Paisano: Schnitzel

Forgotten Tastes




About a month ago I purchased American Classics by the editors of Cook's Illustrated magazine. The book is a good modern reference to such traditional favorites as Chicken Pot Pie, Parker House Rolls, and Yellow Layer Cake done in the magazine's inimitable style of setting a goal and the experimenting until they achieve it. I don't always like their recipes, but I trust them and the investigation behind them.

One of the recipes I browsed was Crisp Pork Cutlets — something I haven't fixed in ages. So the other night I pulled a boneless pork loin chop out of the freezer and thawed it. I didn't follow the book recipe (although I'm sure I remembered parts of what I'd read) but instead followed my own instincts. The result was juicy, tender, and the essence of pork flavor.

Pork Cutlets

6 oz. boneless pork loin chop
1 egg — beaten in pie plate
1/4 c all purpose flour
sage, paprika, salt, black pepper
1/4 c sourdough bread crumbs — seasoned with sage, paprika, salt, & pepper
1 tbsp olive oil

Pound chop to about 1/4" thick and season generously with sage, paprika, salt, & pepper (I'm particularly fond of freshly-ground Lamphong black pepper which is both spicy and highly aromatic). Dredge the chop in the flour, coat with egg, and thoroughly coat with bread crumbs. (Note: seasoning the pork directly is much more effective than seasoning the flour and or seasoning the bread crumbs alone.) Set chop aside.

Heat a skillet over medium high heat. Add oil. Fry chop on each side until golden and crisp (about 2 minutes per side). Serve immediately.

I sauteed some frozen turnip greens in oil seasoned with curry powder to go with it. A great meal.

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin d weeks | seriously good | paisano | pork

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Sirloin Pork Roast

Take it Easy



There's something odd about buying meat off the back of a truck in vacant supermarket parking lot. The setting makes me feel as though I'm engaged in something unsavory — like buying porn — nevertheless, I do it on most Fridays. West Wind Farms, which is located up on the Cumberland Plateau, makes three regular stops in Knoxville, including the grocery store parking lot, on Fridays to sell chicken, beef, pork, and turkey as well as a collection of specialty products they make such as summer sausage, corned beef, and salami.

The couple who own West Wind are nice folks and if I remember correctly they're both environmental scientists by training who decided to get into organic ranching. At any rate, on this day I'd been planning on getting a pork butt to make a pork daube. They didn't have a shoulder but they did have a pork sirloin roast.

My thinking was this approach would minimize the contraction of the muscle fibers and so avoid toughening the meat and driving the juices out.

This is a cut from the opposite end of the pig and is also largely opposite in character. Where the butt has multiple muscles running in different directions with layers of fat separating the muscles, the sirloin is only two primary muscles with relatively little internal fat. The character they have in common is that both cuts tend to be tough which means they're best cooked low and slow. But because of the lack of fat and connective tissue (both of which melt and produce a tender pork butt when braised or barbequed) the sirloin has a tendency to dry out. So I decided to roast it at 225F — very low and slow.

My thinking was this approach would minimize the contraction of the muscle fibers and so avoid toughening the meat and driving the juices out. I was right. I pulled the roast from the oven at 145F and after resting for 15 minutes slicing into it did no more than moisten the cutting board — the juices were all still inside and the roast was a perfect medium from about 1/4 of an inch inside to the center. And although not as tender as a loin roast, it certainly wasn't tough.

Roast Pork

3 lb. pork roast
3 lg. garlic clove &mdash smashed
Salt and pepper
Ground dried rosemary
1 small onion — diced
1 carrot — diced
1 stalk celery — diced
2 Tbsp. olive oil, separated
2 Tbsp. fresh thyme leaves
~3/4 cup red wine, separated

Heat oven to 225F.

Rub pork with one of the smashed garlic cloves. Sprinkle lightly on all sides with ground rosemary then season generously with salt and pepper.

Heat 1 1/2 tablespoons of oil in a large, oven-poof skillet over medium-high heat. Brown roast on all sides then transfer to a plate.

Add onions, carrot, and celery to skillet along with additional oil if needed and cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables begin to brown. Add garlic and thyme and cook a minute longer. Deglaze skillet with 1/2 cup of wine.

Place roast on top of vegetables and place skillet in center of oven. Cook until an instant read thermometer show the internal temperature reaches 145F (about 2 hours). Remove from oven from tent roast with foil.

Transfer 1 1/2 cups of vegetables from the skillet to a sauce pan and add enough additional wine to completely cover. Bring to a soft boil and cook about 15 minutes. Puree vegetable mixture in a blender or food processor. Taste and adjust seasonings. Serve over sliced pork.

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin d weeks | seriously good | main dish | pork | pork roast

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Pancetta, Yet Again

This is my second (and much more ambitious) batch of pancetta. As with my first pass, this is based on the recipe in Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn. Someone (and I seem to have lost the email) suggested I do the drying in a wine fridge. I happened to have access to one and tried it — the results, as you can see, are gorgeous. Sadly, now I need to buy my own wine fridge.

