Snow Day = Day to make braised pork belly

When I was younger, I didn't really like pork all that much. Or at least I thought so. The reason is because American pork is all over-salted or tasteless - bacon, ham, chops. Even SPAM - probably the best American pork is almost like not really pork. And I never made the connection between the Chinese pig meat I loved - char siu, feet, shoulder, and especially double-layered fat belly - and "pork." As I got older, I made the connection that these were in fact all different parts of the same animal. I mean...I knew that, but I didn't KNOW it. (Until this day I have a similar confusion over the difference between sheep, goat, and ram because they all have the same word in Chinese. It's not even like I'm fluent in Chinese, I'm just very easily confused.)

But it gets me upset when I think about the way we in America disrespect the meat we eat. People don't want to eat pig feet or ears or chitterlings or anything that is easily identifiable as part of an animal. We don't even call it pig, but pork. We don't want to eat cow, but want to eat beef and steak and burgers and Rocky Mountain oysters. And of course it's veal instead of calf, or more accurately - infant cow.

In my mind, when it comes to eating meat: stakes is high.

I can stand eating vegetables that aren't cooked that great because they are vegetables. But human beings do not need to eat meat in order to survive or even to thrive - so there is no reason we should ever eat meat that is not cooked to perfection. When we eat meat, we should make it worth it. You know what I'm saying?

Pork is - to me - the perfect meat. I could live without beef or chicken or even fish - but I don't think I'd ever stop eating expertly-prepared pork. So that having been said I used the snow day from work as an excuse to make some braised pork belly with ALL the fat still attached. Mmm. (Read this Slate.com article about why eating lard is not as bad as you thought it was.)

Step by step. (Oooh baby.)

This is some pork belly cut up into pieces maybe an inch (?) thick. Marinate it in dark soy sauce, light soy sauce and a little sugar plus a minced bulb of garlic. The dark soy is the key. We also ended up throwing some pig ears in there too.

 

S has this really clever technique when braising meats - that's to put sugar on the bottom of the pot and burn it until it's a deep brown color - that gives the deep rich color to the final product and probably lends a little bit of smoke to the taste. Unfortunately, i did it wrong and the sugar liquefied instead of burned - I guess I should have used a different pot - regardless, after it became syrup, it browned a little so I just kept going.

After that, you throw your pork and marinade into the pot and saute a little. No need for oil because of the thick layers of lard. Mmmm. After it's cooked a short while, dump in some water. S's style would be to fill it halfway and continue to refill as necessary. I am lazy so I just basically filled the pot. But my mom always braised stuff starting with a full pot so I wasn't concerned; although she would do it starting in the morning - not in an hour.

After the water has basically boiled down all the way, it will look like this. Notice we threw some hard boiled eggs (shells removed) in earlier, and see the whole pig ears on the bottom of the photo. At this point, you might as well taste the liquid in the pot and see if the flavor feels right or not. If it's too strong, then add some more water and cook it down a little more; if it's too weak, you'll need to add flavoring.

As I sliced up the ear, I listened to "Stuck in the Middle with You" by Steeler's Wheel.

 

This is screaming to be eaten with white rice. But given that it's basically eating straight lard, I opted for the slightly healthier brown rice.

reupholstering fever!

This is a chair from G's childhood. When we first moved in, G was thinking about throwing it away because it was so tore up, but I thought is has a beautiful shape and wanted to hold on to it. I saw potential in the chair and also I don't like to throw things out from his childhood. I knew that someday I want to do something with it and since we're working on the nursery, it was a great opportunity for another challenge.

we spent an afternoon at jo-ann's and picked out this fabric to reupholster it. but we needed 6 yards, and they only had 4! we were already thinking about going to the joanns in natick until my husband came up with the idea of using white fabric in areas that are hidden from view. so instead of driving all the way to natick, we just bought a little more plain white upholstery fabric.

So we started to take the whole thing apart! Here's G trying to figure out what pieces can be cut out of what part of our two different fabrics. he's good at geometry.

This is a lot of the materials laid out on the floor. it was a mess all week!

After the pieces were cut, I sewed them together.

Our new best friend: a staple gun

I didn't know he was taking pictures or else i would have wore something instead of a bathrobe! i'm using his patriots hammer to put the arm together.

It's starting to look like a chair again...

G says he never thought about how furniture was put together before this.

Revealing some of the white fabric we're keeping hidden.

close-up view

Now I just want to reupholster everything in the house! next project will probably be our media room sofa...another piece from G's childhood. probably even before he was born...even before people started to talk about "clean lines"!

Painting Family

It's G here. We did some painting over the past few. Many of you who have been over the crib know we had two little birdies painted in the living room representing wifey and me. Now that we're about to welcome two kids into the world, we decided it made sense to add a couple more to the tree.

Here I go working the paintbrush like a Wii remote.

