, the garbanzo beans, and anything else you'd like such as salsa, lettuce, or tomatoes.

Thanks for checking in, and we'll be back soon with a radically different dish used with the other half of the pork shoulder, along with our Christmas dinner of pork wellington, the next stop in our culinary world tour, and more ways to make pasta dishes more exciting!

Tangerine Vinaigrette And Buffalo Thousand Island

Many of our meals include a salad on the side covered in an array of colorful vegetables, and while there are plenty of great dressings available at the grocery store, we really enjoy making our own. Not only does this let us experiment with flavors and get exactly what we want on our salads, but it also lets us reuse old glass and plastic containers instead of dumping them in the garbage.

In previous blogs we've covered putting together smoky jalapeno ranch dressing or thousand island dressing and all the awesome things we put them on. There have been plenty of tweaks to those recipes over time and many other types of dressings we've tried. Today we'll look at a spicy buffalo version of thousand island, along with a vinaigrette made with fresh tangerines.

During our weekly grocery shopping we saw a spicy buffalo mayonnaise on clearance at Smith's and immediately thought it would be great for a dressing. For our hotter version of thousand island we used Mrs. Dash "extra spicy" seasoning, sugar, ketchup, worcestershire sauce, along with diced poblano and onion.

It all goes into a bowl and gets mixed up with a whisk - pretty simple!

After mixing by hand we get something with a much more appetizing color and texture, and it's really start to have a buffalo wing sauce look.

Pop the dressing into a container and stash in the fridge until you are ready to top a salad or use it as a condiment on a sandwich in place of mayo or mustard. This one's much spicier than the regular variety, but it has an awesome flavor I haven't found in any store brands yet.

If thick and creamy dressings aren't to your liking, a vinaigrette might be more up your alley. We originally wanted to do a blood orange dressing, but unfortunately none of the stores had any that week, so we went with tangerines instead.

For the dressing we juiced three tangerines (discard all the seeds and pulp of course) and mixed it with very thinly sliced green onion, dijon mustard, extra virgin oil, red wine vinegar, and a few handfuls of sugar.

After getting blending together this thinner dressing fits nicely in a cleaned out squeeze bottle and is ready to top a delicious salad with plenty of diced fruit.

Six-Seven-Eight Alarm Sauce

In our constant quest for new kitchen adventures we've made a variety of homemade versions of different sauces, like Thousand Island dressing or buffalo wing sauce. Personally I love hot sauce, on just about anything, so it was only a matter of time before trying to put together our own.

All hot sauces seem to have a name, from "Satan's Rage" to "Buttburner Sauce" or "Southwest Jalapeno" and so on, but we really weren't sure what to call ours. Cristal dubbed it "Tybasco" and one of our Facebook group members mentioned that we should call it "Six-Seven-Eight Alarm Sauce."

For this batch we used tomatillos, garlic, onion, red bell pepper, poblano, and jalapenos. You can really experiment here to get different flavors and colors, however. We also got a great result using a mix of banana peppers and serranos for a balance between sweet and heat. For some inspiration on different kinds of chiles to use, check out our pepper comparison guide here.

Everything is chopped up, but it doesn't need to be too small or diced thinly, as it will all end up being blended together later. Unlike with other pepper-based dishes, don't discard the seeds here, as you want the end result to be quite spicy.

All the ingredients are cooked on a hot skillet with a few teaspoons of oil until they begin to soften and become fragrant - you may want to do this somewhere that's well ventilated or with a fan going, as hot pepper fumes aren't easy on the eyes!

After the peppers become soft, throw in about 2 cups of water and allow to boil for a few minutes.

Remove from the heat, and then let the mixture cool down more towards room temperature before pouring into a blender or food processor. Add in either apple cider vinegar or standard white vinegar, depending on what kind of taste you are going for.

Pulse it all together until it starts to become mostly liquid. If you only chop it roughly then what you have here is almost salsa - and if you wanted to add in fresh cilantro and diced tomato it pretty much would be!

After being blended until smooth, pour the sauce through a sieve so the pulpy parts stays up top and the liquid collects below in a container.

Press down on the pulpy solid bits with a wooden spoon to force all the liquid down. Discard the pulp (or get an unsuspecting friend to try eating it for a spicy "surprise") and then repeat the process of pouring through a sieve another time or two.

Here's the refined hot sauce, but it's not quite ready yet!  This needs to sit and allow the flavor to develop first. Put it in container with an airtight lid, pop it in the fridge, and wait a week or two before using.

And here it is, the finished hot sauce (poured back into an old, cleand out hot sauce container for full effect and reusability!) ready to spice up tacos, eggs, soups, or anything else you desire.

Besides using as a topping for anything that would go well with hot sauce, this is also great for using as a base in buffalo dip or calzones.