Month: October 2016

It’s A Dry Heat

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I’ve done it with two different kinds of meat from two different animals, and I’m telling you that I’m sold.  This is how I will do it from now on.

For years I would prepare large, tough cuts that require a long cooking time in one way only—I’d braise them.  The meat is cooked through, and usually quite tasty.  But there was a lacking dimension I didn’t even realize what was absent.  The missing element was texture.

The Japanese are all about the texture.  They will eat something which tastes so-so just because it is a celebration of an unusual mouth feel.  They even enjoy textures that most Americans might find off-putting, such as sticky, spongy, or slimy.  But slow roasted meat has a whole variety of textures that are nothing but welcome to a dedicated carnivore.

We’ll start with the gorgeous, golden crust.  The fat cap has rendered slowly, leaving it crispy and caramelized.  The rest of the crust has become slightly crispy-edged and golden brown.

When sliced, the meat is falling apart tender and juicy.  When you bite into it, it has a richness that coats your mouth (and probably your chin) in the best possible way.  Braised meats just never really achieve this sensation.

I was in Food Lion the other day and in the meat case was a small, boneless piece of pork butt. So I took it home, planning on braising it in a day or so.  I unwrapped it, and rubbed it with a mixture garlic powder, thyme, salt, pepper, and ground caraway seed.

Then I remembered how good a brisket had been that I had roasted a while back.  A pork shoulder has tons of fat and connective tissue, so I decided to break out my roasting pan, and go for it.

The day of cooking, I started it around 10:00 in the morning, with a goal of eating dinner at 8PM.  I set the oven for 225 degrees.  I heated my large Dutch oven, poured in a couple tablespoons of vegetable oil, and when it was really hot, I seared the meat to golden brown on every side.  Then I placed it on the rack in my roasting pan, poured some water in the bottom to eliminate any smoking.

All the sinew and connective tissue, which make it such misery when undercooked, is what makes the eating of the same meat when well-cooked such joy.

Every serious cook needs one.  This is the type America’s Test Kitchen reccomends.

The melting point for connective tissue is 210 degrees.  And ask any pit master; get there slowly.  Think of it like cooking bacon.  If you put it a very hot skillet, the bacon will burn before the fat has had a chance to render.  So you end up with charcoal-flavored limp and floppy sadness.

I inserted my probe thermometer and popped the roasting pan in the oven.  I checked it every couple hours and watched it slowly turn golden.  It took about 8 hours, but I cooked it really slowly.  If you had a bigger piece you could turn the oven up to 275 without any real detriment to flavor and texture.When the breathtaking pork came out of the oven, the liquid in the bottom of the pan had cooked off, so I poured in 1 ½ cups of water and used a silicone spatula to get all the bits off the pan.  This made clean-up a breeze.

But it got better.  I poured the resulting liquid into a jar and stuck it in the fridge.  When it got cold, a miraculous transformation took place.  The fat rose to the top and solidified.  This got discarded.

When all that melted connective tissue was chilled it thickened a bit.  What was left in the jar was basically roasted pork jelly.  While it wouldn’t be my first choice for a PBJ, this intensely flavored piggy jam is pretty much straight umami, that fifth taste discovered by the Japanese.  It’s savory-ness, the taste that makes you want to go back for another bite.The pork jelly (or demi glace, its technical name) is so potent it should only be used in small doses, and under close supervision.  With a bucket of this stuff you could take over the world.

Thanks for your time.

Strata Symbol

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Since Halloween is coming I thought I’d give you, gentle reader, a voyage through one of the most spine-tingling, terrifying places that I know.

My mind.

I developed this week’s recipe well before I could cook, but it’s one we still all enjoy.

It’s a savory Mexican torte.  But that’s not how it began life.  And the mental journey on which I’m taking you is how and why I made changes, from the discovery of the original incarnation’s recipe to dinner last night, when we ate slices leftover from the torte I made a few days ago.

Even before I had any cooking skills, I was fascinated by cookbooks.  They were books about food—with pictures.  I might not have been much of a cook, but I’ve always been a champ at eating.I especially loved going to garage sales and the library sale to snag those little cookbook magazines from the checkout line at the supermarket.  The older the issue better, with a special interest in the Pillsbury Bake-Off editions.

In one from the 70s, was a Mexican pie built in a pie crust and layered with hamburger, sliced tomatoes, lots of cheese and sour cream.  I decided to make it.

It was tasty, but it was also so full of fat that after a few bites one felt the need to go for a run, followed by a few hours of calisthenics.  I needed to lighten it up.To make for a dramatic, attractive presentation, I make it in a spring form pan.  I layer it with flour tortillas which I dredge in a sauce.  Between the tortillas I’d put a couple different Mexican ingredients.

