What does "high on the hog" mean?
What does "high on the hog" mean?
To eat high on the hog originally meant to eat the cuts taken from the loin and leg—ham, chops and loin—that were generally considered to be the best cuts of pork.
The phrase has come to denote eating well in a more general sense. One can be said to be living high on the hog during prosperous good times, but the phrase is also used to describe someone living extravagantly or beyond one's means.
Recipe: Pan-Roasted Pork Chops With Mustard-Caper Sauce (Cookthink)
Recipe: Pan-Seared Pork Medallions (Cookthink)
Reference: What is Boston butt? (Cookthink)
Reference: How to tie a pork tenderloin (Cookthink)
(Image courtesy of Wessels Living History Farm.)
Lemon zest adds a bright spark to a dish. There are lots of tools for zesting a lemon -- zester, a knife -- but it's hard to go wrong with a fine grater (such as the popular Microplane version), which makes a beautiful light zest that melds into a dish and gives great flavor.
To zest with the Microplane, just rub the lemon in one direction against the little blades. Turn the lemon as you go so you remove only the yellow part -- the zest. You don't want the white pith just beneath -- it's bitter.
If you use a traditional zester, which makes long, thin strands of zest, or a knife, be sure to finely chop the strands with a knife. The finer shrivels of zest will permeate the dish better than the strands.
To get the most flavor out of lemon zest, add it toward the end of cooking.
Recipe: Agnolotti With Eggplant, Tomatoes And Garlic (Cookthink)
Recipe: Broccoli With Fettuccine, Lemon Zest And Parmesan (Cookthink)
Recipe: Cremini Mushroom Risotto With Lemon Zest (Cookthink)
Reference: What is a Meyer lemon? (Cookthink)
Deglazing is a fancy term for using the flavor-packed brown bits stuck to the bottom of a pan to make a pan sauce or gravy.
To deglaze, just skim excess fat from the pan you've just used to cook meat or poultry. Then add a small amount of liquid -- such as wine, stock or water -- to the cooking juices and boil quickly over high heat, stirring constantly to dislodge the brown bits and evaporate any added alcohol.
From here, you can reduce the liquid to a desired consistency, then maybe finish it off with a touch of cream, a knob of butter or a squeeze of citrus juice. After you take the pan off the heat, you can sprinkle in some chopped herbs and last-minute seasonings. Or if you want to be very French about it, you can finish by straining the imperfections from your sauce.
Vegetables can also be used to lightly "deglaze" a pan to which you have just browned a bit of meat. Water from the vegetables (especially onions) will have the same dislodging effect. And deglazing to make a flourless gravy for poultry can be as simple as removing a chicken from a roasting pan, straining excess fat, adding water and stirring vigorously until the liquid is uniform and slightly reduced.
Reference: What is a pan sauce? (Cookthink)
Recipe: Pan-Roasted Pork Chops With Mustard-Caper Sauce (Cookthink)
