I had meant to post this recipe a couple of weeks ago, but I’ve kind of been off my game a little the last few months, as witnessed by the fact that I have been posting rather sporadically. Sorry, I’ll try and do better. Yeah, I know I’ve said that before, but this time I mean it!!!!

If you have followed this blog, or taken a look through the recipe indexes you will notice that I love rhubarb. While technically not a fruit-we use the stem of the plant-people most often refer to it as such since it is mostly used in the same context as fruits-meaning it is most often used in making desserts.

Here in Wisconsin, rhubarb is on of the first edibles to break ground in spring and by mid May it is ready to start harvesting. Because it is ready so early we often associate it with spring and early summer, often pairing it with other early summer fruits such as strawberries and raspberries. But, rhubarb can be harvested all summer long and into early autumn.

While pairing rhubarb with peaches is far from new, ground breaking work it’s not a pairing that you see regularly, so I thought I would whip up a Peach and Rhubarb pie to make use of our rhubarb patch one last time before it was done for the season. While this recipe comes a little late, I still see plenty of peaches in the markets and if you have a rhubarb patch you probably still have a couple of weeks left before the hard frosts kill it all off, so hurry up and make yourself one of these. You won’t be sorry!

Peach and Rhubarb Pie

3 cups peaches, sliced, with or without skins-your choice. I left them on.
3 cups rhubarb, sliced
1/3 cup flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
Your favorite pie crust for a two crust pie.
1-1 1/2 Tbsp. sugar

Preheat your oven to 350°F. Line a 9″ deep dish pie tin with one pie crust. Combine the peaches and rhubarb with the flour, sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon, tossing to coat well. Pour into the pie tin and top with the remaining crust. Pinch the edges of the crusts together, fluting the edges for a decorative look. Cut 4-5 steam holes in the top of the crust and place in the oven. Bake for 30 minutes then sprinkle the top with the remaining sugar and continue to bake another 15-25 minutes or until the crust is golden brown and the juices are bubbling. Remove from oven and allow to cool for at least 30 minutes before serving. I like to wait an hour or more to make sure the pie has set up properly.

Voting is now open for Project Food Blog’s first challenge. I encourage everyone to head over to Foodbuzz and vote for me. Of the over 1700 food blogs entered, only 400 will advance to the next round. One way to advance is to win the Reader’s Choice award-the person with the most votes from regular readers. Help support Onceachef and take a minute to vote.  Below is a link to where to vote.  Voting is open now, through mid evening on Sept. 23.  Thanks for the vote!!!!

Vote Here

On a number of the cooking sites and forums I belong to, the topic often comes up about great local and regional sandwiches. Sandwiches that always get mentioned are Muffulettas (New Orleans), Philly Cheesesteaks, Kentucky Hot Browns, Chicago style Hot Dogs, Italian Beefs, Brats, along with some lesser known sandwiches. But there always seems to be one missing from this list, and that is the Pork Tenderloin Sandwich. Found sporadically around the Midwest, this sandwich reaches its apex in Iowa and in central Indiana. I remember, as a kid, coming back to Indiana (both my parents were born there, as was I, before we moved out East) and being treated to this regional delight. What fascinated me, at the time, was how big the sandwich was. And by big, I mean huge. While served on a standard sized hamburger bun, the meat in a Pork Tenderloin Sandwich is pounded into a thin disk about the size of an average dinner plate!

The Pork Tenderloin Sandwich, of Indiana, is a simple affair. Pork tenderloin, or sometimes pork loin, is pounded thin, dipped in seasoned flour, egg wash and then breadcrumbs before being deep fried. It is then placed on a bun and served, most often, with lettuce, tomato, onion and mustard. My grandfather, from what I remember, like any self respecting Old Timer, would forgo the tomato and once home with the sandwiches, would slice up some of his own homegrown, sun riped tomatoes to place on top.

There’s a chain of burger joints, up here in Wisconsin, that serve a pork tenderloin sandwich, but it just seems to lose something when the pork “patty” is massed produced and frozen. It just can’t compare with the real deal, freshly cut, pounded and still dripping with hot oil as it is placed on the bun.

I encourage everyone to, not only make this simple recipe, but to tout the joys of the Pork Tenderloin Sandwich. I want to see it take its rightful place, listed among the great sandwiches of our nation.

