Listen: Boats in the lake and children laughing
Drink: Ice water, ice water, beer, ice water, ice water, gin and tonic
Last night, we got our elbows juicy during our annual chopped pork sandwich feast. In our family, this is the culinary equivalent to the Super Bowl. Pork butts are discussed and selected weeks ahead. We got ours this year from The Good Shepherd Farm near Wausau, and she was a beauty. I estimate she was about 10 lbs, bone-in, with a nice marbling of fat throughout.
The day before smoking day, assemble your rub. I use paprika (not smoked) as a base and generally add chili powder, dry mustard, sugar, salt, white pepper, chipotle or cayenne powder, cumin, powdered onion or garlic, and ground sage. Pull out your pork, rinse under cold water, and pat dry. Examine carefully for blood cuts or bruises, and excise these if you see them. I also take off (per Mike Mills) any hard fat that won't render down during the smoke. A good pork butt should have plenty of fat marbled through the meat, so you don't need a great deal of fat on top of the meat. Sprinkle the pork butt all over with the rub, but for heaven's sake, don't rub the meat with the rub lest you clog the pores of the meat and prevent the smoke from penetrating. Right before you go to bed, toss chunks of hickory and apple wood into a large bucket of water to soak overnight. You can use chips if you can't find chunks, but the chips are too fussy and require too much tending in my book. You can usually find the chunks in any good hardware store.
It's also helpful before game day to make sure your grill is nice and clean. Shovel out all accumulated charcoal dust from the bottom, and empty the ash pan.
On game day, you have to get up early. A big butt will take 10-12 hours (if not more) to smoke low and slow. I can never get the meat on before 8, and the children can't wait much past 7 to eat, which is why I slice and chop the pork rather than pull it. Also, the Hy's barbecue sandwich from my youth was always chopped, so chopped feels more like the real deal to me.
Back to game day -- pull the butt out of the refrigerator while you are preparing the coals. I use an extra large chimney starter to get the coals (lump hardwood only, please) started. My father-in-law has an extra large Weber with gadgets built in to keep the charcoal to the side. If you don't have those fancy charcoal holders (you can buy them as well), just shove the hot coals to one side so that you have enough room for a large rectangular pan full of water on the other half of the bottom grill. Add hot coals and wet hickory and apple chunks over the coals. Place the meat fat side down on the top grill, positioned over the pan of water. Put the top on the grill and start playing with the top and bottom vents until you get the temperature to about 250 degrees. It will start off hot and level off. The bottom vent is your real control over the fire -- the top to a lesser extent. It usually takes my grill about 30 minutes to get down to temperature.
Smoke at around 250 degrees for about 10-12 hours. After the first hour, flip the meat over so that the fat flap is on the top. Occasionally, you may need to flip the meat but try to keep the fat side up more often than not. I have an auxiliary mini-Weber plus mini chimney starter in which I keep live coals going at all times. Ensure that the temp stays at 250 degrees to 300 degrees, and that smoke is always coming out of the top vent. After the meat starts to brown on the outside, spritz with apple juice or white wine each time you fuss with the meat.
After the meat is how you like it (180 degrees or so if you want to pull the bone clean out of the pork), wrap in foil for half hour to let steam while you get the rest of your fixings together. After about a half hour of steaming, unwrap the meat and slice and chop, or pull, the pork. Spoon the meat onto a white trash hamburger bun (no whole wheat or gourmet buns need apply), and top with slaw and dill pickle slices. Pass the sauces separately, on the side, and pile in extra napkins. We find that we have no appetite for sides except for sliced tomatoes, and Nana's rhubarb pie.
If you need sauces, look at Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, & Honest Fried Chicken for the South Carolina style marinade. Or, you can try the sauce we enjoyed this summer: saute half a minced onion in 3 tbsp. melted butter; add a half bottle of Heinz organic ketchup; add half cup or so white vinegar; half cup or so brown sugar; quarter cup Jack Daniels bourbon; 2 tbsp. molasses; pinch cayenne powder, salt, and white pepper.
Enjoy!