Ever wondered what to do with pancetta?

Sauté with some garlic and minced anchovies until the fat renders. Add fresh spinach or blanched broccoli rabe, kale, or chard. and cook three or four minutes.

Add sautéed pancetta to risotto, polenta, or even grits.

Use a bit of ground pancetta in stuffed mushrooms.

Mix sautéed pancetta with chopped fresh tomato and shredded cheese as a topping for bruschetta.

Toss chopped, cooked pancetta in a salad.

Make a sandwich using several thin, grilled slices.

It's wonderful stuff.

Technorati: Food | photo | kevin d weeks | seriously good | pancetta | pork | italy | bacon | pork belly

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Meat

Meat



I noticed that my friend, the good Doctor and Reverend Biggles of Meathenge, was reduced to posting a photo of chicken in a pot this morning. The struck me as the perfect occasion to rub his nose in the pulled pork I smoked for 12 hours on Thursday.



You can find a recipe for the dry rub here and the sauce here.

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin weeks | seriously good | pulled pork | barbeque

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Grilled Pork Tenderloin

Living Small — but not too small



This has been a tough month financially. My two most regular clients have been on hiatus and although my one-off business (dinner parties, picnics, that kind of thing) has continued to improve, food costs have been eating me alive.

I've always had a problem managing food costs. My attitude is I want to eat the best food I can find and that attitude extends to my clients as well -- I want to serve them the best food I can find. But food prices have risen a lot this year (cutting into profits from my regular clients who have a fixed, per-service, price) and although I cost the menu for a one-off before quoting a price I've done a poor job of estimating direct subsidiary costs.

Tonight I plan a wonderful cold broth based on fresh ice cubes and to go along with it some moldy asiago.

"Direct subsidiary costs?" Ok, just for the hell of it, here's how I classify food costs. Note: this is my working approach, not my accounting approach. (Just in case some IRS dude sees this and tries to hang me on it.)

Direct costs are the costs of all the fundamental elements of the meal. Meat, vegetables, fresh herbs, heavy cream, canned stock when I don't have homemade. These items compose the bulk of the meal.

Pantry costs are the ingredients of a dish that I amortize over multiple clients. Dried herbs, oils, vinegars, flour, wine, and on and on. I figure these constitute 25 percent of total food costs for my personal chef service clients.

Direct Subsidiary Costs are where I really get burned. These are expenditures associated directly with a meal, but they only apply to one-off meals. They're for things like flowers for a table setting, radishes for a garnish, or nice paper napkins for a fancy picnic. I never think of them while I'm planning the menu and concentrating on the food and recipes and burners and oven space and the 100 other things needed to serve a fancy meal precisely at 6:30 PM on a Monday evening. No, I think of these things when I'm in the store buying the ingredients or the night before as I'm working out the cooking schedule and figuring out what equipment I need to lug to the site.

Direct Subsidiary items are non-essential from the flavor standpoint, but essential for creating a perfect experience for the client. My Monday night dinner party cost me $15 in unanticipated direct subsidiary costs. A 23 percent cost increase over my estimate. Damn! I've got to do better.

All of this is to say I'm broke again after a decent spring and early summer. So I've been eating out of my freezer as much as possible. A good thing as it's time to scrub my refrigerator again. Hiding in the back I found a pork tenderloin from Laurel Creek Farms.

Laurel Creek is owned and worked by a fellow named Tracy Monday. I'd guess he's in his early forties. He's a short and rotund fellow with a slow, but ready, smile; a soft voice; old Southern manners; and the bib overalls that would make him a complete cliché if you didn't shake his hand and feel the callouses. He exudes honesty like parmigiano regiano exudes flavor crystals.

I've been saving the tenderloin for a special occasion, and I guess not starving to death would have to do. So I moved it to the fridge to thaw and gave some thought to how to cook it. I finally settled on marinating it in wine, olive oil, rosemary, thyme, and a touch of lemon juice. Once thawed, the tenderloin got 24 hours in the marinade, was patted dry, and went on a hot grill for 2 minutes per side (I figure the cylindrical tenderloin has four sides). As you can see it was nicely pink in the center and I only needed a fork to cut it thanks to Tracy.

To go along with it I blanched some broccoli rabe then sautéed it in olive oil with pancetta, garlic, and anchovies. I also repeated the Potatoes Parmigiano recipe because I had a few taters left and it's so damned good.

Tonight I plan a wonderful cold broth based on fresh ice cubes and to go along with it some moldy asiago. And, well, there are a few tomatoes I got at the farmers' market yesterday and a cucumber. Checking freezer... Hmmm... Wonder what I can do with raw pig fat? Oh, I know...

Technorati: Food | recipe | kevin weeks | seriously good | pork | essay | italian | grilling

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Pork Chops Florentine

alla Fiorintina



A few weeks ago Doc/Rev Biggles of Meathenge posted a photo of a gorgeous grilled pork chop. Then a week ago I received the August 2007 issue of Cuisine at Home that offered a recipe for "Pork Chops Florentine-Style." This was just too much. I haven't eaten a grilled pork chop since last summer and it was clearly time to do it again.