Pork Tenderloin Sandwich

1 pork tenderloin (about 1 pound) or 1 pound of pork loin
3/4 cup flour
salt
pepper
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
3 eggs
1 Tbsp. water
1 1/2 cups breadcrumbs
vegetable oil

Remove all the fat and silverskin from the tenderloin.

Cut into 4 portions, each weighing 4-5 ounces. Place 1 portion, cut side down, between 2 pieces of plastic wrap and pound until about 1/4″ thick and about 8″ in diameter or more.

Season the flour with salt, pepper and the garlic powder. Make an egg wash by beating the eggs with the water until well mixed. Fill a large skillet (at least 10-12″ in diameter) with about 1 1/2 – 2″ of oil. Preheat to 350°F. Bread the tenderloins by first dredging them in the flour, then dipping in the egg wash and then coating in breadcrumbs. Allow to rest for about 4-5 minutes to allow the breading a chance to stick.

One at a time, fry the tenderloins until golden brown on both sides and cooked all the way through, about 3 minutes on each side. Drain and season with salt while still hot.

Place in a 150°F oven to keep warm as you fry up the remainder. When done place on burger buns and serve with the condiments of your choice.

Roast Chicken

For those of you who haven’t heard, Foodbuzz is holding a competition for food bloggers called “Project Food Blog.” The competition consists fo 10 contests with 1 person left standing to claim the $10,000 prize. Approximately 1700-1800 bloggers have entered, though only 400 will make it past Round 1.

As I gathered my thoughts for this, my initial post for the Foodbuzz “Project Food Blog” competition, one of the most difficult decisions I had to make is what picture I should use as a lead in to my post. While I certainly have lots of pictures that are much more vibrant and eye catching, I felt that this picture, of a simple, roasted chicken best defines what I do here at “Once a Chef.” Roast chicken is simple, yet to pull it off properly requires a lot of technique and attention to the small details. And while a simple roast chicken can be heartwarming and comforting, it can also be elegant.

Hot Fudge Sauce

It is this same ideal that I have used to create my blog. It is not the most refined blog out there on the web. I’ll leave that to others that are more adept at styling and photography. Nor is it the most adventurous blog in the blogosphere. That’s the realm of the world travelers out there. Instead of trying to “wow” people with pictures of beautiful food, or showcasing ethnic dishes that require sourcing numerous hard to find ingredients, I prefer to keep things a little more simple and straight forward. I want people to look at my blog, read a post, and say, “Yeah, I can do that!” I don’t want to scare them off because they see some highly styled picture and are afraid that they will never be able to accomplish that, or stop reading because they know they will never be able to find half the ingredients a recipe calls for.

Strawberry Rhubarb Shortcake

When someone reads a recipe on my blog I want them to feel confident that they can reproduce it in their home. I take the time to explain each step in detail, because I want everyone to realize that they can cook, that it is not rocket science. Whether it is a simple meatloaf, an elegant, french inspired entree, or the perfect roasted chicken I want my readers to feel confident that my recipes will lead them to success. And, if while doing that, I can impart in them a little of the passion I have for food, then I have been successful.

Apple Dumpling

Ultimately, that’s what it’s all about: passion. It’s why each and every one of us spends the time writing our blogs, creating recipes, and sharing our creations. Growing up in the restaurant business, my passion for food was stoked at an early age, though I can’t remember a time, in my life, that food didn’t play an important role. It is this passion, of mine, that has been stoked and nurtured that I want to share with my readers. I think too many people go through life looking at cooking as a chore that needs to be done. I want to change that. I want to make people excited about cooking, and to do that the first thing that needs to be done is to show them how easy it is took cook.

Shrimp & Heirloom Tomato Pasta

This past Spring a good friend of mine purchased 4 piglets for his kids to enter into the county fair. Soon after I got a call from him to see if I would be interested in half of a hog. With visions of home cured bacon, homemade sausages and succulent barbecued ribs, I jumped at the chance. He also invited me over to see my potential holiday ham. Of course, I couldn’t resist. When I finally had a chance to drive over to his family’s place the pigs had grown from the 25 pound piglets shown above to full grown hogs weighing in at over 230 pounds. This in just a matter of a few months.

