Travel well Quique, you magnificent Spaniard.

This time around I made a sauce from the pork drippings to pour over the rice after crisping it up in the pan, and it’s definitely getting somewhere! Having something flavorful soak into the rice elevates the dish and makes the crispy bits contrast nicely to the rest.

Focaccia is fun. It’s essentially bread dough that’s so wet it just plops and settles into a baking sheet. Just make sure you help to lubricate it with the best extra vergine olive oil you can find. Plenty of it.

Spareribs, slow roasted and then brushed with mustard and pepper until until they are both fall-apart tender and nicely browned. Yum.

Something different to do with leftover rice. Fried with some leftover pork fat until the bottom is nice and crispy. It’s a start, but what this really needs is some sauce to soak into the rice and balance everything out. Must investigate further.

I think chicharrón must translate to “throw pork into a pot and forget about it for a long time”, because that’s just about what you do. You cut up a pork belly, cover it with water, then stew it low and slow until all the water’s gone, then crank the heat and fry it in its own fat until crispy. Served it with a spicy miso mayo nappa cabbage cole slaw. My worry wasn’t that it wouldn’t be delicious, because it was, but that the pork bits would explode in my face, because that’s likely to happen if your fry pork.

Did it in the past with Kombu, this time around it’s miso. No idea yet what to do with it. Maybe I’ll mix it into some butter and roast another kohlrabi with it.

Why not both? The thing about Pasta alla Nerano is, roasting zucchini slices at high heat with some olive oil really brings out their flavor. It’s a wonderful way to serve zucchini, really.

I felt like toying with my faible for cheeseburgers and simultaneously angering traditionalists, so I ended up stuffing cheeseburger ingredients into a bao bun. Fluffy steamed buns are hard not to like, so how does the unorthodox filling fare? You know what, it’s delicious, and I’m pretty sure I could tweak the recipe some more to get the flavors just right, but I actually prefer the traditional cheeseburger. There’s something about the composition of toasted bun, hard seared patty, sauce, onion and lettuce that’s hard to beat.

It’s somewhat rare that dishes I cook surprise me, but this one did. Take a kohlrabi root, peel it to a compact puck, salt it, wait until the seasoning absorbs, brush with melted butter and roast it low and slow for 2-3 hours, turning and continuing to brush with butter until it’s all nice and browned. What you get are some wonderfully chewy bites with concentrated savory flavor that you wouldn’t expect knowing the raw counterpart. What’s most fascinating is that there’s a natural acidity to it that gets concentrated while roasting and balances everything out really nicely, no need for marinades or anything. Crack of black pepper, some crunchy finishing salt and shavings of parmesan and you get a marvelous little dish.