 

The family should look something like this in a few weeks.

 

Before they moved, Theresa & Sophea (two real artists) gave us this joint to paint on. It took a while to figure out what to do with it, but...

 

Junior (a stuffed animal), an alien, a sheep, baby girl and baby boy, and a robot. Full update on the babies room soon...

diy updates: baby accessories

G has been busy getting the house ready for the babies arrival. You saw the cornices already...and we'll update other things when they're finished. But i wanted to take a second to update you on some baby accessories i've made over the past month.

since there are no newborns nearby, everything is being modeled by other friends! thanks to snuggles, whisker, and david the bear.

baby tutu

 

baby bear hat

 

baby tutu and baby bear hat (and another gumdrop pillow I just made)

 

baby winter hats

baby mary janes with real pearls!

Road Trip Down Memory Lane

Note from new contributor Grouchy G: Just because S hasn't updated here in a long time doesn't mean she hasn't had stuff to update about. As many of yall know, there have been plenty of life changes for us, so free time to spend on the internets has been hard to come by. So she invited me to be her co-conspirator on this here blog, so there is less pressure for frequent updating, but so that we can still try to keep family and friends up to date with what's going on, specifically, what projects we got in and out of our hands.

I have guest posted on this blog before, but now I'm a real partner on it! This is really what I wanted all along. So below, I present to you my first entry as an official Home Engineer. (Holla!)

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On Saturday, I had a show at Amherst College. S and I met and became friends as students at UMass-Amherst, so we made the trip together and visited some of our old favorite places.

It was very meaningful actually. This was the 12th annual Voices for the Voiceless poetry concert, and I've been to about 7 of them. Maybe 8, maybe 6. I dunno, but a lot. It's one of my favorite shows to do every year because of the quality of poets and the attentive crowd. But usually, I drive right back to Boston after the show is over - but now that S came with me, we decided to take advantage of the school's offer for a hotel room and stay the night.

Moreover, old friend Shaggy Flores was there, and he was on point. Shaggy is a UMass grad also, who also met his wife in college. They brought their beautiful 5 year-old girl with them too. There are many parallels between myself and Shaggy. We both went to UMass, both moved to DC after graduation - we even were working about 3 blocks from each other. We both have masters degrees, and both are dope. We also both have our share of haters at our alma mater.

Also Bao was there, and he's one of my closest friends in the world. Bao & I have never done Voices together, although we've both appeared multiple times. And since he and his partner J just had their first child 6 weeks ago, it's wonderful to be able to spend time with him as we're getting ready to grow our family.

Also, two legends of Nuyorican poetry were there: Louis Reyes Rivera (amazing as always) and Americo Casiano (my first tiem meeting him) - both were phenomenal. I also got to meet Mwalim, who teaches spoken word and many other things at UMass-Dartmouth. Since I teach a simialr thing at UMass-Boston, we're like UMass brothers. I am definitely gonna hit him up for some knowledge about how to navigate that whole system.

But anyway, the rest of the weekend was focused on - what else? - food. So here we here we go:
Two slices each at Antonio's! Wow, it's been almost 10 years since we had this! Still just as good as we remembered. Maybe even better. Nom nom nom.

Amazing food from Santiago's Family Restaurant in Westfield. They catered the show. Ooooooooooooooh. Damn the pork belly is my JOINT. Even though I try to be pretty health conscious, the Chinese in me makes me unable to resist pork belly and extra oil in everything. Their food was seriously bomb tho. Full plate an hour after two slices at Antonio's.

S did leave the show a little early to catch up with our old friend from college Malis. And to see her beautiful family. Malis moved to Amherst for college, then never left! it was great to see her. After the show, we got calzones from DP Dough. We ate them so fast we forgot to take pictures.

Next morning we hit the Korean Restaurant on Route 9 in Hadley. We wondered if it would be as good now that we're older and get good pretty good Korean food near our home, or can get bomb Korean food every time we're in NYC or LA.

Nope, it was just as good we remembered. Mmmmmm.


Cider Donuts from Atkins Farm.


Yes I will have another.

Grown-Up Party #2

G and I started drinking wine after we got married. we thought that drinking wine would make us look mature...it's kind of like smoking for 13 year olds, but for married couples.

the first bottle of wine we bought was on our honeymoon. we had a yellowtail shiraz in maui...and we hated it! we thought it tasted so terrible, and we didn't know why yellowtail was a popular brand.

but last week we tried yellowtail shiraz again, and we liked it this time! imagine that! i guess we didn't develop a tongue for wine yet when we first got married, but over the past 3 years, we learned how to drink it.

so this past weekend, we held a winetasting party to honor my brother's birthday. it was called "Plonkasaurus Rex." Plonk is a term used to mean the cheapest wine you can find, so we encouraged all guests to bring a bottle of wine under $12 and we would rate them and find winners.

