Escaping kitchen boredom with Steve Machoquiet (and a garlic and oil pasta with a deconstructed pork, bok choy and ginger ragout.)

Ingredients for two:

about 100 grams of chopped pork

1 carrot

1 celery leg

1 shallot

200 grams of pasta (short noodle or spaghetti)

Extra virgin olive oil

Fresh ginger

2 seedless tangerines

6-8 cherry tomatoes or 2 bok choy

1/2 garlic clove minced

3-4 garlic cloves whole

You get bored sometimes, even with things you like. Say, with music, that youtube listening list that you've heard one time too many: '...not today. It doesn't...flick my bic.'  Or a walk on the same trail through the woods: '...I know, it always changes, the scents and vision changes, differing from under clouds instead of sun, seasons, different me. But... not again. Not today. It doesn't... fiddle my middle.' Even books: another fast-written novel, a thriller maybe:  '..sigh. Ok, rich archeology major, great looking girl, daughter of the famous professor M., chosen for her first dig, meets her liaison, Steven Quietmacho, basically a cross between a young Tom Waits and Fabio, long hair, gruff, on a motorcycle, speaks 15 languages though and cites Keats in whole poems,) in Turkmenistan. Where they speak Turkmen. Which Stevemacho speaks fluently, of course. Someone tries to kill her the second day, Quietmacho Steve finds her and they barely escape, (helped by Jaren, sister of local mafia boss....) Uuuuuuuuugh. Next.'

And it happens in the kitchen to. At least to me. After months of... mostly classic dishes, (pastas and quails and turkey and passatelli and risottos and creams and ossobuco and other things all done before in more or less the same way, same flavors, same preps, all good, sometimes wow-really good. But.... sort of like cooking with Steve Machoquiet. While listening to that youtube playlist, the one with a Katy Perry song on it. And you wonder why the hell did I-you put Katy Perry in a music list. So you say, screw it - next time you're at the market. Let's try something new.

 

...So- grab stuff you've either never cooked before or haven't since... reach into those childlike earlier wonder-days in the kitchen when every other dish you made was a first, half of them barely edible, a fourth passable but the remaining fourth... 'wow.... cool.'  I did that last week - with something most have cooked with before and all, or nearly, have eaten. Bok Choy.  And after... maybe 2 years not making it, pork spezzatino. The idea was the obvious asiatic-sort of risotto or farrotto.

And the ingredients, as you can see above, were petty much what you'd expect in such a dish. And it probably would have been, except that... she, (there isoften a she or a he at some moments. You know,) was peckish early, didn't feel like a cheese melt (again?) or potato chips (today I'd rather listen to Katy Perry) or anything else rapidly available. So... me-now-steve-macho-quiet flew into action to save our multilingual damsel in Turkpakromistanian distress. Quietly though. I don't speak Turkmen. Or Stan. OR even Pak for that matter. 

   First I sliced some bread to toast then rub with fresh garlic. The I sliced the pork pieces into smaller long wedges about the width of pen, then chopped up a soffritto of a little carrot, shallot and celery, a bit of minced garlic, grated some fresh ginger, some sliced cherry tomato and quick thin chop of some scallion. First the pork on to brown, high heat, deglaze with the juice of a seedless tangerine, remove, then the soffritto and a little ginger into the pan, medium-low heat by the way, letting it go a few minutes then lower the heat more and add the garlic. Finally the tomato after that which after a couple minutes you scrunch with the wooden spoon. Ahh - salt and pepper at every step then taste and you could add some hot pepper for punch but she-my-girl doesn't go much for it. Anyway. 

   Re-add the browned pork and toss it all together, basically a deconstructed, fast pig ragout. Remove from the pan after a minute or two and reduce it more by fine-chopping the whole. Place it on the toasted garlic bread and squeeze some of the ginger for its juice over top, a dribble of fresh oil and the fine-chopped scallion (raw). She went nuts. (you know how that goes, everyone has their way of expression pleasant culinary surprise. She gets this odd half-relax smile on the edges of her mouth, eyes expand a little and if she's sitting at a table with her legs free, her left lower one will lightly begin to sway.)

So  much that she asked me to make it again for dinner.... so I did, only adding quick boiled and pre-chopped bok choy instead of tomato, and changing the wheat form from to pasta from bread. Simply make a garlic and oil emulsion to toss the pasta in when it's a couple minutes away from being ready (remove from the pot with salted water, I used the same water for the pasta that I'd boiled the bok choy in and add to the pan with the garlic emulsion, adding some of the pasta cooking water. Whittle it around and toss well on high heat to get some starchy creaminess. Then add the rest, toss well, and serve.

And you'll be Steve Machoquiet. But in your living room, not Turkmenistan.  (Though I do wish I still had his long hair. Steve Machoquiets are never bald...) 

(then again...)