Monday, July 26, 2010
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Grilled Stone Fruit Salad
Grilling stone fruit for a salad is a revelation, and an absolute godsend if you have any under-ripe fruit. Tonight, to go with Grandpa's traditional Sunday night hamburgers, we added firm peach halves to the vegetable tray on the grill -- alongside the onions.
Grilled stone fruit salad:
any stone fruit (peaches, nectarines, plums etc. -- i.e., any fruit with a pit)
any fresh greens you have on hand
grill the pitted, halved stone fruit until soft and browned
toss the greens in vinaigrette (a red wine vinaigrette with a dash of balsamic vinegar is nice here)
any blue cheese but preferably an aged one, such as a true Roquefort or a Reblochon
toasted nuts (hazelnuts or pecans are particularly good)
Toss with cheese and nuts, and serve. Guaranteed to dress up any hamburger.
Grilled stone fruit salad:
any stone fruit (peaches, nectarines, plums etc. -- i.e., any fruit with a pit)
any fresh greens you have on hand
grill the pitted, halved stone fruit until soft and browned
toss the greens in vinaigrette (a red wine vinaigrette with a dash of balsamic vinegar is nice here)
any blue cheese but preferably an aged one, such as a true Roquefort or a Reblochon
toasted nuts (hazelnuts or pecans are particularly good)
Toss with cheese and nuts, and serve. Guaranteed to dress up any hamburger.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Easy Sides
Sorry I have been shirking my duties here, but we have just completed our yearly pilgrimage to the family lake house in the northern woods of Wisconsin. And we didn't let little things like tornadoes and lightning storms get in our way. After enduring a three-hour layover in the Minneapolis airport (without the benefit of the little playground in C terminal -- closed for repairs!), as well as a two-hour delay to wait out the weather, we finally gave up and rented a car. We got here eventually, driving mostly along the country routes described so well in Jean Shepherd's Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss.
At the lake house, we usually find ourselves building meals around the grill. We smoke turkeys, ribs, and pork butts. We grill chicken, brats, beef and pork loins, and hamburgers. And we also find ourselves searching for easy side dishes that don't involve a lot of time in the hot kitchen.
Sliced tomatoes and fresh sweet corn are, of course, the most generous sides -- giving so much flavor for so liitte effort. The tomatoes require only a sprinkling of sea salt to render them delicious. If you can find fresh mozzarella and some basil, then you've got the makings for a caprese salad. Just layer, and drizzle with very fresh, high-quality olive oil. I avoid the basil buds and tear the basil rather than chop it with a knife. The steel of the knife does seem to turn the basil dark along the cut.
As for corn, I have grilled it on occasion but find that it deters from the texture if the corn is really fresh. With fresh corn, I simply steam/boil the trimmed ears in a couple of inches of salted water. It's okay to stack the ears up in the pan but you must put a lid on the pan or the top ears won't steam. To keep the corn sweet after you buy, immediately wrap the ears in a paper bag and wet the bag thoroughly. Stick the dripping wet bag of corn in a tall kitchen bag and stash in the refrigerator until ready to cook. This treatment will help prevent the sugar in the corn from converting to starch. Buy heavy ears with good-looking tassels, but don't be one of those people who pull down the silk to check the tops. It leaves the violated ear looking spoiled and unappetizing. (I always buy one extra ear to be safe, though.) And don't be alarmed if you find a worm. As the country lady who sold Silver Queen corn in the Tennessee summers of my childhood told me, "Honey, if the worms don't like it, you won't either."
If you've left the corn too long, or you accidentally buy starchy corn, you can mitigate the damage by slicing the corn off the cob and gently sauteing in unsalted butter with a pinch of salt and a couple of pinches of white sugar. In the same vein, if the tomatoes are not all that they ought to be, I recommend a slow roast in the oven with a little olive oil and salt. You could even swap the olive oil for butter and add a pinch of sugar to the tomatoes if you wanted to caramelize them. Sweet roasted tomatoes are particularly delicious with grilled country bread lightly brushed with olive oil.
Enjoy.