The recipe in Cuisine at Home intrigued me. Bistecca alla Fiorentina is a famous dish made with a thick T-bone or Porter House steak. I started doing research on it.

In this country we associate "Florentine" with spinach and cream sauces because of dishes such as Eggs Florentine or Chicken Florentine. The origins of this association aren’t clear, but according to one tale Catherine de Medici (yes, of those Medicis) brought spinach to the French Court and in honor of her Italian heritage, she called any dish containing spinach alla Fiorintina: "of the Florentines." Apocryphal or not, it probably was the French, those irrepressible arbiters of culinary terminology, who applied the term to any dish including spinach and cream. But no cuisine, particularly not one with the history of an Italian region behind it, can be so neatly encapsulated in a single preparation.

According to Lidia Bastianich, "[Steak Florentine] seems to have its origins with the many people from Northern Europe who fell in love with the countryside around Florence and decided to move to Tuscany. In fact, so many English relocated to the Chianti area that is has been dubbed 'Chiantishire.'" At any rate, ideally the beef for
Steak Florentine is from the Chianina cattle of the region, which were used primarily as draft animals and could be so large that a single steak might weight 6 pounds.

As I expected, the recipes were all over the map. If anyone ever tells you "this is the absolutely authentic and only way" to prepare a dish, put your boots on, the manure is getting deep. But lemon juice and olive oil were common ingredients in most of the recipes. So I took that as a given. The recipes were divided between marinating or not. I decided to marinate. I also decided not to include any acid in the marinade.

The two chops I had were grass-fed Berkshire hog and grass-fed meat tends to be tough. Marinating in acid would have made the meat even tougher. So instead of juice I elected to use lemon zest. To make sure the lemon got into the meat I heated the olive oil to a low simmer and infused it with the lemon zest, fresh oregano, and garlic. That was some damned-fine tasting oil.

Braciola di Maiale alla Fiorentina (Florentine Pork Chops)
Serves 2.

2 bone-in rib chops, at least 1 inch thick
1 cup olive oil
zest of two lemons (reserve lemons)
2 cloves garlic — minced
3 sprigs fresh oregano
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper

Combine olive oil, lemon zest, oregano, garlic, salt, and pepper in a small skillet and cook over medium heat until it begins to bubble around the oregano sprigs. Remove from heat and let cool. Pour into a ziplock bag, add chops, and refrigerate for at least eight hours — turning occasionally to distribute marinade.

Remove pork from fridge an hour before cooking to warm up.

Build a hot fire in the grill. When the coals are ready, remove the chops from the marinade and dry on paper towels. Cook on each side for about 2 1/2 minutes over direct heat — until mahogany brown. Move chops off the direct heat but with the bone facing the heat and cover the grill and cook for four minutes more.

Serve with lemon wedges.

I had tabouleh with these chops — a perfect accompaniment. The flavors from the marinade are mild, but detectable, especially with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice on top. Encourage your eaters to season generously with salt and pepper. Encourage your eaters to gnaw the bones as I did, searching for that last delectable morsel.

Technorati: Food | recipe | italy | italian | steak | pork | pork chops | florentine

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Paisano: Pinchos Morunos

In April of 711, the Arab governor of Tangiers, Tariq ibn-Ziyad, crossed the strait between what are now Morocco and Spain with an army of 10,000 Berbers. At the time the Iberian peninsula was ruled by the Goths and their king, Roderick, took an army south to repel the Moorish invader, but Tariq and his troops defeated Roderick's army in a battle near the River Guadalete.

Tariq's army then followed the old Roman roads north to the Goths' capital city, Toledo, taking the cities of Ejica and Cordoba along the way. Resistance was minimal, whether reduced by Tariq's intimidatory propaganda (reportedly he'd had group of prisoners cut into pieces and their flesh boiled in cauldrons) or not. The invasion had been ordered by Musa, the governor of North Africa, who joined the invasion the following year with another Berber army of 18,000 -- including a large number of Arab officers. Musa took Medina Sidonia, Seville, and Merida, where a last stand by the Goths failed. And that was more or less that for the next 700 years until the Christians defeated the Moors and drove them out.

Close your eyes and taste the spices swirling across your tongue.

To this day traditional Spanish architecture shows a clear Moorish influence -- so does the cuisine.

Called Pinchos Morunos (Moorish Pointed Stick or Thorns), this recipe, adaped from the Williams-Sonoma Web site, highlights the Moorish influence on Spanish cooking. The Moors didn't eat pork but the Spaniards have, apparently, always loved eating pig. I can imagine the marinade with lamb, but judging by the results I'm positive it has been tweaked over the centuries to specifically complement pork.

