Braised Pork Shoulder

Braising—which means long, slow cooking with liquid—is one of the oldest, simplest, and most delicious ways of cooking. There are a lot of cheap, sinewy cuts of meat that are flattered by spending a few hours in soft, warm bubbling liquid. They become so tender they melt. Braising is everywhere. It's how mom cooked her pot roast, how chili is made, and it's the technique behind the brussel sprout recipe I shared.

The basic technique for braising has two steps.
1) Season and brown
2) Cook in liquid

There are a million variations on that theme, but the gist is always the same. Here's a simple way to apply the recipe to pork shoulder, something I really like.

Get yourself two pounds of pork shoulder which will serve 4-6 or leave two people with lots of tasty leftovers. Season it with salt and pepper by sprinkling and rubbing them in with your hands. Be generous. Brown under the broiler until the surface is just short of charred, turning to make sure it's cooked on all sides.

Put it in a good soup pot with water and perhaps some unsalted broth (chicken or beef) and white wine. The water should surround but not cover the meat, an inch or more should be showing. Add some bay leaves or thyme if you'd like.

Bring the liquid to a boil then turn it down quickly. Set the heat to a temperature where the surface of the liquid barely moves. Cover and let cook for a few hours. Hell, you could probably let it cook for a few days if you wanted. It'll just get better. The meat will fall apart when plucked with a fork.

If you need to eat right away dig in. It's good to go. But if you cooked it ahead of time, braised meats get really spectacular when you take a couple extra steps. Take the meat out of the liquid and let them both cool in the refrigerator. For the liquid: skim the hard fat that surfaces, reheat the meat in it, then reduce and strain for sauce. Slice the shoulder in thick slices, drizzle the sauce on top and give 'em a grind or two of Tellicherry pepper. Serve with a bit of strong mustard on the side, like Dijon.

Pasta Cooking Details

Harold McGee wrote a good article on cooking pasta with different amounts of water in today's New York Times.

It reminded me of a few details I've learned about cooking pasta over the years. Each one is a small thing but, added up, I think they make a big difference in the way it tastes.

Salt. I salt the water pretty heavily as soon as I put the water on. "Salty like the sea," says Signora Passalacqua, the mother of my Sicilian friend Gioacchino. (He's the export help we use for many foods we carry, like the Sicilian sun dried tomatoes, which as it turns out, go great in pasta.) Salty water gives the pasta a base of flavor you just can't get salting afterwards. I use the French grey sea salt. Dollar per pound, it's still the best sea salt I've ever tasted.

Stir soon. As soon as I add the pasta to the water I stir. This is the best way I've found to keep it from clumping and sticking.

Stop short. I cut the cooking short of done, when it's still very al dente, i.e. it has a bit of snap to it.

There and back again. I drain the water, shake the pasta once or twice then quickly return it to a warm pot, mixing it with the sauce. The extra bit of cooking with the sauce softens it further and, instead of absorbing water, the pasta absorbs sauce, making it even more flavorful.

Warm bowls. I drain the hot pasta water into the bowls and toss it out just before serving.

I don't add oil to the water, run water on it after it's cooked or throw a piece against the wall,to see if it's done, which are weird tricks I've tried once or twice in my day. In my experience, most of those things don't do much to help the cooking. Some even hurt.

One of my favorite pasta dishes for two is half a bag of Rustichella's fettucine with half a jar of Il Mongetto's plain tomato sauce mixed with a full tin of good tuna in olive oil, (Ortiz is a treat). I eat it almost every week!

What do you like?

Bacon Wrapped Hot Dogs, Part I

The whole operation. More photos.

I first tasted bacon wrapped hot dogs in Mexico. Brad introduced me to them. We ate them as appetizers before going to dinner, which is an act of gustatory hubris I don’t entirely recommend. They’re a street food in the Baja peninsula, sold from hot dog stands. I thought they were particular to that area until I tried them a second time, this time in Sayulita, Mexico, a small town about an hour north of Puerto Vallarta. There were two stands on the main town square dueling it out within eye shot of each other. Both charged ten pesos, about a buck.

In Sayulita the bacon is sliced paper thin and wrapped all around the hot dog like the candy stripe on a barber’s pole. They’re grilled and held warm until you order. The bun isn’t toasted, but they will ask you if you’d like it slathered with mayo, port and starboard inside the bun, and whether you’re up for any chopped raw tomatoes and grilled onions. The rest of the toppings are up to you. If you want to do it Sayulita style you can add mustard, ketchup, sour cream, pineapple, mango and relish.

