FFWD: Berry Terrine and Coconut Lemongrass Pork

So this week we made up for lost time by preparing last week's and this week's Around My French Table recipes, Coconut-Lemongrass Pork for dinner and Citrus Berry Terrine for dessert.

The pork dish was not too difficult to prepare but did require exotic ingredients like cardamom pods and a fresh lemongrass stalk that we obtained at the Hong Kong Market Asian food superstore. I thought I'd really stick to the recipe and add pieces of celery root - this is not an easy vegetable to find in my area, although Hubbell & Hudson did me right. You sear the pork, then add the spices and coconut milk then braise for 30-40 minutes. Then you add boiled vegetables and serve with a starch. We cooked some nifty-looking sweet potato noodles from the Hong Kong Market. They weren't very good. We had leftovers with penne pasta. That was better.

I liked the pork but I didn't love it. I was surprised at how roasted it tasted. I don't know if that was the spice combination or it was that I over-seared the pork at the outset, but I didn't feel like there was a lot of depth of flavor. I didn't notice the lemongrass or even the coconut flavors at all. Maybe I did something wrong. It was still a good little meal. I probably won't try it again but it was a fun experiment, and my 'cool spices' section of the spice rack is growing weekly.

I was not sure at all about the citrus berry terrine when I approached that recipe. I stay as far away from Jell-O as I can, and this basically looked like a Jell-O mold, with berries in orange gelatin. So I was extremely pleasantly suprised to find that this stuff was really delicious. It's so dependent on the quality of your ingredients - I bought some fresh-squeezed OJ at H&H, and I think it really made all the difference. Of course, the oranges came from the Hong Kong Market and they were so, so dried out that I could only use 1/2 of each segment; with good citrus segments this would have been perfect.

So for this recipe, you make a gelee with orange juice, a little sugar, and gelatin, and as it solidifies you add segments of orange and grapefruit and a lot of berries. Then you chill it some more until firm. In theory, you then turn it out onto a lovely platter and slice it into perfect servings that photograph well. In practice, your husband generously serves dessert for you and you forget to tell him how to run warm water over the outside and gently turn the terrine out and instead you both enjoy piles of scooped-out berry and citrus jelly goodness. This was really good. The leftovers were great too. And it feels sort of healthy, since there's only 1/3c of sugar in the whole thing and the rest is mostly fruit.

It was great to get caught up with the Dorie recipes. I'm looking forward to the August selections, too. And I don't remember if the bacon-egg-asparagus salad has been featured on FFWD yet since I started late, but we made that earlier this week and OMG was that ever good. Just so good. Everyone who has this book should prepare it tonight. And if you don't have the book, go buy it so you can make it later tonight.

As always, you can check out everyone's take on this week's recipe here. For the recipes, go get this wonderful cookbook!!