What's Cooking: Citrusy Carnitas, Beef & Farro Stew, Goat Eggplant Curry, Palak Paneer & More!

So much cooking this week! As usual, but maybe a little extra (in every sense of the word).

Satsuma Lime Carnitas with Pinto Beans

Often when we want pulled pork for tacos, we do a dry rub and smoke it on our PK Grill for a few hours before putting in the Instant Pot to pressure cook until it’s falling apart. Pork of course has plenty of fat so it won’t dry out if you smoke it until it’s done, but there’s less babysitting required when you finish it in the Instant Pot and you get the bonus of some lovely bone broth, too.

This time, Grant had too much going on to have time to do even a short smoke and with satsumas in season, I opted to do a citrusy batch of carnitas, instead, where the smoking element isn’t really required.

I started by cutting a 6.5 lb picnic shoulder into two pieces and searing it in a cast iron pan on the stove first. And even though I did have the stove vent on, I got to experience the smoke alarms going off in our new house for the first time!

Wowza! They were piercingly loud and pretty hard to figure out how to turn off, since they are hardwired in and there’s no battery to remove.

I grabbed the instruction manual and vacated outside to save my eardrums, while also googling how to turn them off. Despite multiple attempts, I don’t even think I succeeded, I think they eventually just reset after the smoke cleared (I had turned the vent to full blast and turned every ceiling fan in the house on full blast, too!).

Anyway, I think these carnitas came out well enough that that whole experience was worth it.

Once the chaos died down, I transferred the pork to the Instant Pot and seasoned with sea salt, chili lime seasoning, garlic powder, coriander, cumin and oregano. Then I squeezed the juice from two satsumas and two limes, along with a bottle of lager and pressured cooked for an hour.

I wasn’t sure if it would totally be done by then, but I wanted some of the pork broth for pinto beans. Because there was beer and citrus in the broth, I used just some of that for the pork flavor and some beef broth I had made the day before for the beef stew (below).

So then I set it to pressure cook for another 30 minutes after retrieving the broth and let it slow cook the rest of the day after that. I also seasoned the beans with chipotle powder and some salsa.

It all came out so delicious. Grant ate it with rice as a bowl and I did more of a burrito with beans, pork, cheese, homemade almond sauce, tomatoes, cilantro and hot sauce. Later in the week, I made some very delicious quesadillas with the carnitas, too.

Beef & Farro Stew with Mushrooms, Carrots & Sun-Dried Tomatoes

I haven’t used farro in awhile, so I dreamed up this stew as sort of like a beef and barley soup but with farro instead.

First I made a batch of bone broth with beef bones in the Instant Pot.

I used my favorite versatile tenderized round steak for the beef, cutting into cubes and coating with a little flour and cornstarch before browning it.

I removed all the beef from the soup pot and sautéed onions, carrots, (frozen) pink celery and shiitake and oyster mushrooms. Then I added some sun dried tomatoes and used the oil from those to cook the garlic (I always like to add garlic later in the sauté so it doesn’t burn).

I deglazed the pan with some soy sauce and balsamic vinegar, then added the beef back in, along with farro I had soaked for about 12 hours. Then I filled it up with beef broth and cooked for about 45 minutes until the farro was finished, but still a little al dente.

Because I didn’t have parsley, I garnished with some carrot tops, which have a similar though slightly more carroty flavor. It was really good with a Bellegarde baguette made into garlic bread.

Goat, Eggplant & Tomato Curry

This is some of the very last of the goat meat we have in stock until we process more in a few weeks. And both of these packs — bone-in stew meat and a shoulder roast — had failed vacuum seals, so this sorta chose me and not the other way around!

I had two small eggplant to use, so I started by roasting those with avocado oil, curry powder and coriander.

Then I seared the goat meat on all sides. I sautéed some onions and garlic, then added that and diced beefsteak tomatoes I had in my freezer plus the roasted eggplant to the Instant Pot.

I put the trivet on top of the veggies mixture with the seared goat meat and then seasoned with sea salt, garam masala and turmeric and pressured cooked for an hour. It came out perfect!