At the lake house, we usually find ourselves building meals around the grill. We smoke turkeys, ribs, and pork butts. We grill chicken, brats, beef and pork loins, and hamburgers. And we also find ourselves searching for easy side dishes that don't involve a lot of time in the hot kitchen.
Sliced tomatoes and fresh sweet corn are, of course, the most generous sides -- giving so much flavor for so liitte effort. The tomatoes require only a sprinkling of sea salt to render them delicious. If you can find fresh mozzarella and some basil, then you've got the makings for a caprese salad. Just layer, and drizzle with very fresh, high-quality olive oil. I avoid the basil buds and tear the basil rather than chop it with a knife. The steel of the knife does seem to turn the basil dark along the cut.
As for corn, I have grilled it on occasion but find that it deters from the texture if the corn is really fresh. With fresh corn, I simply steam/boil the trimmed ears in a couple of inches of salted water. It's okay to stack the ears up in the pan but you must put a lid on the pan or the top ears won't steam. To keep the corn sweet after you buy, immediately wrap the ears in a paper bag and wet the bag thoroughly. Stick the dripping wet bag of corn in a tall kitchen bag and stash in the refrigerator until ready to cook. This treatment will help prevent the sugar in the corn from converting to starch. Buy heavy ears with good-looking tassels, but don't be one of those people who pull down the silk to check the tops. It leaves the violated ear looking spoiled and unappetizing. (I always buy one extra ear to be safe, though.) And don't be alarmed if you find a worm. As the country lady who sold Silver Queen corn in the Tennessee summers of my childhood told me, "Honey, if the worms don't like it, you won't either."
If you've left the corn too long, or you accidentally buy starchy corn, you can mitigate the damage by slicing the corn off the cob and gently sauteing in unsalted butter with a pinch of salt and a couple of pinches of white sugar. In the same vein, if the tomatoes are not all that they ought to be, I recommend a slow roast in the oven with a little olive oil and salt. You could even swap the olive oil for butter and add a pinch of sugar to the tomatoes if you wanted to caramelize them. Sweet roasted tomatoes are particularly delicious with grilled country bread lightly brushed with olive oil.
Enjoy.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
The Living Is Easy
Listen: Verve Remixed, 2, "Black Is The Color Of My True Love's Hair"
Sip: Bombay Dry Gin, Healthy splash of Q Tonic, 1 wedge lime squeezed
When the weather's warm, there's only one dish I ever feel like hanging out over a hot oven for, and that's fried chicken. Now, there's serious fried chicken where you break down whole chickens and soak the pieces overnight in buttermilk and tabasco, and then dredge in seasoned flour and fry in lard. That's an effort, though worth its weight in gold. Don't forget to add a slice of Benton's country ham to the pan while frying.
In the summer, though, I just get lazy. My children won't eat the dark pieces, and Spouse complains that she is forced to wolf down practically the whole chicken because those children don't appreciate me, damn it, but do her jeans look any tighter from the back? So, there are times when even the most impassioned and committed of cooks, which I am god knows, even though I am occasionally misguided, resort to the boneless, skinless chicken breast and bread crumbs. So, here's a good trick from which you can derive two meals: homemade chicken fingers for the children and fried chicken salad for the grown-ups.
For the chicken fingers:
4 boneless, skinless half breasts -- best quality, but be warned that the finest producers aren't selling just the breasts
about 2 cups bread crumbs (preferably homemade from your larder but store-bought panko will do)
2-3 eggs, beaten
salt and pepper,
peanut or canola oil
Trim excess fat and silver skin off the breasts, excise the tendon on the tender, and cut away tender
Cut into rough strips, salt and pepper
Dip chicken (including tenders) into eggs, then roll in bread crumbs, pressing the crumbs into the chicken
Fry in about 1/4 inch hot oil over medium-high heat until cooked through
Serve hot to children with honey mustard sauce and lots of vegetables
(Please do not go out and buy honey mustard for this occasion if you already have both mustard and honey in your larder. Just mix them together until they taste good. If you only have some funky green scallion garlic mustard type thing, however, you're in for a trip to the store. Dijon or regular stone ground mustard is called for here.)
