Copy cat recipes, I don’t fully understand them. When I go to a restaurant
yes, the food is good. But it is very rarely because I can’t make food as good
as they can. It’s because I don’t want to cook. I don’t want to clean. I want
to order my food and usually I want to have some nice college kid bring it to
my table and keep my glass full of Pepsi. Usually, a copy cat recipe is a truck
load of ingredients that I don’t typically keep around the house, so that
requires shopping and also spending. And also figuring out what the heck a ripe
tomatillo is supposed to look like cuz I’m pretty sure, I chose wrong. Copy cat
recipes, in my experience, are usually just lots of work, lots of ingredients,
and sometimes, lots of heartache, over something that tastes not quite as good
as what I could have gotten for ten bucks and a 15 minute car drive.
I live in a fairly large metropolitan city. One may go so
far as to say very large. So there’s not much I can’t get behind the wheel of
my car and go get. Maybe that’s one reason I don’t fully understand the allure
of the copy cat recipe. Some people LOVE Cracker Barrel’s cheesy potatoes.
Personally, I like mine better but that’s beside the point. Once upon a time,
the nearest Cracker Barrel was a 4 hour car ride away. Now it’s 20 minutes
maybe 30 in traffic. And some mystery cook prepares them where I cannot see them
or the mess they’re making and a nice person with gold stars of awesomeness
embroidered on their aprons brings them to me from the mystery place and
refills my Pepsi and they taste infinitely better because I don’t resent the
potatoes for being a lot of work.
Recently, I found myself with a little over a pound of pork
shoulder in my freezer and I was trying to think of things to do with it when I
remembered this little site I had pinned on Pinterest. Strangely enough, I found
this website completely separate of the fact that I know the family responsible
for it. We went to the same church, I babysat one of their kids. Isn’t the
internet funny like that? I didn’t know they had a blog of deliciousness but
there they were. Hi guys!
Anyway, I digress.
I had pork. I needed dinner. I decided to go try copy cat Café
Rio pork. In spite of the fact that there is a brand new Café Rio, less than 10
minutes away from my house. It looked easy enough, and I already had the roast!
I had to go to the store for almost everything else but that doesn’t matter
right?
The night before I was going to wow myself and handsome with
this deliciousness, we got pretty absorbed in Lego Lord of the Rings and ended
up staying up til like 1 am battling Lego Orc’s and I completely forgot to put
the roast in to marinade. So when Pumpkin Pie woke up at 4, strange that
infants don’t have an on off switch isn’t it? I fed her, got her back to sleep,
and proceeded to throw together my marinade, and clean the kitchen while I was
at it. I mean, I was already awake so why not? Actually, I’d had a doozy of a
nightmare and wasn’t excited about going back to sleep. So I put a still mostly
frozen pork shoulder in a bag with some Pepsi, and brown sugar and went back to
bed.
We woke up the next morning, I transferred the roast to the
crock pot with some more Pepsi and water and set it on high, and we went to
church. When we got home the crock pot was still cold. I don’t know what had
happened, either the circuit was tripped, or something was wrong with the
switch on the crock pot and it didn’t realize it had a task to fulfill. Anyway,
it was no closer to being food than it had been that morning and I was
frustrated, and sleep deprived. But Handsome talked me down, I plugged the
crock pot into a different outlet and dinner was on again!
Then came the waiting, and the shredding, and the adding
more sauce and cooking some more. Remember when I mentioned they were a lot of
work? And I didn’t want to stop at pork. I wanted, cilantro lime rice, and genuine
Café Rio black beans, and homemade tortillas, and the whole works. By this time
I was really tired, and tender from my nightmare (another story entirely) and
had another hour or so of cooking in front me but I was determined. I put
together my tortilla dough and they turned into basically pie crust. They were
nowhere near round, the edges looked tattered and torn and I couldn’t roll them
thin enough. So I asked Handsome to get tortillas. I would not be deterred! And
then I tossed some crushed garlic into a frying pan and it quickly turned to
cinders. That did it for me. I cried at Handsome for awhile then packed up what
was supposed to be dinner and walked away from it all.
When we did eat our Faux Café Rio I must admit it was pretty
delicious and Handsome said it could go in the favorites box so I’ll be trying
it again. I think I’ll skip the marinating and maybe even the slow cooking in
the Pepsi part. I’ll just cook the roast, shred it, and add the sauce then let
it cook and get all stewed together. In doing things the hard way, I figured
out some short cuts so hopefully next time I won’t cry. And next time, I’ll
write up everything I do differently so if you don’t want to do the things the
tear filled heart broken way, you’ll have another option.
After harping on Copy Cat recipes for an entire post, I feel
like I should leave you with a good one. This is easy and tasty and pretty much
fool proof. Enjoy.
Tony Roma’s Baked
Potato Soup
Soup
2 medium potatoes (about 2 cups chopped)
3 tablespoons butter
1 cup diced white onion
2 tablespoons flour
4 cups chicken stock
2 cups water
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 1/2 cups instant mashed potatoes
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon basil
1/8 teaspoon thyme
l cup half and half
Garnish
1/2 Cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/4 cup crumbled cooked bacon
2 green onions, chopped (qreen part only)
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees and bake the potatoes or 1
hour or until done. When potatoes have Cooked remove them from the oven to
cool.
2. As potatoes Cool prepare soup by melting butter in a
large saucepan, and sauté onion until light brown. Add the flour to the onions
and stir to make a roux.
3. Add stock, water, cornstarch, mashed potatoes, and spices
to the pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes.
4. Cut potatoes in half lengthwise and scoop out contents
with a large spoon. Discard skin. Chop baked potato with a large knife to make chunks
that are about ½ inch in size.
