It’s taken us over two years to get around to it, but, finally, here it is. I got faux fancy with this one and crusted it with persillade, which is nothing more than a mix of garlic, parsley, bread crumbs, and lemon zest.  I’ll give you the recipe for it after the jump, but even if you don’t like parsley or just don’t like things with French names, this post will tell you all you need to know about cooking a pork tenderloin, however you want to season it.

There’s not much to know, but it’s well worth knowing.

A tenderloin is a relatively inexpensive and nearly fat-free cut from the lower part of the back of the pig. The low fat content is both a boon and a hazard: It means that you get a lot of meat for your money, but it also means that if you don’t put a little bit of thought into how you cook your tenderloin, it can wind up extremely dry. This is why many of the pork tenderloins you’ll find in the grocery store will come pre-marinated, and in fact, sometimes you can only find pre-marinated tenderloins in the store. My parents are very fond of these, so I’ve eaten more than a few in my day. Ideally, I’d always season my own, but pre-marinated tenderloins taste great, if a little overly salty.

You can braise a tenderloin on the stove or slice it and use it in stir-frys and the like, but for the purposes of this post, I’m going to focus on roasting.

Recipe for roasting a pork tenderloin: Season pork tenderloin. Place in 400 degree oven. Roast for 25-30 minutes.

Bam. That’s it. Unlike chicken, for example, pork tenderloins are of nearly uniform thickness, which means they cook in approximately the same time, regardless of poundage. This is great for cooks like me, who are a little paranoid about undercooking meat. If you’re lucky enough to have a meat thermometer – I suppose “luck” doesn’t really factor into it, but nevertheless, I don’t have a meat thermometer – you want the center of the pork to be about 155 or 16o degrees Fahrenheit. But 25-30 minutes really does the trick, and to be safe, just let the meat rest for 5-10 minutes and then cut into the thickest part to make sure it’s not too pink. Remember, though, that overcooked pork is the pits and that pork does not need to be grey in order to be done.

As for seasoning a tenderloin, you can crust it like I did here (which helps keep the moisture in the meat) or marinate it (which keeps it plenty juicy). Any crust or marinade that sounds good to you will work, but if you want to try persillade, the recipe is below. If you do go with persillade or with any other crusting option, you should roast the meat uncovered, but keep an eye on it. If the crust starts to get brown before the meat is done, just cover it in foil to keep it from burning. If you’re using a marinade, wrap the marinated tenderloin in aluminum foil and roast it that way.

(In case you’re curious, the sides above are (1) spinach, sauteed in olive oil with garlic, red pepper flakes, and dried cranberries and (2) sweet potatoes, thickly cut, tossed in olive oil, and roasted in a 400 degree oven until very well browned, about 30 minutes.)

Persillade
Adapted from Ina Garten

2 cups loosely packed fresh parsley leaves
1 tablespoon chopped garlic cloves (3 cloves)
1 cup fresh white bread crumbs
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest (2 lemons)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1. Place the parsley and garlic in the bowl of a food processor and process until they’re both finely minced.

2. Add the bread crumbs, lemon zest, salt, and pepper and process for a second until combined.

albondigas, before frying.

I’m with Claire – meatballs are not a trend.  They’re a classic, and in Spain they’ve been making them, deliciously, for a long time. (And, per Kevin’s post earlier this week, in Italy. Maybe we are in the midst of a bit of a meatball craze, at least here at FJ.)  This, according to Carlos, is a standard recipe, and it combines a lot of my favorite aspects of cooking – local, fresh ingredients; pork products; and a straightforward process that yields excellent results.  New Yorkers, get ready – when I’m back, these are going to become a dinner-party standard.

Also, keep an eye out for the unique ingredients in this recipe (but I will give you substitutes in case your local Kroger doesn’t have them).  I’m particularly excited to introduce you to caldo de jamón.

Albondigas con Setas

Ingredients:

For Albondigas (meatballs)

Whole milk
Loaf of sliced white bread
Ground meat – mix of pork and beef– 14 oz.  (In Spain, they sell this mixture pre-packaged in the grocery store, which I hadn’t seen before.  Ask your butcher to grind the meat separately and mix together well in the bowl yourself if you can’t find a mixture.)
Garlic – 3 cloves
Parsley, 2 or 3 sprigs, finely chopped
2 Eggs, whisked
Salt to taste, dash of black pepper
Flour
Olive oil for frying

For Salsa:
Large mushrooms – we used locally procured mushrooms, but they resembled shitakes.  Anything that is sort of large and soft and able to soak up liquid and flavor will work.
White wine
Caldo de Jamón – Cured ham stock (!) (Chicken stock would be fine for substituting.)
1/4 of an onion, diced
Pinch of salt, black pepper, pimenton dulce – paprika to taste.  (I think red pepper flakes would be a good substitute if you’re not into paprika.  I also really recommend finding Spanish pimenton dulce if you can, not just any old paprika.)
Flour

