Bossam Pork Roast, Yakemein, White Bean Mushroom Soup, Spatchcocked Chicken, Pizza Night & More!

We were so focused on snow storm prep last week that I didn't write up my weekly What’s Cooking round up, so this one is especially crammed full of cooking ideas for you! Of course, it’s warmer now, but it’ll probably get cold again before we know it!

Bossom Style Pork Roast with Two Sauces, Romanesco & Rice

I’ve been wanting to make a Momofuku style bossom pork roast forever and I found a Boston butt that had a big gash in the package right before the snow storm!

So I started this on Tuesday morning and had it going all day. It’s really easy — you just coat with salt and sugar and roast it until it’s falling apart and the fat is crispy and caramelized like a cracklin’.

The fat did start to burn a little with all the sugar in it, so I let it cook in the oven at 250 degrees for a few hours and then transferred it to the Instant Pot and cooked on high pressure for an hour. Then closer to when we were ready to eat, I stuck it back in the oven at a high heat to re-crisp up.

Then I made the ginger scallion sauce and the ssam sauce.

For the recipes, I looked at both the NYT’s version and Recipe Tin Eats.

I didn't have any butter or little gem lettuce leaves to stuff everything in or fresh oysters, but it was still pretty delicious with some of the ginger scallion sauce drizzled over some Compostella lettuce mix, alongside Jasmine rice, homemade cucumber kimchi and whole roasted romanesco.

And even though the pork was amazing with these Korean flavors, because it’s just caramelized with salt and sugar, the leftovers were pretty versatile for a pizza topping, mixed in with the white bean soup (below) and with eggs in a breakfast burrito.

Yakemein-Inspired Beef & Veggie Noodle Soup

I got a craving for Yakemein, but we were so limited on eggs that I didn’t even include them!

And I wanted to amp up the veggies, so this is very much inspired by the flavor profile of Yakemein, but is of course not the authentic original by any means.

I did a broth with beef bones and pork trotters and then did the traditional Yakemein seasoning with the trinity of veggies, soy sauce and cajun spices.

For the veggies, I also added sliced carrots, watermelon radishes and hakurei turnips and at the end, some sliced escarole, too.

The beef was actually a chuck roast sliced fairly thin and seared. I learned from the chuck eye steaks that if you cut it the right way, you don’t actually have to slow cook beef chuck!

We ate it with bucatini and fresh scallions. Boiled eggs would have been lovely in it, too, we’ll have to hope we have enough the next time I want to make it!

White Bean & Mushroom Stew with Potatoes & Collards

This time of year, you can just never have enough broth, right? On Monday night before the snow storm, I started another big batch of broth with some chicken backs and pork bones and it filled the Instant Pot nearly to the very top!

I also soaked some white beans and then on Wednesday made a soup with those, potatoes and two whole pounds of oyster mushrooms. I also added some collard greens. I seasoned with Smokey Shiitake & Black Garlic seasoning, Trader Joe’s mushroom umami seasoning and a little of ALL CAPS new Caps & Cream soup and dip mix!

It came out really lovely and great as leftovers. The mushrooms were so meaty Grant thought there was thinly sliced beef in it!

Spatchcocked Roast Chickens

To go with the soup, I also cut the back bone out of two whole chickens and roasted them with mushroom seasonings and rosemary. I love cooking chickens this way because you can save the spine and neck for broth and they cook so much more quickly and evenly when spatchcocked.

Snow Day Pizza Night

There’s no better time to crank your oven as high as it will go than when it’s really cold, right? I think we took some pressure off of the heater on Wednesday night doing this!

I defrosted four dough balls from Bellegarde and stretched them out on parchment paper. I sprinkle some corn meal on the parchment first and rub my hands with olive oil to help it not stick to the parchment or my hands.

Then I preheated my pizza stones while I dressed the pizzas. The first one was Andouille sausage and roasted red pepper with Monterey Jack and fresh mozzarella cheeses, then topped with fresh green onions when it came out of the oven.

The second one was sautéed garlicky oyster mushrooms I held back from the soup, plus lots of smashed black garlic cloves. The cheeses were the same combo of Monterey Jack and fresh mozzarella, with the addition of some parmesan flakes after it came out of the oven.

The third one was some mustard green pesto from the freezer, plus chicken, sun dried tomatoes and kalamata olives with mozzarella and goat feta.

And for the final one I used leftover pork roast, Japanese barbecue sauce, some of the ginger scallion sauce, plus mozzarella and smoked gouda.

There were only three of us eating, so we also had tons of leftovers!

Baked Catfish & Waffle Fries

Grant is working on perfecting his waffle fry game with this mandolin he ordered. This round of fries went with some baked catfish with a simple herb butter and a big salad with strawberries, feta, pistachios and a tahini balsamic dressing.