Roast Pork

The Trick to a Perfectly Cooked, Juicy Pork Roast

Pork is trendy.  Pork cuts of all descriptions have become favorite menu items at chichi restaurants in recent years.  And no wonder.  It’s a tasty meat that combines beautifully with many side dishes.

Roast Pork is one of the first things I think of when I’m cooking for company or preparing a festive dinner.  And I’ve found an easy way to make sure that it turns out perfectly.

Simple and Quick Vegetable Stir-Fry

Fear of Chinese

Many American cooks (even experienced ones) are intimidated by Chinese cuisine.  Some are scared away even before they start — by that long list of unfamiliar ingredients.

Then there’s all the preparation required.  Mise en place is a French term, but surely the Chinese must have invented the concept.  You can’t cook Chinese unless you first do your mise en place, and a lot of it.

And, of course, there are some unfamiliar cooking techniques.  (A stir-fry is like a sauté — but not quite.)  So that can be a bit scary, too.

Stir-Fry for Dummies

Well, good news!  The stir-fry method I use here is easier than the “classic” technique.  It’s more of a braise (the pork is stir-fried but the vegetables are braised in liquid).  And the flavor is excellent.

As for the rest?  Let’s just jump into the recipe, and you’ll see.  Everything will become clear as we go along.

Cheddar Cheese Chicken Curry - A Guilty Pleasure

We all have our secret guilty pleasures – something we like even though we know we “shouldn’t.”  When it comes to food, that usually means something that’s unhealthy or too déclassé for words.  Often both.   Dishes like:

• Tuna noodle casserole (bonus points for corn-flake topping)
• Cold leftover pizza for breakfast
• Lipton California dip (the one made with dried onion soup mix and sour cream)
• Mrs. Paul’s fish fillets (or fish sticks!) with cocktail sauce
• Frito pie
• Velveeta & Rotel queso dip 
• Jell-O mold
• Kraft's blue box macaroni and cheese

Yeah, some of those on are my list, and probably yours, too.

But my all-time favorite guilty pleasure is a recipe for leftover chicken curried in cheddar cheese sauce that I first tried over 40 years ago.

It’s not authentic.  It’s not healthy.  It requires a processed food product.  And it’s probably not something you want to tell your friends about.

But sample it once, and as its creator suggests, “you may find yourself having chicken often just so you can have leftover chicken often.  I can’t say that I’d blame you.”