Month: January 2017

Pozole at Home, Sort of

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Cooking at home is a continuous process. We bought pork hocks from Patti Popp at Sport Hill Farm in Easton. The pigs were raised by Patti and her husband Al. We rubbed the hocks with salt and pepper, and roasted them on a bed of onions, carrots and celery, and added water before covering the pan with foil to create moist heat. That night we ate the hocks with mashed potatoes, gravy and honey-parsley carrots. I sliced some tender meat off the bones. Men like putting the whole hock on their plate. The next day, we had leftover meat. Hocks are the perfect consistency for making a quick homemade pozole. What is pozole? It’s a Mexican stew made of hominy and pork. It’s served on weekends at restaurants such as Los Poblanos in Norwalk and El Paraiso in Bridgeport. The fun part is it’s served with a whole bunch of condiments — green and red sauce, limes, avocado, raw onions, dried oregano, fried tortillas or tostados smeared with beans and topped with shredded lettuce and avocado. I love the whole enterprise of …

Brazilian BBQ, Buffet & Bar in Bridgeport

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Yes! We’ve found a new place for Brazilian churrascaria in Bridgeport, Rancho Pantanal Restaurant and Bar.  Fitting for a place that specializes in grilled meat, it has a ranch theme, with dark brown tables and banquets with fence-like backs. Rancho Pantanal Restaurant and Bar is almost on the Stratford line. It’s nicer than the other Pantanal in Bridgeport, which I wrote about for CTBites here.  Parking’s easier at Rancho Pantanal. Rancho Pantanal’s salad buffet is filled with enough fresh and healthy foods to counteract the splurge of grilled steak. I chose mango salad, pico de gallo, fresh melon, pineapple, and cucumber. At the warm buffet, I showed restraint: yellow rice, black beans and fried sweet plantains. (The warm buffet serves daily specials, stews of beef, chicken or fish, pork belly, vegetables, okra, yucca, plantain, rice, beans, pastas and lasagna. ) At the meat station, I asked for rare steak, and guy removed a skewer from the brazier, pulled off a steak pierced through its thick cap of fat to form a self-basting bundle. He sliced the meat quickly with super sharp knives and …

Bistro Cooking at Home

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Moules Frites at Home Mussels are one of the easiest, healthiest, sustainable and economical ways of enjoying a bistro dinner at home. To tell the truth, I’m often disappointed by the mussels in  restaurants. So often the essential bath of broth seems separate from the mussels. Too often, cooks add too much butter, taking away from the refreshing taste of the sea. I like classic preparations, like Rive Bistro’s moules, pictured above. You can see how parts of the sauce catch in the shells, to flavor each mussel. Here’s the piece I wrote about Rive Bistro in Westport, CT for the Hartford Courant. As a restaurant critic I’ve had to endure abominations like mussels in gorgonzola sauce. It’s the kind of dish people say, “It was really okay,” but really it’s not. Writing about beer for Yankee Brew Magazine brought me to Mikro, a beer bar in Hamden, CT, where I had a memorable mussels dish in a very good way. They use Belgian witbier, with its notes of coriander and orange peel, and orange juice, garlic, chili, thyme and parsley. Mikro’s mussels were the jumping off …