Pork Cooking Temps

Fork Dork: Intensity, Passion Fuel Monsoon East

Eric Banh, chef / owner of the monsoon is in Old Bellevue, speaks with the conviction of a preacher. It is this passion and commitment that fueled Banh and her sister Sophie empire of five restaurants - East Monsoon, Monsoon Capitol Hill, Baguette Box in Fremont, baguette box on Capitol Hill and his last company, Ba Bar, a Vietnamese street food, coffee and an espresso bar on Capitol Hill.

Banh monsoon is opened in December 2008 replacing Kelly Gaddis' Porcella Urban Market at 10245 Main Street and providing traditional cuisine of southern Vietnam in Old Bellevue.

As the neighborhood has evolved so has Banh and his cuisine.

During a lazy summer afternoon at Monsoon East, he leans forward and over a table, slides his bifocals down his nose to make eye contact with his audience, pinches his thumb and index finger for emphasis and unleashes about the topic dejour or in Bahn’s case the topic of the moment. This time it’s demystifying the cooking temperature of pork, which many people routinely cook to well done after a trichinosis oubreak decades ago.

“It’s safe to cook pork medium rare with a little pink in the middle,” said Banh, furrowing his brow. “There’s so much stigma about cooking pork medium rare. Pork is so much cleaner today than it was in the 1970s and 1980s. It is cleaner than beef. You don’t have to grill it until it’s dry and tough. That’s what the general public needs to know.”

He’s as intense and committed to sourcing the best ingredients as he is about educating consumers about cooking temperatures.

“You have to use the good stuff,” Banh said.In the case of a new pork dish, the pork fat neck Mangalitsa woolly pigs from Auburn, Washington

It is simply cooked in a caramel sauce and fish with shallots and lemon grass for aromatics.

"It is mottled. It's not fat, "says Banh. "I like him because he is one of the best pieces of meat you can eat.

Family Dinner Plan: The one where the freezer thinks about going ...

Last week, Bharat and I had a virtual kitchen playdate with some of my pork last year and buy the machine under vacuum. After marinating in the rub I found on his blog a dork pork, Bharat made a belly of pork and pork roast in the machine under vacuum overnight. The results have been mixed, certainly an opportunity for further research. Method worked really well with bacon, less well with the roast, and we assume it is because each meat has different cooking temperatures. As a result, however, has changed our menu last week. Go back and check what we ended up eating - Wednesday night was a huge hit with kids!

On weekends, our garage freezer started acting funny, so I'll cook from the freezer this week. This means that we could end up with dishes more suited to late fall, but good.

In our box Mariquita Farms this week, we found strawberries, tomatoes (beefsteak and cherry), Walla Walla onions, jalapeño peppers, cucumbers, Gold Chard, and zucchini. Cucumbers and tomatoes make great snacks while I cook dinner, and are good in lunch boxes. The rest is easy for a week.

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