When I started thinking about today’s Vietnamese Coffee Caramel Corn I had no idea it would be so easy to make. Too easy! This corn is so simple, it’s dangerous. Today’s recipe is one of those recipes I wish I could unlearn because I have zero self-control in the face of this corn. I’ve always been a bit of a popcorn fiend but this corn really kicked it up a notch. Oh, and the recipe makes a ton, so you can happily eat your way through a ginormous bag of it until your dentist disowns you…Or you can give it away as gifts. Actually, I’m going to say you *should* give some of it away as gifts. You will immediately regret it but you will be doing yourself a kindness.
If you know this blog, you know that I don’t cut a lot of corners. In the era of 5-ingredient, 20-minute meals I stubbornly (stupidly?) continue to post long, long recipes. Week after week I come at you with overnight brines, batches of homemade pasta, and simple syrups. Two-week infused rum cocktails, pleated dumplings, and high maintenance poached chicken breasts. I swear I don’t do it to alienate you, I do it because it’s hard and sometimes doing something hard feels really good! And sometimes it doesn’t. And one of those times was this week. I was up to my eyeballs in work and other people’s problems. It was one of those weeks where you feel like you could totally scream into a pillow for the entirety of the weekend. And when you find yourself crawling towards the weekend, today’s Duck Fried Rice will be there for you.
T
Some of my earliest memories are centered around meat and potatoes. Every Sunday my family would pile into the car and head over to my grandmother’s house for dinner. Without fail she’d always serve a roast alongside a mountain of mashed potatoes. My sister was a roast beef kind of girl, but I was in it for the roast pork. I loved that roast pork not because it was brined or smoked to rosy pink perfection. My grandmother wasn’t that kind of cook. She grew up on a farm, fussing was not in her DNA. No, what I loved about her roast pork was the applesauce that accompanied it. It was one of the first times fruit and meat crossed paths on my dinner plate and it was certainly not the last. Today’s Apricot Stuffed Pork Chops are just another by-product of a food obsession hatched in my formative years.