For the adults, buy or pick the freshest most tender lettuce available. Get the best tangy blue cheese you can (Maytag Blue, Point Reyes Blue, and Amish Blue are all good choices), You don't really want an aged blue here. Look for whatever produce seems best. French radishes are delicious, and crisp green beans also would be good. Chives are essential. If you think about it ahead of time, soak some red onion slices in salted cold water the night before. Soaking removes the harsh flavor and sweetens the reds up.
Make a simple vinaigrette (red wine vinegar, dijon, best quality olive oil (I love anything Katz -- same for the vinegar), Maldon sea salt, freshly ground white pepper). Toss the lettuce well with vinaigrette and vegetables. Warm the chicken strips. Crumble in the blue cheese and toss again. Plate the salad and arrange the warm chicken fingers on top. You can gently toss the strips into the plated salad by hand, but be careful you don't lose the breading.
After your gin and tonic, you may want to switch to a glass of cold white wine -- an un-oaked chardonnay, such as a Macon Villages, is very good with the salad.
Sip: Bombay Dry Gin, Healthy splash of Q Tonic, 1 wedge lime squeezed
When the weather's warm, there's only one dish I ever feel like hanging out over a hot oven for, and that's fried chicken. Now, there's serious fried chicken where you break down whole chickens and soak the pieces overnight in buttermilk and tabasco, and then dredge in seasoned flour and fry in lard. That's an effort, though worth its weight in gold. Don't forget to add a slice of Benton's country ham to the pan while frying.
In the summer, though, I just get lazy. My children won't eat the dark pieces, and Spouse complains that she is forced to wolf down practically the whole chicken because those children don't appreciate me, damn it, but do her jeans look any tighter from the back? So, there are times when even the most impassioned and committed of cooks, which I am god knows, even though I am occasionally misguided, resort to the boneless, skinless chicken breast and bread crumbs. So, here's a good trick from which you can derive two meals: homemade chicken fingers for the children and fried chicken salad for the grown-ups.
For the chicken fingers:
4 boneless, skinless half breasts -- best quality, but be warned that the finest producers aren't selling just the breasts
about 2 cups bread crumbs (preferably homemade from your larder but store-bought panko will do)
2-3 eggs, beaten
salt and pepper,
peanut or canola oil
Trim excess fat and silver skin off the breasts, excise the tendon on the tender, and cut away tender
Cut into rough strips, salt and pepper
Dip chicken (including tenders) into eggs, then roll in bread crumbs, pressing the crumbs into the chicken
Fry in about 1/4 inch hot oil over medium-high heat until cooked through
Serve hot to children with honey mustard sauce and lots of vegetables
(Please do not go out and buy honey mustard for this occasion if you already have both mustard and honey in your larder. Just mix them together until they taste good. If you only have some funky green scallion garlic mustard type thing, however, you're in for a trip to the store. Dijon or regular stone ground mustard is called for here.)
For the adults, buy or pick the freshest most tender lettuce available. Get the best tangy blue cheese you can (Maytag Blue, Point Reyes Blue, and Amish Blue are all good choices), You don't really want an aged blue here. Look for whatever produce seems best. French radishes are delicious, and crisp green beans also would be good. Chives are essential. If you think about it ahead of time, soak some red onion slices in salted cold water the night before. Soaking removes the harsh flavor and sweetens the reds up.
Make a simple vinaigrette (red wine vinegar, dijon, best quality olive oil (I love anything Katz -- same for the vinegar), Maldon sea salt, freshly ground white pepper). Toss the lettuce well with vinaigrette and vegetables. Warm the chicken strips. Crumble in the blue cheese and toss again. Plate the salad and arrange the warm chicken fingers on top. You can gently toss the strips into the plated salad by hand, but be careful you don't lose the breading.
