Wednesday, May 23, 2012

What's a caper?

My second favorite thing to do next to art is cooking.  The problem is...I have no one to experiment on.  Sure there's Lou.  But I really don't think he appreciates different foods the way I do.  He'd be happy eating spaghetti with jar sauce and ham & mayo sandwiches for the rest of his life.  He looks at new unidentifiable dishes with fear in his eyes, whereas I look at them with excitement.
Luckily (...I guess?), he's too lazy to make food himself, so whatever food whim I have, he's subject to eat it, or at least poke at it with his fork.

I don't remember how I came across this dish.  I think I was googling dinner ideas, or maybe capers.  Sometimes I can come across something interesting to cook if I just search for an ingredient I'm trying to use up.  Like the capers.  I made chicken piccata the other night with them.  But that's another delicious story.

I used to hate capers.  Or maybe I was just scared of their mystery.  The first time I ever tried them, it was when I was making a dish in college.  I had no idea what they were, but the recipe called for them.  They looked strange.  And they were salty, but with a weird flavor.  At the time, I didn't know if they were a nut, a seed, a sea creature...who knew.  The dish came out crappy and I swore off capers for a while after that.  Only recently, have I grown to like them a lot more.

Enter...Pork Medallions with Mustard-Caper Sauce.  Ooh, we's fancy tonight.

Here's how the picture on the website looked.  Fancy and sophisticated, yes?


Here's how mine looked.  Kind of like slop, yes?


Maybe because I forgot that parsley garnish.  But that's fine, because the flavor was awesome.  And the roasted potatoes I made to go with them soaked up all of that saucy goodness.  I licked my plate.  I'm not gonna lie.  Ok, well I did lick it hiding in the kitchen where Lou couldn't see me.  I'm not a savage.

The recipe was really easy to make and with a small amount of ingredients, which is great. If there's more than 10 ingredients, I'm not making that crap. Get out of here. I don't care how delicious the recipe might be. I have places to be. I have a life to live. I can't be measuring a bajillion separate ingredients. I think that's why I never make anything by Emeril Lagasse. It seems like every recipe I come across by him has 40 different components. Or fancy sounding ingredients that are just going to waste more of my brainpower...like clarified butter. Just get on with it alreadyyyyy. Stop showing off.

I found the recipe here, if you'd like to try it out for yourself.

4 comments:

Greener Pastures--A City Girl Goes Country said...

But what ARE capers?

I don't make anything that I have to specifically shop for the ingredient, hence the reason why I still haven't made your recipe for taco soup.

magicbeanbuyer said...

Capers are unripened flower buds from some plant that were pickled in a brine. They're usually next to the pickles in a teeny jar.

This is why you guys are never going to experience new and fun foods! You're finally right near civilization and a food store and you haven't even tried my taco soup yet! You're making me put the taco soup on a pedestal! I keep talking it up and up and up to get you to go buy the ingredients. It's not thaaaat great, but it's pretty awesome, and it's so easy! And the total cost for this giant pot of soup is around $10. It's a great deal!

Greener Pastures--A City Girl Goes Country said...

Oh! For some reason capers sounds like a fishy thing! Like caviar.

Well, I have the ingredients on my list.

magicbeanbuyer said...

haha...yeah I thought the same thing at first!