the categories were: best red, best white, best new world, best dressed, and ultimate champion. my cuz lyna won 4 of the 5 with the salice salentino. and chloe won for best white with her delceoro. congratulations to the winners!

also, it wouldn't be a tek production if there wasn't a lot of food! my cousins kunthea and sokea helped by rolling shrimp and pork summer rolls, and G made his famous junk food sliders (little baby hamburgers) and soleak and map helped assemble the mini fish and steak tacos. chintra made a fruit salad - eaten by my sister's kids before any other guests arrived! i also made a khmer beef dish called kaw-koh, stewed with anise, clove, paprika, and secret ingredients for several hours, and served with vienna bread.

also, dessert was brought by sabrina (lollipop cheesecake) and chloe (cheesecake cheesecake) - and a birthday sheet cake for my brother and my cousin. look at the ridiculous picture on the cake. i told the guy to make the guy's skin brownish yellow because he's asian, but he just used regular white people color and did this to his eyes! this doesn't look like my brother at all! when G picked up the cake, he called to tell me, but he was laughing too hard.

Check out this slideshow, taken by my favorite photographer-Eugene and his crew-delia, theresa, hsindy and victor.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tsukemono/sets/72157617779526320/show/

look below for some more pictures:

Guest Post / A Star in Saipan

S told me that she and her co-workers were on the front page of the Saipan Tribune the other day. I looked all over the Internets for a copy of it, but it's not up. There's a picture of her supervisor online, but the one that ran on Page 1 isn't anywhere to be found.

But later on, she said the bellman at her hotel brought a little girl to their room because she came to their hotel seeking an autograph. That's so cute!

We've been talking every day, but the time difference is 14 hours, so it is hard to coordinate. But she has told me she is having a great experience, there are wonderful things and hard things to learn and hear about. I think there is a lot of stuff crammed into her trip. A month seems long, but in a lot of ways, it's short too.

While I'm away this weekend, I don't think I'll be able to talk to her much. I have to be honest, the past 3 weeks have been kind of hard. I don't take care of myself or anything around me unless she's with me. When we first became friends, I went from a C and D college student to a B and C (and occasional A) student and even made Dean's List once - I think that's a 3.5 or higher for one semester. Some of you nerds may not be impressed, but I haven't traditionally gotten good grades. The weird thing is, it's not even like she was a good student either. I think because I could envision a future together, it made me smarten up and work harder.

Since S has been gone, I realized I've been drinking more beer and sleeping fewer hours, and have allowed our bills and mail to pile up without barely opening any. Our plants are dying, and I've piled a bunch of clean laundry on one side of our bed and a bunch of dirty laundry on the other, so I sleep wherever there is space, whether that is the bed or the couch - depending on the day.

Anyway, this is to say that I don't plan to update this blog for the rest of her trip. Just look forward to her coming back and posting pictures and stories from her travels! She says she has a lot to share, but no energy to update from the Pacific Ocean.

Sorry this was so unfunny and slightly depressing...talk later!

Guest Post / Bok Sadai (#5 Style)

it's G here. hi. two weeks until S gets back.

the dish i never tasted before S was bok lahong (papaya salad), as well as its variants like bok sadai (green bean salad), and what we call "bok mango" - which is self-explanatory. But the term "bok" in khmer doesn't mean salad, it means the method by which you make these dishes, by crushing all the ingredients in a huge mortar and pestle thing.

i am something of a connoisseur. i can pick out my wife's bok dishes out of anyone's in the world. it's pretty unlike anything i grew up eating, so i set out to learn how to make it. after working on it for months, i have determined myself to be the #5 best bok-er in the world. yeah i said it.

so before she left, we done did this. check it:


these are the ingredient for making bok sadai: fish sauce, shrimp paste, garlic, lime, MSG, smoked fish, hot peppers, beer. (missing: green beans and sugar)


then you toast this smoked fish for a little while to bring out the flavor. it's still in the package here, we bought it in revere or maybe lowell. at this point, you should also drink your beer. if you need more, go ahead and get more.


cut up the green beans into little pieces like this. check out how fast my knife moves - it's a blur! i think this was the day i sliced off the tip of my finger.


BOK the smoked fish. break up the bones!


add the fish sauce, lime, shrimp paste, garlic, peppers, msg, and sugar. BOK that! my steez is to add a little at a time of fish sauce, lime, and sugar and taste along the way and add more of each accordingly. the flavor has to be a balance of salty, sweet, sour, and MSG-y. all those flavors should be strong too. you can only know if you know.


add the sadai and keep up the BOKing.


blacken some chicken. dark meat is highly preferred - but that's always preferred in my opinion.


typically, most people like to BOK the sadai to the point where it's more pasty than this. but my style is to keep them more whole, i like the texture that way.


eat with rice. holla.