These bites of pork are extraordinarily good. Close your eyes and taste the spices swirling across your tongue. One moment they stamp on your taste buds -- a Flamingo dancer pounding a rhythm of sensation, hard heels beating a tattoo with skirts flouncing. Then the flouncing skirts morph into swaying silks and delicate veils and the erotic languor of a belly dance caresses your tongue. Two cultures, choreographed into a seamless dance across the palate. Romancing the nose. Seducing the belly.

Moorish Pork Kabobs (Pinchos Morunos)
Serves 8.

1/2 cup olive oil
3 tbsp ground cumin
2 tbsp ground coriander
1 tbsp sweet paprika
1 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp salt, plus more, to taste
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 lb pork shoulder, cut into 1-inch cubes
2 tbsp minced garlic
1/4 c chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1/4 c fresh lemon juice

Combine the olive oil, cumin, coriander, paprika, cayenne pepper, turmeric, oregano, salt, and pepper in a small skillet over low heat. Cook until warmed through and fragrant, about 3 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool to room temperature.

Place the pork pieces in a bowl and rub with the spice mixture. Add the garlic, parsley and lemon juice and toss well. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

Preheat a cast-iron grill pan over medium-high heat, or prepare a hot fire in a grill.

Thread the meat onto skewers and season with salt. Grill on all sides until just cooked through, 12 - 15 minutes total.

Technorati: Food | recipe | pork | pork kabobs | spain | morrocco | pinchos morunos

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The Day of Pigs

The Day of Pigs



Today was far more special than you could have imagined. This is not only the Chinese Year of the Pig, which occurs every 12 years, but the Golden Year of the Pig, which occurs every 600 years. On top of that, March 1 is National Pig Day, the first, and perhaps only, time there will be such a confluence porcinus. Clearly such an auspicious event called for a panoply of piggish prodigality. Fortunately I didn't have anything time-critical scheduled today so I had time this morning to give a little thought to the matter.

But what to do? I didn't want to make a trip to the store just to buy a pork chop for some lame last-minute effort at some lame last minute effort. And although I did have bacon and a couple of different kinds of sausage in the freezer, I wanted something special. Then I remembered I had some pork confit that I'd made a month ago and hadn't gotten around to tasting since I'd made it. This was the perfect occasion. A little more thought and I had my menu planned.

I decided to fry some potatoes with the pork confit in the fat from the confit and then toss the potatoes and confit with some grated Parmigiano Reggiano. I would serve it on a bed of Italian green beans sautéed with some of my homemade pancetta, garlic, and a couple of minced anchovy fillets (a treatment that has become one of my favorite ways of fixing greens and I thought it would work equally well with the beans — it did). I also had a few homemade bratwursts in the freezer, so I thawed one of them out as well. Then, figuring if it's worth doing it's worth over-doing, I decided to make buttermilk biscuits using lard that I'd rendered.

But even that wasn't enough. La Tienda had a sale on Serrano ham last week and I'd ordered some. It arrived today, clearly a omen, and in a last frenzy of pig-headedness I decided to wrap a few orange segments in ham as an amuse bouche. (The flavor pairing worked, but the orange overwhelmed the ham. I may try this again using country ham.)

And, as you can see above, that's exactly what I did. It was a remarkable meal built almost entirely of pork products that I made myself. I think even the CIA would be happy with the results.

Technorati: Food | recipe | pork | pig | National Pig day | bratwurst | pork confit

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Pancetta

A Face Only a Cook Could Love



How can something so ugly taste so good? But it does. It tastes extraordinarily good.

Last December I made pancetta using a recipe in Michael Ruhlman's and Brian Polcyn's Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing. I ordered a pork belly from my local rancher, rubbed the cure into it, and let it rest in the refrigerator for two and a half weeks. Then I rinsed the cure off, rolled it up and tied it, and let it age for another two weeks in a cool closet. Finally it was ready and I cut off a

Anybody who believes that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach flunked geography. ~ Robert Byrne

piece and cooked it -- as I said, extraordinary. Far better than any pancetta I've ever eaten. It's also easy to make in a home kitchen. The hard part is the waiting.

Inevitably I had to try cooking with it so I peeled and diced a couple of parsnips and sautéed them with diced pancetta for lunch — awesome!

I've included an adaptation of the recipe for making pancetta below, but I recommend buying the book.

Pancetta
2 - 3 pound pork belly — skin removed

2 cloves garlic — crushed
1 teaspoon pink salt (curing salt with nitrite)
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 tablespoon juniper berries — crushed
2 bay leaves — crumbled
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 reaspoon dried thyme

Combine all ingredients except pork in a small bowl.

Trim the belly so that it forms a neat rectangle of fairly uniform thickness.

Rub the cure into the both sides of the pork belly, place in a large zippered plastic bag, and refrigerate for one week. Without removing the belly from the back, massage the curing mixture into the meat again. Refrigerate for another week. At the end of that time check the meat for firmness at it's thickest point. If it's still soft, refrigerate for another couple of days until firm.

