Pork Cheek with Root Vegetables

I saw pork cheek at the store the other day, and tried looking it up on my phone... I didn't find much, but I picked them up to try anyway. They are surprisingly lean, streaked with more cartilage than fat, and therefore are suited for low, slow cooking. They taste like very meaty pork - yet another flavor from the pig! I cooked them up with root vegetables, and they were delicious.

Grilled Pasta Sauce

I call this "grilled pasta sauce" even though its not really saucy. However, I use it the same way I would use sauce out of a jar, which is why I think of it that way.  The "sauce" is basically just grilled sausage and vegetables. I like to cook the ingredients for this while I'm grilling something else for immediate consumption, because there is an extra step or two to prepare it.

Mango Chicken

This mango chicken dish combines sweet and sour flavors. The sauce is made mostly of mangoes and roasted red peppers which give it an intense red color. I battered and fried the chicken, but you can save time by just stir frying it.

Meat Pies

After having some success with corn rotis, I decided to try something else with the corn flour. What I ended up with, I can only call a "meat pie". I used a similar dough as for the rotis, and it was hard to get it thin. The result was on the dry side, so I need to figure out how to work better with the dough.

Twice Cooked Pork

Twice cooked pork is a Chinese dish where pork belly is boiled and then sliced and fried. I like the idea of it, but in restaurants it's always too chewy. Traditionally, the pork is mixed with cabbage and/or leeks, but I used green bell peppers because that's what I felt like.

Vaguely Middle-Eastern Rice with Lamb Sausage

I wanted to try to a rice dish along the lines of pulao, and had some nice lamb sausage on hand. This is what I came up with...