Pork: Belly, Cake, Camp and a Giveaway!

Today, I bring you news from the world of delicious pigs:

Thanks to support from the Pork Board's Be Inspired campaign, we have been playing with pork. On Friday night, braised pork belly was the center of our meal. We served it over local root vegetables with mashed potatoes and homegrown green beans. This is a truly decadent preparation!

Saturday's It Couldn't Be dinner included pork sausage as the fat component in a spice cake. I realized when serving it the next day to my family that perhaps the inspiration for making a cake from raw meat was to avoid dairy; the crazy creation was lactose free!

Are you a fellow pork lover? On August 27, join me at Bacon Camp 2011. I'll be there as one of the judges for the bacon cooking contest. For $10 you can purchase one of the few remaining tickets to taste bacon creations, view bacon art, and enjoy bacon-related discussions.

And finally, the giveaway! The Pork Board wants you to also Be Inspired by pork. One of you will win the fun stuff pictured above in the "Be Inspired with Pork" kit, including:

• $25 gift card to a local retailer to purchase pork
• 11” Square Grill Pan
• 16-Jar Revolving Spice Rack
• Pork Be Inspired Cutting Board
• Digital Thermometer
• Copy of "How to Cook Like a Top Chef"

All you need to do to enter is leave a comment about a pork dish you want to make at home by Monday August 8, 2011 at 8 pm. I will use random.org to pick a winner. Good luck!

Disclosure: I received a Pork Board Be Inspired kit in exchange for hosting this giveaway. All opinions are my own.

Sausage Cake {Recipe}

There are rare times when I post a recipe after making it just once. And never have I posted something that I don't plan to make again. But on the off chance that you have a spare pound of sausage laying around and want to make dessert, behold the Sausage Cake.

Making this cake feels all wrong. The raw meat turns the batter pink and you definitely can't lick the bowl.

The resulting cake is surprisingly tasty to the medieval palate. If you use a mildly flavored sausage, the pork lends very little flavor. Nuts and fruit stud the cake. The texture is rich and dense like any spice cake.

As we shared the cake around, we realized two things. First, my family challenged our palate with a similarly meat-enriched sweet thing when preparing for our Canada trip. Dad was convinced we should take Pemmican, a Native American snack cake of dried fruit and meat. We couldn't stomach it and ditched the idea. Secondly, this cake is dairy free. Perhaps the recipe came from a situation where dairy was scarce?

A hard sauce of apple brandy would improve the plating and presentation. Tasters agreed that it might be good for making into breakfast french toast or bread pudding where the slight hints of meat are more welcome to the palate.

I would truly love to hear what others think of this if they make it. Please come back and leave comments!

PS. Come back tonight for a pork giveaway!

[print_this]

Sausage Cake
from the Nordic Ware 'Unusual Old World and American Recipes' booklet circa 1970s

1 pound ground pork sausage
1 1/2 cups firmly packed brown sugar
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 eggs, beaten
3 cups all purpose flour
1 cup dried fruit
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1 cup cold coffee
1 cup chopped nuts

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour a bundt pan.
2. Beat pork sausage with sugars in a stand mixer until well blended, approximately 3 minutes. Add eggs and continue beating.
3. In a separate bowl, mix flour, spices, baking powder, and baking soda.
4. Meanwhile, pour 1 cup of boiling water over dried fruit. Soak for five minutes and pour off water.
5. With the mixer on low, alternate cupfuls of flour with thirds of the cold coffee. Mix thoroughly after each addition.
6. When the batter is combined, gently stir in nuts and dried fruit.
7. Pour into prepared pan and bake for 60-90 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out dry. Cool 15 minutes in pan before inverting to release the cake.
8. Store leftovers in the refrigerator.

[/print_this]

Added to Hearth and Soul.

Foodbuzz 24x24: It Couldn't Be...

Have you ever read a recipe and thought "that can't be tasty"? I usually skip right over those. Many of us also have food gifts that are getting dusty in the pantry because we are unsure if they will be good. The "It Couldn't Be..." dinner I hosted Saturday, supported by Foodbuzz, was a chance to try those offbeat dishes. I invited food and recipe loving friends to contribute a suspect course to a pot-luck style meal. Decor included my funky chicken collection atop a colorful oilcloth table covering from local fabric store Sew to Speak.

Pastry chef Heather brought Hot Mushroom Meringues from the Antoinette Pope School Cookbook, published in 1957. These appetizer toasts topped with eggy mushroom and baked meringue earned a solid 4 on a scale of 0 to 5. They could use some help in the visual department but were a passably tasty dish.

Debra and family brought baked spareribs with luau sauce from Texas restaurant chain Luby's cookbook. The sauce of peaches, tomato and vinegar was surprisingly tasty, again earning a 4 from those who ate the combo.

Alex used the occasion of the It Couldn't Be dinner to cook his first beer can chicken. He searched Larousse Gastronomiquefor an unfamiliar yet possibly tasty sauce, settling on the chicken liver Bearnaise. The chicken and sauce were both outstanding, solid 5s. I couldn't see having a whole dinner without vegetables so I made a salad topped with homegrown heirloom violet jasper tomatoes, ark of taste Jimmy Nardello peppers, and purple beauty sweet peppers. I searched for a salad dressing that would fit the spirit of the It Couldn't Be meal and came up with the cottage cheese dressing from our 1966 Women's Day Encyclopedia of Cookery. The veggies were tasty but the salad dressing was hit or miss. Alex and Heather couldn't stomach it at all, while the rest of the table decided it was passable but not something to serve again. Drinks for the meal were wine gifts of various sorts. We started with a sparkling strawberry wine that only tasted acceptable with an ice cube or two. It leaned heavily towards soda pop but not so much so as the second bottle, an apple Ohio wine that scored 0 among those playing the ranking game. Fruity does not begin to define the depth of sweetness in this concoction. The final wine was an unlabeled mystery red given to us by a seed potato buyer. It was the best of the bunch and we would love to know more about it. After a quick tour of the garden, I served the piece de resistance: sausage cake from a Nordic Ware promotional cookbook circa 1970s. Made from a whole pound of (homemade, of course) pork sausage with cold coffee as the liquid, this spice cake was clearly meant to be served as dessert. Three of the five adults enjoyed the cake, while the other two had trouble overcoming the psychological barrier that their dessert contained undetectable meat. We tried the cake with an apple moonshine pairing and decided that a chef could serve this at a restaurant using the moonshine in a hard sauce and patrons might love it.

Dense and sweet, unsuspecting diners might not know the cake contained sausage if they were not told. We'll try this theory on our family coming over tonight. Shhh....

Overwhelmingly, our dinner party was pleased with the recipes we chose. It just goes to show, when you take a risk on something that 'couldn't be', you may very well be pleasantly surprised!