Remove the belly and rinse off the cure with cold water (you don't need to be obsessive about cleaning it) and pat dry. Sprinkle the meat side with another tablespoon of black pepper. Roll very tightly, meat side in, and tie with twine at on to two inch intervals. Hang in a cool (50 - 60F), dark place — ideally with 60 percent humidity — for 2 weeks.

Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for up to 3 weeks or freeze for up to 4 months.

Technorati: Food | recipe | pancetta | pork | bacon | charcuterie

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Stuffed Pork Chops w/ Caramelized Onions

Powerless



Ok, so I lack will power. It's a flaw, but it's not as though I was child molester or worked for Tyson foods. I'm not so obsessive that I have to count every parking meter on the street nor am I compelled, like some bloggers, to write about my daughter, or even my cat, throwing up — count your blessings.

But yes, I can be obsessive.

Saturday afternoon I got a couple of pork chops out of the freezer for supper Sunday night. I didn’t know what I was going to do beyond eating them, but I figured I'd

It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions. ~ Robert Bly quotes

come up with something. As Saturday afternoon progressed I thought about it a bit, perused a couple of cookbooks, thought about it a bit more, checked out some recipe sites on the Web. Now mind you, this was not some single-minded search for a recipe, just sort of a relaxed — oh, I wonder? — research session as I watched TV; worked on a new blog Farmgirl Susan and KitchenMage and I are starting; and caught up with my magazine reading.

But about 10:00 that night I had an idea. I tried to push it out of my mind, to come up with another thought. But the more I pushed against it the better it seemed. It was a perfectly good idea, but it required port — and I didn't have any in the house. I considered using madeira or sherry, which I had. Nope. They wouldn’t work (not that I knew port would work, I mean, I was making this up on the spot, it could turn out to be a fiasco) but at 10:30 I knew it had to be port.

I live in the Bible belt. You can’t buy liquor on Sunday (and in Tennessee, port is legally the same as bourbon or vodka) and the liquor stores were closing in 30 minutes and wouldn’t reopen until Monday morning — a bit late for supper Sunday night. It was about 28 degrees outside — chilly. I was watching a movie on SciFi channel, which would be over by the time I got back. No dice. I couldn't talk myself out of it. No will power.

Sigh. I got up, changed the raggedy sweats I wear at home for something presentable in public, pulled on a coat, drove to the liquor store, and, with 5 minutes to spare, spent $20 on a bottle of port just to make dinner Sunday night. It's not even a main ingredient — it's a flavoring.

I wonder if there's a 12-step program for cooks?

Stuffed Pork Loin Chops Stuffed with Caramelized Onions

2 ea boneless pork loin chops — 1" thick
2 oz gruyere — sliced
1 lg onion — peeled, halved, and sliced into half rounds
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
1 1/2 tbsp red wine vinegar
1/4 c port
salt and pepper

Melt butter in a large sauce pan over over low heat. Add onions and stir to coat. Cover and cook until onions caramelize — about 30 minutes — stirring frequently.

Heat oven to 400F and heat olive oil in a cast-iron skillet over medium high heat.

Cut a deep pocket in the side of each chop and stuff with sliced gruyere. Liberally season with salt and pepper. Brown one side of chops — about 4 minutes. Turn chops over and place skillet in the oven. Cook chops for about another 5 minutes. Remove from oven and tent with foil.

Meanwhile, place onions over medium heat and stir in vinegar. Reduce vinegar to a glaze. Add port and reduce to a glaze. Season lightly with salt and pepper.

Serve chops topped with caramelized onions.

Note: The gruyere provided an unexpectedly sweet note when paired with the pork. Excellent! The onions were also good, but not worth the trip to the liquor store.

Technorati: Food | recipe | main dish | pork | pork chops

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Milk-Braised Pork Loin

Simple, Strange, Delicious



Sometimes cooking and eating are a matter of faith. Or, perhaps more accurately, a calculated risk. I had a three pound pork loin in my freezer that I needed to do something with but I wanted something different and I was clueless. So I sent an e-mail to my friend Doc Biggles at Meathenge and asked him for suggestions. And he came back with a suggestion for pork braised in milk — Arrosto di Maiale Al Latte, which he published back in February of 2006.

Doc got the recipe from Kate at Accidental Hedonist who posted the recipe a few days earlier. Actually, that's what I figured Doc would suggest because he'd just tried a variation using pork chops.

Perhaps it's just me, but braising pork in milk seemed like a strange idea to me. It is also such a simple recipe that (pork, milk, garlic, and salt and pepper) that I wondered how much flavor it would have. But Doc has never steered me wrong, and I did want something new so I decided to give it a shot. However, I decided to follow Kate's original recipe rather than Doc's posting because I didn't want to incorporate any variations Doc may made on this first trial. — which doesn’t mean I followed Kate's recipe exactly.

I look upon it that he who does not mind his belly will hardly mind anything else. ~ Samuel Johnson

Kate browned her roast in butter before braising, however at medium-high heat I knew the butter would burn during browning, so instead, I elected to brown the roast in bacon grease. I think this was consistent with the recipe while using something like olive oil wouldn't have been.