Palak Paneer & Red Lentil Dal

It wasn’t a huge amount of goat meat, including the bones, so I planned some extra protein and veggies to go with it in the form of Palak Paneer and a red lentil dal.

For the greens, I used Swiss chard, mustard greens and even a baby bok choy I had on hand. I normally cook with the stems, but for a dish like this that you puree and want to be smooth, I leave them out and use for something else.

I started with red onions, cubanelle peppers, ginger and garlic and then added the greens. Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s were out of paneer and while I sometimes make my own, I didn’t have it in me for this go round. So I actually used bread cheese, which is a firm cheese that can be seared. And it worked perfectly!

The dal I have made many times from my Indian Homecoming cookbook. I prefer it with yellow split peas, but those have become harder for me to find lately.

Because the Instant Pot was in use for the goat curry, I cooked the lentils in my crockpot. You use cook them with water, salt and turmeric and the flavor comes from making a tempering oil that it poured on at the end. You toast cumin seeds and dried red chili, then add a mix of peppers, ginger and garlic. You finish with a little water and lime juice so the garlic doesn’t burn. And then add that to the lentils along with a bunch more lime juice and cilantro.

The combination of the goat curry, the palak paneer and the lentils over rice was just lovely!

Kale Mini Quiches with Cream Cheese & Bacon Fat Pie Crust

Since I’ve been in my BLT era, we have a lot of bacon fat in our fridge. And we always have tons of cracked eggs.

So I played around with this recipe to potentially make a bunch of either mini or full size quiches to freeze.

I brought home some goat yogurt and goat creole cream cheese in mind for the crust because I remember making some pecan cookies that have a cream cheese pie crust that was so easy to work with and press out into the muffin tins.

I looked up a recipe for cream cheese pie crust and because it also called for plenty of butter and I was running low, I replaced some of the butter with bacon fat. It was still easy to work with — not too crumbly, not too sticky — and of course the flavor came out incredible.

I also had some baby kale to use up, so I sautéed that and then once it was cooled, blitzed it in the food processor (since I already had it out for the crust). I was planning to put goat feta in the quiches as well, but I had already added some creole cream cheese in place of any cream or half & half and kind of ran out of room!

They came out really great even with out the additional cheese and the texture of the blitzed greens was perfect.

Leftovers for Breakfast!

The standard American diet includes a lot of carbs and sweets for breakfast, but I have learned over the years how much better I do if I have significant protein and also veggies for breakfast.

So sometimes when I cook a ton of food on the weekends, one dish tends to get used for breakfast makings more than lunch or dinner leftovers!

This week I did a lot of breakfast burritos with carnitas and pinto beans. Plenty of protein, fiber and healthy fats and then it fills me up for hours, with no weird blood sugar crashes. I cracked way too many eggs for the mini quiche filling, so the leftovers became breakfast burrito filling the next and worked out great!

I also got some frozen naan at Trader Joe’s on my last trip, so the last of the lentils, plus some of the sautéed baby kale, more seared bread cheese and eggs scrambled with curry powder and tomatoes made an incredible brunch one day, too!

Double Chocolate Strawberry Pistachio Cookies

I dehydrated and then froze some strawberry slices in the late spring, specifically for a few cookie recipes that call for freeze dried strawberries. Dehydrated are of course a little different, but they do the job!

And since we’re fast approaching the next strawberry season, I don’t need to hoard them, but need to use them up!

There’s a white chocolate and strawberry cookie recipe that originally inspired me. I made a version in the summer that pistachios, too, and almond extract really brings the whole cookie to the next level.

This time I followed a different recipe and didn’t have quite enough white chocolate, so added dark chocolate, too.

I chilled the dough for half a day or so (which can be really key in “curing” cookie dough) and wow, they were so good! Grant said they were maybe the best cookies I have ever made.

I have been trying to get chewier and less cakey cookies and these delivered on that, but I baked maybe a few minute too long. They were a little on the crunchy side for me, but they were an incredible cookie to dunk into a glass of milk!