If you like bacon and hot dogs separately, you might just lose your cookies when you eat one of these. They're easy to make at home. Just make sure to get the bacon sliced really thin. If it doesn’t hold to the dog you can pin it on with tooth picks.

Picking Citrus with Robert Lambert

From Robert Lambert

A week ago today I visited two of the farms where Robert Lambert gets his rare citrus. We picked rangpurs for our Rangpur Lime Syrup, yuzu fruit for a syrup he's making for us this summer and lots of other interesting things, some of which didn't have names. I'm working on a longer piece about the trip. In the meantime, here are some photos and an excerpt.

...We walk around Gene Lester's grove and eat. The experience is extraordinary. Let me try to describe it for you. Gene talks about the tree’s health while Robert plucks off a piece, usually stooping because the tree is short. Each is a different color, size and shape. There are dark green finger limes as tiny as a toe. Giant sun-yellow celebes pepada, as big as a bowling ball. Gnarled Buddha’s Hand, whose tendrils look like a Thai dancer’s hands with outsized finger nails (he's holding two, above). Robert lines up his fingers into an open fist and scratches the peel with his nails. He smells and passes it to me. The aromas are outrageous. There are sunny bright citrus notes, of course, but much more. Dark smells, that I wasn’t expecting. Depending on the fruit there is clove, nutmeg, cedar, leather, bay, white pepper. The aromas are lingering, intense and are not tiring or cloying. Nothing like storebought citrus.

Robert slices into the fruit with a long, thin serrated pocket knife, common among citrus farmers. If it’s a small fruit, he hands me half. If it’s big, just a wedge. Gene only tastes a few, from trees he especially likes. I sniff the flesh of the fruit – usually not a strong smell – and, on faith, plunge the piece into my mouth, not knowing what to expect. Some fruits are gentle, like the Fairchild mandarin. It is as sweet and luscious as any fruit I’ve had, a texture more like a raspberry than an orange. Many are a shock to the system, the kind of experience you get when you guzzle orange soda thinking it’s orange juice. Rangpur limes have sour flavors that make my cheeks convulse. Other have spicy flavors, like chutney. Some finish like petrol, some like honey. We finish sucking on the fruit, throw the peel on the ground, go to the next tree. We did this a hundred times. No scurvy for me in '09!

Portuguese Salt

There's an article in the New York Times about the Flor de Sal and Traditional Salt we carry — an interesting tale of a failure turned success.

If you want to read more, there's an older, more in depth article written by Corby Kummer in The Atlantic.

Christmas Story

The customer got a catalog. They were a regular, going on five years. Ordered every holiday. They called the service star. The service star was a veteran and knew them well. Had spoken to them many, many times.

Bad news. The customer wouldn't be placing an order for themselves this year. Just a couple gifts. Nothing wrong with the company. It was something else. The neighbors, a one income family, lost their one income. The job was gone. The customer was spending a portion of their holiday money on helping the neighbors. Food, mortgage payment, the works. Not enough left for the annual box from the company.

The phone call ended. The service star looked up the customer's order history. Entered a new order. Sent it out, no charge.

--- --- ---

Thanks for all the many small acts of kindness that are happening, have happened, and will happen soon. I thought I'd just share one as this season begins to wind down. It reminded me yet again why this is such a wonderful place.

We're off!

Thanksgiving week always marks the unofficial start of the holiday season in my mind. I know we’ve all been working on various parts of the holiday. For weeks, for months. The catalogs have arrived in mailboxes. The service stars have been trained; they’re answering calls left and right. But the Monday before Thanksgiving, that’s the day that we have a huge rush of orders and a bunch of new people here to pack them. It’s the first day with an 8pm UPS deadline that’s always a little tough to reach. (Some years it’s been much tougher than others, that’s for sure. There were days when a hundred orders would put us in a spasm.)

After that week ends, right around now, I begin to remember the emotional rhythms of the holiday. The anxiety of hiring — it’s like throwing a party, will anyone come and if not what does that say about me? The training shifts — who’s late? who are you? The sales that never seem to come when you expect them. The food we run out of and the food we have too much of. The last box on the truck, please just one more! The guy who calls who swears Mo always gives him this discount and can he talk to Mo now? All the dread and elation that small business in America offers, and a lot of laughing. I swear I laugh more in December than any time of the year.

As the rhythm comes over the next few weeks and I have a moment to write about it, I will. For now, if you’re new to it, my advice is don’t fight the wave too much. Surf where it goes. There will be stress. There will be some kooky people. Just ride it and laugh as much as you can. After all, in the end, it’s just food. Glorious, delicious, amazing handmade food, yes, but food all the same.