I varied the cooking technique as well. Kate cooked it on the stove top, but my experience is that braising works best in the oven. In the oven, particularly if you have a good heavy cast iron dutch oven like my Le Crueset. Using the oven and cast iron the braise is cooked simultaneously from all sides instead of just from the bottom. This results in more even cooking and produces a superior result.

Lastly, instead of whisking the liquid at the end of the cooking process, I used my immersion blender, which produced a smooth, thick sauce with the garlic evenly distributed throughout.

Arrosto di Maiale Al Latte

3 - 4 lb pork loin roast
salt and pepper
2 tbsp bacon grease
2 1/2 c whole milk (don't use anything low fat or skimmed)
5 cloves garlic — peeled

Heat oven to 325F.

Melt bacon grease in a large dutch oven over medium-high heat. Generously season pork with salt and pepper, then brown on all sides in the dutch oven. Pour out the fat in the bottom of the pot, add the milk and garlic, cover, and place in the middle of the oven.

Cook for one hour. turn roast over and cook another hour. Turn roast over again and cook 30 minutes more. Remove from oven and set roast on a plate, covered with foil, and allow to rest 10 - 15 minutes. Blend milk sauce using a blender and season to taste with salt and pepper. Serves 4 -6.

This is an amazingly good dish. The milk really brings out the pork flavor and, although as a rule a lean cut like pork loin isn’t a good candidate for a technique like braising, in this case although the meat shrank to about half it's original size it wasn't dry. The sauce was incredibly rich and flavorful with a nice, but not overwhelming, garlic lilt to it. If you make this, please resist the urge to add additional seasonings the first time, you should understand the baseline before you screw around with the recipe.

I've got some chops in the freezer and may try Doc's most recent variation in the near future — the onions sound like a good idea.

Technorati: Food | recipe | main dish | meat | pork | pork loin | italian | braise

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Charcuterie: A Book and a Year, In Review

A Book and a Year, In Review



About this time a year ago I decided 2006 was going to be the year I finally satisfied a cooking urge I'd been harboring for 10 or 12 years — 2006 was going to be my year of the pig. In particular, it was going to be the year I started learning charcuterie.

Around 2000 I bought the grinder attachment for my Kitchen Aid and a rather pitiful book on making sausage (The Sausage-Making Cookbook).

I tried a couple of recipes, but the results were pitiful — mainly because the author failed to address the issue of having sufficient quantities of fat. So after two or three incredibly dry batches of sausage I lost interest, although I did continue to grind my own beef, pork, and lamb.

Having reawakened my ambition to make sausage, I bought Bruce Aidells's Complete Sausage Book and proceeded to start making sausage including Mititei, Kofta, Italian sausage, and bratwurst. I've also made several batches of breakfast sausage, but although it's no longer dry, I still haven't found the flavor I'm looking for.

A couple of months ago I bought Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn's Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing. I mentioned the book back in this article on smoked duck breasts, but I wanted to wait until I'd had a chance to try more recipes before writing a genuine review.

The book was a revelation. I started flipping though it when it arrived, something caught my eye, that led me back to the introduction, and before I knew it I'd read half the book. Literally. Every description, every recipe. I even hauled down my Bruce Aidell book to make a couple of comparisons. Charcuterie is one of the best-written books I've read this year — perhaps because it's neither a cookbook, though it is a book of recipes, nor a cooking manual, though it does present the technical aspects of the art of charcuterie.

Here's an example of what captivated me: "A powerful mania descended on me a decade ago when I first tasted duck confit…." What serious cook can't identify with such a statement, such a sentiment whether about confit or asparagus? Elsewhere Ruhlman writes, "Embrace the sausage." I wish I had the gift for expressing such simple unadorned passion.

Curious, I asked Ruhlman how he got involved in cooking and he said he'd seen Julia Child make an apple pie on TV and then made his own "rather bad" effort. "[It] always seemed natural, cooking, especially if you love to eat. [I] began writing and cooking at same age, I think they're linked for me."

The prose, even when describing how to do something, is smooth, flowing, readable. Ruhlman's background as an English major and then writer and editor is evident.

Polcyn, Ruhlman's partner and the source of the expertise, clearly has as deep a knowledge of preparing and preserving meats as Ruhlman does of expressing that knowledge.

The book's 300 plus pages contain six sections (not counting the introduction and a final chapter on "Recipes to Accompany Charcuterie"). The sections cover salt-cured food, smoked food, sausages, dry-cured food, pâtés and terrines, and "The Confit Technique." I haven't even begun to explore the material in practice, but I have read the book and made enough recipes to think I can judge the quality from the standpoint of an experienced cook learning a new method of preparing food.

As I mentioned in the piece on Smoked Duck Breasts, they're extraordinary and, after reading the recipe, straight-forward to prepare. Since then I've also used the All-Purpose Brine on a pork loin, it's a good solid basic recipe (compared to many I've seen or tried) and is readily adaptable to modification.