After your gin and tonic, you may want to switch to a glass of cold white wine -- an un-oaked chardonnay, such as a Macon Villages, is very good with the salad.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Cookbook Love
What's the first cookbook you ever fell in love with? Oh, sure, everyone has their favorite utility infielders -- the cookbooks you go to when you need a bit of sensible advice -- but I'm not asking about those kinds. I'm asking about the kind of cookbook that you curl up with like a good novel.
I had two first loves: Edna Lewis' The Taste of Southern Cooking and Ronni Lundy's Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest Fried Chicken. Now, these two cookbooks are both about Southern cooking but the trait they share most strikingly is that they tell good stories about good times. And I'm quite sure you read this blog because you are also of the view that good times always involve good cooking. Miss Lewis' food memories from Freetown convey the bounty that her family and community pulled from the land around them, and each menu is described in rich prose. A simple "Cool-Evening Supper" is composed of Summer Vegetable Soup, Store Soda Crackers, Ham Biscuits, Cucumber Pickles, Tyler Pie, and Coffee. Now, when I read this, I had no idea what a Tyler Pie was, but I sure wanted to eat one. And, atheist though I am, I would happily sit through a day's worth of preaching to get to the Sunday Revival Dinner: Baked Virginia Ham, Southern Fried Chicken, Braised Leg of Mutton, Sweet Potato Casserole, Corn Pudding, Green Beans with Pork, Platter of Sliced Tomatoes with Special Dressing, Spiced Seckel Pears, Cucumber Pickles, Yeast Rolls, Biscuits, Sweet Potato Pie, Summer Apple Pie, Tyler Pie, Caramel Layer Cake, Lemonade, and Iced Tea.
I first discovered Miss Lewis' cooking in San Francisco in 1988. A good friend of mine -- also from Tennessee -- had a dog-eared copy of The Taste of Southern Cooking in a book rack over her refrigerator. We pored over the recipes and schemed how to find seckel pears, for example, or "a really good chicken." We doubted the pasty-looking birds at the local Safeway qualified as edible, much less "really good." We did manage, however, to try our hands at some pickling and biscuit-making. I tried hard to find my own copy of Miss Lewis' book, as no one in San Francisco seemed to know of her food, or care that they were missing something delicious. Thank goodness for Scott Peacock, who cherished Miss Lewis in her later years and carried her legacy forward, and thank goodness I can now find seckel pears and really good chicken.
If I regard Miss Lewis with a more sainted type of love, I love Ronni Lundy's Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest Fried Chicken with an earthy abandon. Ms. Lundy writes with an air of certainty that inspires confidence in even the most timid of cooks. Introducing her recipe for Honest Fried Chicken, Ms. Lundy writes: "I was born in the state of Kentucky and Colonel Harland D. Sanders was not, so you can believe me when I say that I, not the Colonel, know the secret to making honest fried chicken." As I've mentioned before, Ms. Lundy inspired me to first put pork shoulder to smoke, enabling me to enjoy one of the richest treats from my childhood -- a hickory-smoked chopped pork sandwich on a mushy white bun, lots of outside meat, please, and don't forget that slaw and pickles have to go on top of the sandwich. The premise of Shuck Beans is that Ms. Lundy collects recipes, memories, tall tales, and good stories from various country music stars (real country music stars like Emmylou Harris and John Prine - but don't let's go down that road) and their relatives.
Ms. Lundy also includes plenty of good advice for beginning cooks, including my favorite tip for mastering mashed potatoes:
"You're likely to encounter two kinds of potato mashers in most kitchen stores. The first has a masher that is a firm, zigzagged metal rod across the bottom. My mama told me not to fool with that kind because no matter how long you mash it's going to leave your potatoes with lumps. The masher that you want has a round, open waffle grid across its bottom that the potatoes are pressed through."
Mindful of her mother's dictum to ' be careful when you buy one, because they make a lot out of flimsy metal that are just not worth a hoot,' Ms. Lundy advises: "To make sure the masher isn't one of those hootless, flimsy kinds, pick it up by its handle in one hand and then press real hard against its masher with the other. If you feel any give, it's not worth your money. But if it stands firm and looks well made and sturdy, buy it, because, like my mama told me, a good masher is hard to find."
