Try a little tenderness…pork roast with vinegar & bay leaves
Otis Redding was 26 when he died on December 10, 1967. He was on his way to Madison with his band the Bar-Kays when his small plane crashed into the cold water of Lake Monona. Otis and 6 others died in the crash. It’s merely a sick twist of fate that his opening act for that show was suppoed to be a group called The Grim Reapers. I drive by that lake every day and I often think of Otis, his incredible talent, and the great music he left behind. He’s best known for his song Dock of the Bay, but you might not know that he wrote Respect. Aretha did a good job with it but when Otis sings Respect, he owns it. My favorite Otis songs are the soulful and romantic Try a Little Tenderness and I’ve Been Loving You.
I promised to follow a recipe once a week this year and I’m trying to stick to it. I gotta tell you, it’s killing me. For one thing there is absolutely no standard when it comes to meat cuts. One butcher might call a pork shoulder roast a pork butt, or maybe a boston butt, or maybe just a pork roast…there is absolutely no standardization. I dug around in my freezer for a pork shoulder roast and all I could turn up was a “pork roast”. It didn’t have the shape of a shoulder roast and it didn’t have the shape of a loin…it was sort of in between. I decided, after much debate with GH, that I would just treat it like a shoulder roast.
I knew I was going to turn to Marcella Hazan’s Essential’s of Classic Italian Cooking for the recipe since it came highly recommended by my friend Lisa. I checked the index for pork recipes and decided to go with roast pork with vinegar and bay leaves. I had all the ingredients including my own homemade red wine vinegar. It’s from a vinegar mother that I got about 15 years ago from my friend Francesca. I’m sure she’s had it for years…who knows how long its actually been around. Every once in awhile I top it off with wine and white vinegar and let it steep…it’s a tasty .
The contrast of the acidy vinegar and the bite of the bay leaves and pepper with the rich pork was seriously perfect. But I must confess that I didn’t enjoy following the recipe, actually I found it to be an enormous pain in the ass, even though it was super simple and it turned out exquisite. However, it did free my brain up to be creative elsewhere. I made a rosemary foccacia and garlic green beans to go with this lovely porky pile of meat. It was a great meal, especially for a Tuesday. The dessert I made was a total improve riff, you can see and read about at Accidental Hedonist…check it out because it was fabulous, quick, and easy.
Marcella Hazan’s Roast Pork with Vinegar and Bay Leaves
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2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 pounds pork roast
salt
1 teaspoon whole peppercorns
3 bay leaves
½ cup good red wine vinegar
Choose a heavy pot that the roast will fit in snugly. Put it on a burner over medium heat and add the butter and vegetable oil. Melt the butter but don’t allow it to brown. Once it foams add the meat and brown well on all sides, turning it to get good browning everywhere. Turn the burner down to medium low and salt the meat. Crush the peppercorns with a meat mallet and add them, the bay leaves and the vinegar. Loosen any crusty bits from the bottom of the pot, bring the liquid up to a simmer and then cover the pot tightly and let it simmer for 2 to 3 hours. Occasionally lift the lid and prod the meat with a fork to check the tenderness and to turn the meat. Put the lid back on the pot.
When the roast is tender remove it from the pan, keep it warm, and let it rest. Take the juices left in the pan and skim the excess fat from the top. Add ½ cup of water, loosen all the crusty bits with a spoon and turn up the heat and reduce the liquid. Slice the meat and serve it with the reduced pan juice.
Enjoy some Otis…
Obama dumplings
Last year, around this time, I attempted to make soup dumplings…I’ve since dubbed them my “George Bush dumplings” because they were such a miserable failure. I was craving the porky/gingery delight so I figured I might as well try again. Since I’ve decided to follow recipes and I checked Barbara Tropp’s book, The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking out from the library. It’s a great book and I’m delighted I have it for four weeks…I can already bet I’ll put it on my list of books to buy. I read through the dumpling chapter and quickly saw how to make a good dumpling wrapper. It’s amazing how going with the facts can be so beneficial.
Because of the rousing success of these dumplings I’ve decided to call them the Obama dumplings…they’re already better than the last ones and even though there’s room for improvement it’s obvious that it’s a change for the better.
Shu Mai Dumplings aka Obama Dumplings
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Dumpling Wrapper
3 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
2 large eggs
9 tablespoons water
cornstarch for dusting the dough as you roll them out
Put the flour and salt in the work bowl of a food processor. Buzz it around a couple of times and then add the eggs with the motor running. Pulse two or three times. With the motor running add the water slowly, pulsing and adding water until the dough forms a ball and moves around the bowl. Remove the dough from the bowl and divide it into 4 equal pieces. Let them rest for 10 minutes.
Press the dough segments out flat and feed them through a pasta machine, working through the numbers, dialing it thinner each pass through. I went to number 6 which is where I could see the shadow of my hand behind the dumpling sheet. Keep them covered until you’re ready to fill them.
Dumpling Filling
1 pound ground pork
2 inches of fresh ginger
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon rice wine
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons chinese sesame oil
black pepper
Put all of the ingredients in the bowl of food processor and pulse two or three times. Remove from the bowl and refrigerate until ready to fill the dumplings.
To fill the dumplings I used a 1 tablespoon scoop and instead of cutting the dumplings into circles I just used squares. Once filled, I drew the edges up with my fingers and cinched them with a pinch. I steamed them in a bamboo steamer over simmering water for 25 minutes. Serve them with a dipping sauce of soy sauce, sesame oil, chili oil, and rice wine vinegar.
GH and I came up with these this morning: a Hillary dumpling looks good but tastes like all the other store-bought dumplings. A Giuliani dumpling is filled with hot air. A Edwards dumpling is absolutely beautiful but falls apart in the steamer. A McCain dumpling is beefy yet has an odd texture/flavor, it’s served with a difficult vietnamese-flavored sauce. A Romney dumpling is shaped like the mormon underwear, served with a secret sauce and is really difficult to swallow. A Huckabee dumpling is lowfat but ultimately makes you nauseated and uncomfortable.
Pork is the word
Peter Kaminsky, “Pig Perfect”
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, “The River Cottage Meat Book”
Stéphane Reynaud, “Pork & Sons”
Fergus Henderson, “The Whole Beast”
Today I begin my stint as the guest writer at Accidental Hedonist. Head over there to see what I’ve cooked up. In the meantime, these are my all time favorite books about pork. They are all engaging, well written, and total advocates for buying local, humanely-raised meat. Also check out what Bill Buford says about The River Cottage Meat Book and Pork and Sons in this article from a December New Yorker. I love this review because I think Buford is an excellent writer himself, plus he absolutely captures the dilemma of reading any of these books…the wanton pork lust that forces you to put down the book, get out the pork, and start cooking.
“There’s nothing like a pork belly to steady the nerves.”
-Fergus Henderson
Here’s a printer-friendly version of the recipe I posted at Accidental Hedonist.
