Birthday Dinner

My Grandmother turns -- on Thursday, and she drove down to our house to celebrate with us today. My mother and I devised a four-course menu with Spanish/Cuban elements for the occasion, filling in with stuff that we like:

Cheese

1 yr. Aged Gouda
1 yr. Irish Cheddar

Soup

Caldo Gallego
Galician Bean and Garlic Soup


Salad

Grandpa's Coach House Salad

Main

Grilled, Marinated Pork Chops with Mojo
Sauce

Dessert

Honey-Roasted Plums with Thyme and Creme Fraiche

The meal was great. Besides a small mishap in which I couldn't find the right dish to cook the dessert in, and Mom spilling the jus from the pork chops inside the oven and the smoke detector going off, everything went well.

To save time, I made the soup yesterday. I found the recipe in a new cookbook of mine, Our Latin Table: Celebrations, Recipes, and Memories by Fernando Saralegui. Here is the recipe, as I followed it. It should make enough soup for ten to twelve people as a first course.

Caldo Gallego

Ingredients:

2 14-oz cans white beans
1/2 cup olive oil
1/3 lb. chorizo
7 cloves garlic
1 1/2 carrots, finely chopped
1 1/2 stalks celery, finely chopped
1/2 large white onion, finely chopped
[the three above ingredients, together, are called a mirepoix]
8 cups chicken stock (2 homemade, plus 6 free-range organic)
1 1/2 bay leaves
3/4 t dried thyme
1 ham hock
2 leaves Swiss chard, washed and chopped, hard stems removed
2 cups diced potatoes
Freshly ground pepper and salt, to taste

Heat half of the oil in the stock pot over medium-high heat, add chorizo, cook 3 minutes, remove and reserve. Heat the remaining olive oil and add garlic, carrot, celery and onion to the stockpot. Cook until soft, then add chicken stock, bay leaves, thyme, ham hock, and beans, bring to a boil, and reduce heat to low. Allow soup to simmer for 2 hours or until reduced by one quarter. Remove ham hock and bay leaves.
To the soup in the stockpot add the kale, potatoes, chorizo, salt and pepper and cook over medium heat for another half hour. Taste and adjust seasoning.
The soup can be made up to three days in advance and kept refrigerated in an airtight container. [I let it cool to room temperature, then put it in the fridge. The next day, I heated the soup back up to the proper temp over medium-low heat. It took about thirty minutes.]

The broth is a beautiful yellow-to-orange color, and the chorizo and swiss chard add nice touches of color to the soup. The original recipe called for three times as much chorizo. I remembered my old roommate, Kathy, mentioning once that the chorizo at Zingerman's was very flavor-ful and that just a little was necessary to flavor an entire pot of soup. Even with a third of the recommended chorizo, I felt that the soup was a little too flavorful, and if I were to make this again, I wouldn't bother with the ham hock, as the sausage itself was enough. [Something delicious: Taking a ham hock out of a pot of soup that it has been boiling in for a couple of hours and eating the meat that flakes gently off of the bone. mmmmmm. . .] I would also add more leafy vegetables and beans. Next time, I'll probably use dried beans, as well.

I also made the marinade and sauce for the pork last night, as well. I'd read about Mojo (pronounced MO-ho) before, I'd heard it was delicious, fantastic, and addictive, but I was not prepared at all for the experience. Fernando Saralegui, the author of the recipe, describes Mojo this way:
"This dish is what Cubans are weaned on and live for."

I usually don't like citrus with meat, but I was the first one to finish my double cut pork chop at dinner today.

To make the sauce, which is drizzled over the meat after it is grilled, and the marinade you'll need:

10 cloves garlic
3 T dried oregano
2/3 cup olive oil
3/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
juice of 2 limes
1/8 teaspoon cumin (or to taste - I added more)
salt and pepper to taste (I added a pinch of salt and a couple grinds of pepper)

Puree the garlic, oregano, olive oil, 1/4 cup of the orange juice, lime juice, cumin, salt, and pepper in a blender or in a food processor fitted with the metal blade. Reserve 1/3 cup of sauce and set aside.

To make the marinade, whisk the remaining 1/2 cup of orange juice with the remaining mojo sauce in a nonreactive bowl.

I had one more thing to do last night, and that was to make the creme fraiche. I could have bought it at the store, but I thought it'd be more fun to just make it at home. To make creme fraiche at home, whisk together the following ingredients:

1 cup heavy cream
1/3 cup plain yogurt with live acidophilus cultures ( I used organic goat's milk yogurt - I ate the left overs, and it was the best tasting yogurt I've ever had.)

Let the mixture sit on the countertop uncovered, overnight. In the morning, put it in the fridge. It will keep for two weeks.

I covered mine, so it wouldn't spill, and because of this it did not culture as much as I would have likes, and it was runny. It still complemented the dessert, though.

Three hour's before dinner, we started making the pork chops. Here's the rest of the recipe:

Grilled Marinated Pork Chops with Mojo

Mojo Marinade (see above)
6 double-cut pork chops
Mojo Sauce

Put pork-chops in a non-reactive dish and cover with the marinade. Cover and marinate in the refrigerator for 1 to 2 hours, turning the chops occasionally.

Discard marinade and grill the pork chops on a hot grill for 5 to 7 minutes on each side until cooked to medium. Serve with the reserved mojo sauce.

We ended up grilling the chops until they were well done. They were good, but I can't wait to try them medium.

For dessert we had Honey-Roasted Plums with Thyme and Creme Fraiche. [Hit the link for the recipe.] In my opinion, it was one of the most beautiful dishes that I have ever made. My review is on epicurious (katieh1) but I have to mention here the wonderful dimension that the thyme added to the dish. I never would have considered thyme for a dessert seasoning, but it works quite well here, imparting a fullness to the otherwise extremely sweet sauce. I used the honey that my mother had on hand, but I'm sure that a higher quality would add to the dish.