Sigh. I love a woman who can riff on Flannery O'Connor. I guess you never get over any of your first loves.
I had two first loves: Edna Lewis' The Taste of Southern Cooking and Ronni Lundy's Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest Fried Chicken. Now, these two cookbooks are both about Southern cooking but the trait they share most strikingly is that they tell good stories about good times. And I'm quite sure you read this blog because you are also of the view that good times always involve good cooking. Miss Lewis' food memories from Freetown convey the bounty that her family and community pulled from the land around them, and each menu is described in rich prose. A simple "Cool-Evening Supper" is composed of Summer Vegetable Soup, Store Soda Crackers, Ham Biscuits, Cucumber Pickles, Tyler Pie, and Coffee. Now, when I read this, I had no idea what a Tyler Pie was, but I sure wanted to eat one. And, atheist though I am, I would happily sit through a day's worth of preaching to get to the Sunday Revival Dinner: Baked Virginia Ham, Southern Fried Chicken, Braised Leg of Mutton, Sweet Potato Casserole, Corn Pudding, Green Beans with Pork, Platter of Sliced Tomatoes with Special Dressing, Spiced Seckel Pears, Cucumber Pickles, Yeast Rolls, Biscuits, Sweet Potato Pie, Summer Apple Pie, Tyler Pie, Caramel Layer Cake, Lemonade, and Iced Tea.
I first discovered Miss Lewis' cooking in San Francisco in 1988. A good friend of mine -- also from Tennessee -- had a dog-eared copy of The Taste of Southern Cooking in a book rack over her refrigerator. We pored over the recipes and schemed how to find seckel pears, for example, or "a really good chicken." We doubted the pasty-looking birds at the local Safeway qualified as edible, much less "really good." We did manage, however, to try our hands at some pickling and biscuit-making. I tried hard to find my own copy of Miss Lewis' book, as no one in San Francisco seemed to know of her food, or care that they were missing something delicious. Thank goodness for Scott Peacock, who cherished Miss Lewis in her later years and carried her legacy forward, and thank goodness I can now find seckel pears and really good chicken.
If I regard Miss Lewis with a more sainted type of love, I love Ronni Lundy's Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest Fried Chicken with an earthy abandon. Ms. Lundy writes with an air of certainty that inspires confidence in even the most timid of cooks. Introducing her recipe for Honest Fried Chicken, Ms. Lundy writes: "I was born in the state of Kentucky and Colonel Harland D. Sanders was not, so you can believe me when I say that I, not the Colonel, know the secret to making honest fried chicken." As I've mentioned before, Ms. Lundy inspired me to first put pork shoulder to smoke, enabling me to enjoy one of the richest treats from my childhood -- a hickory-smoked chopped pork sandwich on a mushy white bun, lots of outside meat, please, and don't forget that slaw and pickles have to go on top of the sandwich. The premise of Shuck Beans is that Ms. Lundy collects recipes, memories, tall tales, and good stories from various country music stars (real country music stars like Emmylou Harris and John Prine - but don't let's go down that road) and their relatives.
Ms. Lundy also includes plenty of good advice for beginning cooks, including my favorite tip for mastering mashed potatoes:
"You're likely to encounter two kinds of potato mashers in most kitchen stores. The first has a masher that is a firm, zigzagged metal rod across the bottom. My mama told me not to fool with that kind because no matter how long you mash it's going to leave your potatoes with lumps. The masher that you want has a round, open waffle grid across its bottom that the potatoes are pressed through."
Mindful of her mother's dictum to ' be careful when you buy one, because they make a lot out of flimsy metal that are just not worth a hoot,' Ms. Lundy advises: "To make sure the masher isn't one of those hootless, flimsy kinds, pick it up by its handle in one hand and then press real hard against its masher with the other. If you feel any give, it's not worth your money. But if it stands firm and looks well made and sturdy, buy it, because, like my mama told me, a good masher is hard to find."
Sigh. I love a woman who can riff on Flannery O'Connor. I guess you never get over any of your first loves.
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