Now I know many people would have a problem meeting their potential dinner, but I have grown up around farmers for a good portion of my life and it does not bother me. Some might think I am cruel, but I don’t see it as such. Most people don’t like to think of their food in terms of living beings and prefer to remain ignorant of where that steak or that pulled pork sandwich came from. Instead, it’s much easier to think of that meat in terms of always being an inanimate object. While this type of mindset might ease people’s conscience, I totally disagree with this “head in the sand” approach to blind consumption. If the only way you can eat meat is by convincing yourself your ribeye was never a living, breathing thing then maybe you should become a vegetarian. It just seems hypocritical, to me, for someone to continue to eat meat, but not think about its origins as a living being. I know this sounds harsh, but I think if more people would think about where their meat came from the better off both us, and the animals we eat, would be.

Our refusal to contemplate the origins of our food, meat specifically, has lead to large, industrial farming practices. These practices are not good for the environment, not healthy for the animals, are often considered inhumane, and ultimately I don’t believe can really be healthy for us. These practices often include packing animals so tighly together that they have very little space to move about. Because they are so tightly packed they are often pumped full of medications and antibiotics to stop rampant disease that can spread quickly through herds housed so closely together. They are also pumped full of growth hormones to help them achieve market weights in a shorter amount of time. Not only are these practices inhumane, one has to wonder about how much of these chemicals are passed along to humans in the end.

On the other hand, I have seen, first hand, how my pig was raised. I know the person who raised him. I have seen the large pen in which the pig lives, with only 3 others, and know he has plenty of room to roam about and lounge in his mud pit. I also know that this animal has been fed on a diet of all organic grains and the only drugs that have been administered was a shot of penicillin give once because of an eye infection.

I can feel good about knowing I have purchased meat which has been humanely raised and in return I know that the product I will be receiving will be more flavorful than anything raised using factory farm methods. I have also contributed to a person who farmers in a more sustainable, environmentally sound way.

I see it as a win-win situation, by getting to know my food. I win because I am guaranteed a wonderful, flavorful product, the animal wins because it is raised in a more humane manner and we all win as such small scale, sustainable farming practices are less detrimental to the environment.

I hope to have my half hog by the end of September, just in time for some cooler weather. Stay tuned for my experiments with pork!

I’m a pig and a glutton, sometimes. I admit. It’s true.. The other day, for example, I made a wonderfully simple salsa, packed with the fresh flavors of late summer. That, in and of itself, doesn’t make me a glutton, but the fact that once I started eating it, I didn’t stop until I had polished off half of a family sized bag of tortilla chips does. In fact, for 2 nights salsa, chips and PBR (that’s Pabst Blue Ribbon-beer- for those not in the know) was my dinner. I look at it this way; at least I got my vegetables for the day!!!!

Seriously though, I love salsa in all its forms, from the simple pico de gallo, to complex mole like creations involving 15-20 ingredients or more, though I don’t make it as often as I should. Instead, I often take the lazy way out and just pick up a bottle at the store. Yes, I am ashamed of myself, especially as I so often gripe about people buying stuff at the store when it is so easy to make at home.

This time of year though, I’d be a fool not to make my own salsa. With so many of its ingredients at their peak of ripeness there is no way store bought can even come close to the beauty that is homemade salsa. A quick stroll through my local farmer’s market and I had all I needed to make some killer salsa, and at a fraction of the cost of the store bought stuff.

Grilled Vegetable Salsa
makes about 1 quart

4 pounds tomatoes
1 medium onion
3 cloves garlic
3-6 jalapenos, depending on how hot they are and how hot you like your salsa. I used 3 as my wife likes her salsa only medium hot.
1/2 bunch cilantro
4 Tbsp. vegetable oil
salt

Preheat your grill. Peel the onion and remove the core. Cut it into 3 thick slices. Use 2 Tbsp. of the oil to lightly oil the tomatoes, onions and jalapenos. Grill until lightly charred and slightly softened.

When done, core the tomatoes and remove the stems from the jalapenos. Roughly cut the tomatoes into 1/6ths or 1/8ths. Place the vegetables in a blender, along with the garlic and blend until well blended but not completely smooth. You will need to do this in 2-3 batches. You shouldn’t need to add any liquid if you place the tomatoes in first. Meanwhile add the remaining oil to a large skillet and heat until smoking. Add the puree to the skillet-be careful as it will sputter and spit-and cook for 10 minutes or until the salsa thickens slightly and turns a darker red. Remove from heat. Allow to cool to room temperature. While the salsa is cooking finely chop the cilantro and add when cool. Season with salt. Place in the refrigerator and allow the flavors to mature for at least 1-2 hours before serving.