For the sauce, I mixed a mild green salsa, some chicken stock, and sour cream.  I put it in a pie tin and coated both sides of the tortillas before I laid them in the spring form.

I took the topping from the original recipe but lightened it.  After the torte had cooked (covered in a parchment round and foil) at 350 to an internal temp of 165, I uncovered it, spread 2 tablespoons of low-fat sour cream on top, and sprinkled ½ cup or so of cheddar.  I then put it under the low broiler until browned.mexi-torta-1After experimenting, I settled on filling.  The center layer was 2 cups shredded rotisserie chicken mixed with ½ cup of store-bought queso, like what you eat with chips.  The layers above and below the meat would be my deluxe homemade cantina-style rice.

Super Lucky Happy Fun-time Mexican Rice

cantina-rice

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

½ yellow onion, chopped

1 ½ cups Jasmine rice rinsed under water until water runs clear, then drained

2-4 ounce cans chopped green chiles, undrained

1-10.75 ounce can low-sodium tomato soup

2 teaspoons cumin

2 teaspoons dry thyme

2 teaspoons Goya adobo powder

2 packets Goya Sazon with achiote

½ cup white wine

2 ½ cups chicken stock

1 cup frozen shoepeg corn

Heat oil in large, heavy pot with lid.  Sautee onions until they start to caramelize. Add the next seven ingredients and cook, stirring frequently until the rice is very lightly toasted.

Add wine and let cook out.  Pour in chicken stock and corn.  When it comes to a boil, lower to medium-low and cover.

Cook, covered, approx. 17 minutes or until liquid has just cooked in.  Take off heat, leave covered, for 15 minutes or so.  Serve, or use as layers in torte.

I hope this trip through my thoughts hasn’t been too traumatizing. I have one last thing to say.Boo!

Thanks for your time.

Portrait of a pig

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It wasn’t the name he was christened with, but Pig is how everybody in town knew him.  It was a versatile moniker not unlike Beaver’s name on Leave It To Beaver.  It was his name, “Hey Pig! How’s it going?” and when preceded by an article, it was a description, as in, “Anybody seen the Pig?”

He wasn’t a member of the porcine species, but a giant man-child, with a chest that would make any barrel jealous, and hands the size of hubcaps.

I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know him—for various reasons, everybody in Elizabeth City knew him.  But once I started dating Petey; his best friend, I got to know him very well indeed.

Sometimes maybe a little too well.  It seemed like every time we tried to sneak off for a little privacy, that boy would find us.  Listening for sweet talk in my ears, they would instead be assaulted with “Hooty-Hoot!”, Pig’s very own aloha.  This was the early 80’s but it was like we were both fitted with GPS trackers.  We would go to the mall or deep into the woods, it didn’t matter—The Pig would eventually show up.

This is kinda what it felt like.

With the conviction of medieval Crusaders, Petey and I made a solemn vow to get our Velcro-like friend a woman.  But of course when Pig found his own mate, we didn’t think she was good enough for our colossal buddy.

Maybe it was because his first choice was already taken.  Once he sat at my mother’s table and ate her spaghetti and meatballs, he was a goner.  As a member of the National Guard, he’d eaten his way through Italy, but still insisted that my mom’s was the best he’d ever had.

And she had a soft spot for him.  Each December Mom has a luncheon to frost the hundreds of cookies she bakes for the holidays.  The rule was, if you break it, you eat it.  Which sounds awesome until a second cookie is broken at your hand, and a laser-beam like Mom-eye is turned in your direction, and you spontaneously combust, leaving behind nothing but a pile of smoldering ash.

She did warn us…

All except Pig.  His first year he broke every cookie he touched.  Holding our breath, us veterans watched, waiting for the cyclone of pain coming his way.  Except, it never came.  In a response that was never repeated for another soul, Mom smiled benignly and let the cookie plunder continue unabated.

The next year she made him his personal batch.  He inhaled them all.  But not before uttering a pro forma “Oops” each time.  This was Pig’s nod to the cookie interpretive dance he and my mother were performing.

His heart was as big as the rest of him.  When we moved across town, Petey and the Pig volunteered to help.  Early in the day, his eyes lit up while packing one of the bathrooms he spied a Hershey-colored fuzzy toilet seat cover.  He slapped it on his head and wore it for the rest of the day.  He looked like a French cave man sporting a beret made from the fur of a wooly mammoth.

I swear, this is what he looked like (minus the bones, and fur dress).

My brother still talks about that day.

We’d lost touch with the Pig for some time, then one day a couple of years ago we heard a motorcycle pull up, and then our doorbell rang.  I opened the door and was confronted with an enormous bald man.  I was perplexed, and not a little frightened.  Then he opened his mouth.

And said, “Hooty-Hoot!”

Thanks for your time.