Georgia Style Braised Pork Shoulder (& other Top Chef recipes)

Last week's episode of Top Chef was Restaurant Wars and to celebrate (geez we are so lame?) we had some friends over and set the mild challenge of each cooking something that had been featured on Top Chef over the last 6 seasons. For the record, the recipes on Top Chef vary pretty greatly from easy to ridiculously complicated, and 'this is a michelin star quality dish' to making-Tom-Collichio-spit-food-into-the-desert, so this didn't actually mean much more than there being a massive range of recipes to choose from and an excuse to say dumb stuff like "flavour profile" and "execute the dish".

First up Nat brought Season 5 Jamie's Red Curry Carrot Soup with Raita and Smoked Paprika Oil. It was delicious! Once more a Jamie soup (with flavoured oil) is a win (see also Chilled Corn Soup that I am hoping will get another run this summer).

Then the television took over our lives for 50 minutes. We all hated on Toby Young, and were relieved with the decision made by judges at the end. Also Padma rolled her eyes a few times.

Main course: Georgia Style Braised Pork Shoulder, from (everyone's favourite) Kevin of current season.

This was from an episode where they had to cook at an air force base, for a bunch of air force officers, hence the recipe says it serves 125 people. I cooked a quarter of the amount, and we had amazing pulled pork sandwiches the next night for dinner so in the end it probably served about 6-8 full sized meals.

It all seems like a lot of mustard, but it worked really well. Kevin wins again!

We served the pork with Mustard Potato Salad, the dressing for which Matt made up because somehow I couldn't locate Eli's recipe, although now I have very easily. What's up with that? Was the internet playing tricks on me? Maybe. But the made from scratch mayonnaise that Matt created was probably better than Eli's anyway. To be fair they had to work with what they had in the airforce base kitchen (lots of cans) so I suppose he is forgiven for all the ingredients involved. But keep egg out of my potato salad please.

Again, more mustard? Yes, more mustard. I made the addition of some finely sliced up apple for colour and lightness which worked obviously because apple and pork are friends. There was going back for seconds. Hooray.

For dessert Helen made (DJ?) Hubert Keller's Gingered Bittersweet Chocolate Mousse with Toasted Pistachio! Firstly, bonus points for cooking from Top Chef Masters. Secondly this too was delicious.  Apparently there were slight changes (less cream, more ginger?) to the recipe but I don't see why it would be done any other way, it was awesome.