The pancetta is

easy to make, although I haven’t yet eaten any because it's still drying. The pork confit is excellent. I liked the Italian sausage better than Aidell's, but I need to go back and try them side by side to figure out why. I also liked the Shrimp and Salmon Terrine with Spinach and Mushrooms, but next time I make it I think I'll add some fresh lemon zest to make it brighter.

On the down side, rendering pork fat for lard requires (in my experience) making a point of trimming off all the attached meat or you won't be able to avoid browning the lard to get out most of the fat. This may be an issue for me because I can’t get enough leaf fat to make lard and so use a mixture of whatever pork fats I can get. Polcyn, on the other hand, is a chef and has access to resources that many readers won't. This brings up a related point.

The recipes typically produce five or more pounds of sausage, confit, or whatever. That's a lot for what will, for most people, be an experiment. If you figure a single link of bratwurst is about 1/4 of a pound, then that's enough sausage for 15 to 20 servings. Suppose you screw something up? The recipes are certainly scalable, but I suspect that I'll be scaling all of them down for a 1st batch, and in some cases for all batches.

Though I'm sure I'll find more nits to pick as I continue to explore Charuterie, this is a great book. Eminently readable, clearly knowledgeable, and thorough, it's earned a place, not on my bookshelf so much, as under my coffee table so I'll have it handy as my second Year of Charcuterie begins.

Pork Confit

Technorati: Food | review | Charcuterie | Pancetta | Pork confit | sausage | smoking | food preservation

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Apricot/Sausage Stuffed Pork Roast

Thanksgiving Traumas



"Help! I burned the Turkey Gumbo!"

This call came in around 2:00 PM yesterday (Thanksgiving). When she discovered the problem she poured the unburned gumbo into another pot, but it still had a burned taste. I had to tell the poor caller I didn't know of any way to eliminate the burned taste, but suggested she might be able to distract from it by upping the spice level in the gumbo. Later it occurred to me that adding some smoked sausage might also have helped.

I've spent the past week manning a Thanksgiving help-line for people with cooking questions. The help line was offered as a free promotional service by ChefsLine.com, a startup company offering advice from food-service professionals on an array of kitchen topics including baking, menu planning, wine choices, and adapting recipes. It turned out to be a lot of fun and besides the "gumbo incident" the only other person I couldn't really help was the caller who didn't start defrosting her 20 pound turkey until yesterday morning. (Fortunately, that caller had a ham she could serve instead.) Most of the questions were about roasting times and temperatures and defrosting.

Consequently, it's rather ironic — although, perhaps, fitting — that I screwed up my Thanksgiving dinner. Not seriously, but enough to disappoint.

I'd done all the prep between phone calls on Wednesday and Thursday so that after I took my last call I could finish it off. I made the Shrimp Bisque on Wednesday — all I had to

do yesterday was heat it back up and add the cream. I also made the dessert, Cranberry Mousse, Wednesday.

Thursday I prepped the baby artichokes yesterday morning, and they were read to slide into the oven. In a last minute change, I tossed the root vegetables (potatoes, carrots, and beets) in the last of the smoked duck fat and they were in a pan ready to bake. The pork loin had been brining for 24 hours and yesterday afternoon I made the stuffing and then tied and stuffed the roast. Last, I made the apricot coulis to go on the pork and it just needed a quick zap in the microwave. So far, so good.

Once I was through with the help-line, I heated up the oven and browned the roast in a skillet. Then I inserted the probe of my digital thermometer into the center, put the roast (and veggies) in the oven, and set the thermometer to beep at 130F. I called my sister and my parents to wish them a happy t'day. When I got off the phone the thermometer was reading 120F. Fifteen minutes later it still read 120F. So I doubled-checked using another instant read thermometer — it read 150F. Damn! I'd overcooked the roast.

A couple of weeks ago I'd spilled some stock on the thermometer and it went haywire. But once it dried out it seemed to be working correctly again. Guess not.

All in all, it was a good meal, but not great. The bisque was smooth and creamy and managed to be simultaneously rich and light. The root veggies had a nice hint of smoke from the duck fat. The baby artichokes were tender and delicious. I was pleased with the stuffing for the pork -- it was perfectly seasoned and a nice complement to the meat.

On the down-side, the apricot coulis wasn't a success. It was too acid for the pork. And the pork itself, though wonderfully flavored, was dry and tough. However, the pork is definitely worth doing again and, although it involves quite a few steps, isn't difficult and can be made in advance.

Stuffed Pork Loin Roast

3 lb boneless pork loin — about 12 inches long

Apple Brine
1/2 gal apple cider
1/4 c pickling salt
1/4 c maple syrup
1 tbsp dried sage
1 tsp dried rosemary
1 ea bay leaf

Bring cider to a boil, add remaining ingredients and stir to dissolve salt. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature, then refrigerate until cold.

