Weekend Cooking - Sole with Rhubarb sauce, Puffy pancakes with a port blueberry sauce, and grilled pork chops with homemade BBQ

This was one great weekend for cooking at the Stoneham residence. Our wonderful friend Laura Robinson of Dandelion sadly for us just moved to Boston. We will miss her tremendously! She was so sweet to allow Les and I raid her refrigerator and fridge the day before she left so she wouldn't have to throw out her condiments and frozen items.  Wow, it sure is a treat raiding a chef's kitchen! We came home with bags, and coolers, and bags of great items like: port, marsala, sherry, miso, anchovies, tomato paste, frozen basil, homemade cranberry sauce, truffle oil, nasturtium capers, bread, and the list goes on and on. Thank you, thank you Laura.

With all this great food and sadness with our friend leaving, Les and I got inspired to do some serious cooking. Les started the weekend hickory smoking some of Gorman Heritage Farm's pork spare ribs on a cast iron filled will carrots from GHF and potatoes and marinated with Laura's homemade BBQ sauce. I don't have her BBQ sauce recipe, but I'll try to get it. (that pictured to the left.)

Then, the next morning I made puffy pancakes with a port blueberry sauce, and freshly made whipped cream made with Snowville Creamery's Heavy Cream.

Port Blueberry Sauce
Ingredients:
1 cup frozen blueberries (found in the freezer at GHF)
1/4 c Port wine (from Laura)
1/2 juice from a lemon
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp cornstarch
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
zest of one lemon (I didn't do this but after I tasted it I think this would have been a good addition)

Directions:

1. Heat saucepan on medium heat. Toss in blueberries, sugar and port wine.
2. Simmer for about 2 minutes.
3. Gradually add in cornstarch until evenly combined
4. Heat for another 2 minutes.
5. Take off heat and add in lemon juice and vanilla extract.

Puff Pancakes 
(from Best of Quick Cooking which I got from my grandma-in-law)

Ingredients:

2 tbsp butter

2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup flour
2 tbsp sugar
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Directions:
Place butter in a pie pan and place in a 425 degree oven for 4-5 minutes or until melted. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, whisk eggs and milk. In another small bowl, combine the flour, sugar and cinnamon; whisk in egg mixture until smooth. Pour into prepared pie plate. Bake for 18-22 minutes or until sides are crisp and golden brown. (I did this type of recipe again and I used a frying pan instead that has rounded sides. It worked a lot better). It'll puff really high on the edges so make sure you don't have it too close to the top of the oven. It'll fall quickly once you take it out of the oven. The next two photos are from another attempt of this at my parents house later. The filling this time was peaches and a cinnamon simple syrup with  berries adorning it. 

Then the next day for lunch we made...

Grilled sole with Rhubarb Fish Sauce 
(I got the idea for this recipe from Jason Neumann (experiential educator at Cincinnati Nature Center - I highly recommend this place!) who did a class on Rhubarb at GHF. I couldn't remember his recipe but tried to recreate it.)

1 lb of fresh sole (bought at Luken's at Findlay Market)
3 tbsp flour
pinch salt and pepper

1 1/2 cup chopped rhubarb (from Gorman Heritage Farm)
2 tbsp honey (from Gorman Heritage Farm)
3 tbsp red raspberry vinegar (next time I'd try apple cider vinegar instead. It was a little too berry)
1/2 tsp freshly grated ginger
juice from 1/2 of a lemon
3/4 cup water
2 tsp flour

Directions:
Mix together the flour, salt and pepper and lightly flour the sole. Heat cast iron on grill with a little oil (something that can get hot like safflower oil). Place sole in the cast iron pan. Once it starts to get slightly golden flip. Don't cook too long or it'll dry out.

Meanwhile make the rhubarb sauce. Place the vinegar, ginger, water, and honey in a small sauce pan on medium heat. Gradually add the flour to the liquid to thicken the sauce. Stir to combined. Once it is about to boil toss in chopped rhubarb. Let the rhubarb cook for about 3-5  minutes or until it's tender. smash some of the rhubarb but leave some chunks too. Then put in the lemon juice and serve over the fish. I put all of this on top of a bed of Isreali couscous. Yum yum. (I'd recommend for looks putting it on maybe a tri-color couscous because all of the colors kind of ran together. I mean remember the sense of sight determines a lot about how you taste something.)