A Send-Off Adventure

My little baby sister isn't so baby anymore.  In fact, she just left to study abroad in Northern Ireland.  Before she left, I took her out for a lovely, fancy Italian dinner.  We had four courses!  And I splurged and bought the absolute cheapest bottle of wine on the menu!

We talked about cats, and boys, and how much we were going to miss each other, and how we were getting a little tipsy on wine.

But what is adventurous about that?  I love pasta.  No one can question that.

The adventure came with the dessert course.  I decided to get a crème brûlée.  I'm not sure why they were serving a French dessert, but they were.

The last time I had crème brûlée, I was in college.  A somewhat pretentious campus photographer decided to brûlée up some dessert in our third floor dormitory kitchen.  Because what college kid doesn't have crème brûlée ramekins just lying around his dorm room?

Long story short: It sucked.  It tasted like a horrible caramel-coffee-fire-mess.

Somehow I decided to give it another try.  Maybe it was the wine.

I started eating it before I took the picture.  I blame the wine again.

Maybe it was because this one was made by professional cooks/chefs in a professional kitchen.  Maybe it was the lack of coffee in this recipe.  Maybe it was the wine.  No matter the reason, this crème brûlée was amazingly delicious.

I miss my sister, though.

The Brits and Jim Beam

As someone of legal drinking age, I enjoy legally drinking.  I enjoy vodka, gin, wine, hard cider, and schnapps.  In the past couple years, I've really come around to beer.  But I cannot stand bourbon, whiskey, scotch, or Tennessee sippin' whiskey.  They are gross.

But I had a whole bunch of pork belly to cook up.  And this lovely recipe from the BBC for Bourbon-Glazed Pork Belly Chunks.  It's British, I'm American.  I had to adore it unquestioningly.  It's what Americans do!  The British have never made mistakes!!

So I went to my beloved 7-Eleven and bought the smallest bottle of Jim Beam they had.  And I baked my pork in bourbon.  And I made a bourbon-honey-ketchup glaze.  And then I continued to bake my pork in bourbon and covered in the bourbon-honey-ketchup glaze.  And I thought, "I'm going to be so pissed off if this ruins my delicious pork belly."

Then the timer went off for the final time.  I took the pork out of the oven.  I set up a little dish of sour cream because the Brits said so.

It looks beautiful.  But we all know the Brits can be quite deceptive.  You could also ask Native Americans.

First, I decided to try the pork belly on its own.  I loved it.  In fact, I wish I had more than the five pieces right there!  The bourbon was almost drowned out by the honey and soy sauce.  Combined with the ketchup, it tasted like a sweet barbecue sauce.

Barbecue flavors are not something I expect from the people who sell Tangy Cheese and Cool Original Doritos.  And barbecue flavors are not usually something I enjoy.  But with the sweetness of the honey (and the fact that bourbon is sweeter than my true nemesis whiskey), it was a very soft barbecue taste.

Then, I thought, "Well, the BBC said I should eat it with sour cream."  So I tried it with sour cream.  Even more delicious!  The sour notes of the cream combined in perfect harmony with the somewhat sweet bourbon glaze to make a ying-yang of absolute tastiness in my mouth!

I just need to remember to hold off making this recipe again until my un-air-conditioned kitchen isn't 80 degrees.  This is a recipe for a cooler night.