Put the pork loin in a gallon zip-lock bag, and put that bag in a second one (to prevent leaks). Pour brine into bag containing pork, seal, then seal second bag. Refrigerate for 24 hours.

Stuffing
1/4 c cooked, chopped breakfast sausage
1/4 c coarsely minced onion
8 ea dried apricots, chopped
1 tbsp minced fresh sage
1/4 c bread crumbs
1/2 c chicken broth
salt and pepper to taste

Place chopped apricots and chicken broth in a small sauce pan, bring to a boil, and remove from heat. Allow to cool.

Mix all ingredients, including broth apricots are in, together in a small bowl. The mixture should be moist but not wet. You may need to add a bit more broth.

Cut pork loin in half, crosswise, so that you have to 6 inch pieces. Stack portions together, fat-side out, and tie with twine. Using a carving knife, cut a slit in the center of the paired loins at right angles to the seam — be careful to not cut too deeply. You should now have a plus symbol in the roast when viewed from the end.

Assemble
Heat oven to 375F.

Use your fingers to force stuffing into the slot, then push it in further with a wooden spoon or some similar implement. You'll want to stuff the roast from both ends, so only use half before flipping the roast over. Season roast on all sides with salt and pepper.

Heat a couple of tablespoons of oil in an oven-proof skillet, then brown roast on all sides and both ends. Place on the middle rack of the oven and cook until center reads 135 on an instant-read thermometer.

Allow roast to rest for about 20 minutes before carving.

Update: I added some heavy cream to the apricot coulis the day after Thanksgiving and that moderated the acidity.

Technorati: Food | recipe | pork roast | main dish | thanksgiving

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Chops & Kraut (Choucroute)

The Wheel Turns



Saturday morning I awoke in a dark bedroom. Never bright even on the sunniest days, my bedroom was particularly dim on this morning. I could hear rumbling in the distance and outside my window an irregular, multi-tonal chatter of rain on leaves and air-conditioner cowlings. It was the first day of fall, and it sounded like it.

I checked the clock, snuggled deeper into the sheets, and dozed a bit longer — enjoying that especially comfortable feeling

I'm at the age where food has taken the place of sex in my life. In fact, I've just had a mirror put over my kitchen table. ~ Rodney Dangerfield

of sleeping in on a rainy morning. I got another 10 minutes in before SweetThing, my cat, demanded breakfast.

At this time of year in East Tennessee there are few real indications of the official change in season. The leaves are still 90 percent green (except in the mountains), the weather is still suitable for short sleeves, and the sunlight hasn't yet achieved that orange-gold cast that, in a strange confounding of our senses, almost smells like fall.

But this Saturday (and unseasonbly) it felt like fall and so it was time for my first fall meal.

Fall is my favorite cooking time. I begin to make again those dishes that adhere first to your ribs before migrating to your belly and thighs where they take up long-term residence. Hearty foods, boldly flavored that turn even a rainy Saturday into something to savor in anticipation of the evening's supper.

Traditionally, I mark this change of season (not the official day but the psychic day, the day it first feels like fall) by fixing chops and kraut. I don't recall when I began this tradition, but I've been doing it a long time. And although I call it simply "chops and kraut" it's really a somewhat simplified version of the tradition Alsatian dish of Choucroute. But whatever it's called, it's a great way to celebrate another turn of the season.

Chops & Kraut (Choucroute)
Serves 6.

4 bone-in pork chops
3 ea bratwurst -- cut into 1 1/2" lengths
4 oz salt pork -- trimmed of rind and cut into matchstick-sized pieces
2 lg yellow onions -- cut in half and then into half rings
2 15 oz cans of sauerkraut
1 btl dark beer
1 c beef stock
4 md red potatoes -- cut into eighths
1 tbsp juniper berries -- coarsely chopped
salt and pepper

Heat oven to 350F.

Place salt pork in a non-reactive dutch oven or stew pot over medium low heat and gently render fat until lardons are browned. Remove to a bowl and reserve.
Generously season chops with salt and pepper and brown in batches in rendered fat over medium high heat. Remove chops to a plate as browned.

Brown bratwurst and remove to plate with chops.

Reduce heat to medium-low, add sliced onion, and cook, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned -- 20 - 30 minutes. Sprinkle in 1/2 of crushed juniper berries. Add a 1/3 of the kraut (including juice) and mix with onions. Insert a few potato pieces into the mixture.

Add a couple of chops and kraut and fill in around them with half of the remaining potatoes and half of the bratwurst. Add another 1/3 of the kraut (including juice) and remaining juniper berries. Repeat chop, potato, and sausage layer. Top with remaining kraut and juice.

Add beef stock ad enough beer to not quite cover the top.

Return pot to stove and bring to a vigorous simmer over high heat. Cover tightly, place in preheated oven, and cook for one hour or until chops fall off the bone.

This is essentially a one-dish meal, but as mentioned above, some rye bread for sopping up the broth is highly recommended. Homemade stewed apples are also good as side dish.

Technorati: Food | recipe | main dish | pork | choucroute | alsace

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