red beans and rice take two

We enjoy Roger Mooking's Man, Fire, Food quite a bit and recently caught an episode that included red beans and rice and tons of smoked meat. The version of that recipe we tried, while similar to mine, threw in enough new ingredients, and turned out well enough, that I wanted to write down what I did before I forget.

1 package pork belly (we get it from Trader Joe's)
1 link linguica
1 package andouille sausage (we love North Country's)
1 onion
2-3 garlic cloves
12 ounces of water
2 16 ounce cans of dark red kidney beans
cajun seasoning
Worcestershire sauce
Crystal's hot sauce
Cooked rice

Cut up all three meats into bite sized pieces (we did smallish chunks for the pork belly, cubes for the linguica and rounds for the andouille). Place the pork belly in a Dutch oven and heat on high until the pork belly gets crusty and brown. Add the other meats, onion and garlic and cook until onions become translucent. Add the water and kidney beans and stir. Add cajun seasoning to taste, as well as 2 to 3 glugs each of Worcestershire sauce and Crystal's hot sauce. Heat at medium high until the liquid has thickened and reduced, or until the rice is ready.

We also steamed some spinach and vitaminna with just salt and pepper and it complemented the heaviness of the dish nicely.

Adapted from Cooking Channel

lettuce mix

We eat salad at least once a week, and now that our spring farm share has started off with delicious lettuce mix it just makes us want to eat even more salads.

A few options for when we're forgetful:

Steak and Blueberry Salad

steak seasoned with salt and pepper only
blueberries
goat cheese
lettuce mix

For the dressing we used black cherry balsamic, olive oil and salt and pepper. We used Denver cut steak and it was amazing.

Pulled Pork Salad

leftover bbq pulled pork
tomatoes
orange
lettuce
goat cheese

For the dressing we used cara cara vanilla balsamic, olive oil and salt and pepper.

Pork Chop Salad

Pork Belly and Roasted Root Veggie Salad
For this you can throw in any root veggies you have. We did it with:
baby carrots
small turnips
kohlrabi
radishes

We roasted all of the veggies in a marinade of honey, olive oil, cara cara vanilla balsamic and pineapple white balsamic, salt and pepper for 45 minutes at 400 and 15 minutes at 415 degrees.

We made a vinaigrette using the pineapple balsamic, coated the lettuce, added the fried pork belly and roasted veggies and a little bit of goat cheese.

porky belly salady

In an effort to find the right side salad for our sweet potato soup we came up with a delicious pork belly, fried egg and parmesan salad.

Ingredients:
2 eggs
cooked pork belly
hard parmesan cheese
balsamic vinegar
lettuce

Wash salad greens and distribute among two bowls. Shave parmesan into each bowl. Fry pork belly until crisp on all sides. Slice the fried pork belly. Fry each egg in the same pan as you fried the pork belly to use the leftover pork fat. Mix everything together.