To make meatballs:

1. Pour milk into a small bowl, just enough to cover the bottom of the bowl.
2. Place three slices of bread into the bowl to soak milk up.  Mix together with your fingers – break the bread slices up.
3. Add garlic and parsley to mix.
4. Add meat.
5. Pour whisked eggs into mix.
6. Add salt and pepper.
7. Mix with fork until you have ingredients evenly distributed.
8. Make the meatballs – one soupspoon scoop for each ball.
9. With your hands, squeeze balls until compact and roll through flour, thoroughly coating.  If the meatballs lose shape, re-roll in flour.
10. Fry meatballs in a large pan with lots of olive oil.  Cook until golden brown.
11. Remove from pan and place on plate with paper towel to absorb oil.

To make sauce:

1. In a large pot, add a small amount of olive oil.  Turn to medium-high heat.
2. Add onions, allow to brown.
3. Tear mushrooms in half, add to pot.
4. Add salt and white wine, lower heat.
5. Add black pepper and pimenton dulce.
6. Add one glass of water and one spoonful flour, sprinkling flour in a bit at a time and stirring.
7. Add ham stock to taste.
8. Allow to all simmer together for about 5-7 minutes, until sauce thickens and mushrooms have softened a bit.  Add meatballs for 1-2 minutes at the end.  Remove from heat and serve immediately.

Yields 4-6 servings.

I am back in Minnesota, land of snow and ice, for my second semester of writer school. My first week back was a bit of a downer: all ice and no snow (and strangely balmy 40 degree temperatures). But now we’re back to the way I like it here during the winter, with a fresh layer of snow and an 8 degree chill. I must be going native, because I hardly notice the 8 degrees anymore (that, weather gods, is not an invitation for 20 below). But really, I’m being sincere, I like the little jump it gives me when I walk out my door, and I like the feeling of hibernation in my apartment doing my writerly (and non-writerly) things, and I like the whole feeling of winter wonderland that I think is really a uniquely midwestern phenomenon.

But as much as I like my world of snow, I was in Mexico for a week over winter break, and that was even better. Banish all images of beaches from your mind; this was cold Mexico, the Mexico of the mountains, and still, it was glorious, because how could a vacation with friends and food and fireplaces not be? I would like to be there…now.

In the meantime, however, I have this stew. Have the loyal readers among you been noticing a trend in my posts lately? Mexican chocolate cake, tortilla chips, ceviche…all from my Mexican Christmas feast. As is this, from the pages of Gourmet, rather than some hideaway authentic Mexican cooking school (recipes from there to come). But, you know what, I had posole twice while in Mexico itself and this one is right on up there with the source.

It probably helps this recipe’s case that 26 garlic cloves are involved (pick some good music to listen to while prepping this baby). Also long-stewed meat. And also a topping of cotija cheese, which never hurt anyone or anything. To simplify matters, when I served this, I just made a simple little slaw on the side of cabbage and radish with a cilantro-lime dressing. If you want to be more authentic about it, however, you’d serve all those components separately (cabbage, radish, cilantro, lime), plus maybe chopped red onion and chile powder.

Assembling the ingredients for this may take you a little longer than your usual grocery shopping, but you will be forever grateful to know where to buy dried chiles and hominy. Other than peeling the garlic cloves, the rest of this recipe moves by surprisingly fast, especially once you start tasting how incredibly it’s going after just the second step of cooking the pork.

I think the superior of the two Mexican posoles was actually a green chile posole, so that’s next on my list. And also this similar version from Bon Appetit. (I can never get enough posole.) And also, a hot tip: if you live in San Francisco and want to try this, but don’t want to, say, invest the effort in peeling 26 cloves of garlic before you know what the pay-off is, you can try a very similar version at Little Chihuahua, which just added posole to its menu (but maybe as a special? not sure).

Posole Rojo (Pork and Hominy Stew)

Serves 8-10

From Gourmet

Ingredients

- 1 bunch mint (1 ounce)
- 1 bunch cilantro (1 ounce)
- 4 pound country-style pork ribs (not lean)
- 10 cups water
- 26 garlic cloves (about 1 1/2 heads), peeled, divided
- 1 (1/2-pound) white onion, quartered, plus 1/2 cup, chopped
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano (preferably Mexican)
- 5 whole black peppercorns
- 2 ounces dried guajillo or New Mexico chiles (6 to 9), wiped clean
- 1 1/2 ounces dried ancho chiles (2 to 4), wiped clean
- 1 whole clove
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 3 (15-ounce) cans hominy (also called pozole), rinsed and drained

Accompaniments: diced avocado; crema; queso fresco; thinly sliced iceberg or romaine lettuce; chopped white onion; sliced radishes; fried tortilla strips or chips; lime wedges; dried oregano; dried hot red-pepper flake

1. Tie together mint and cilantro with kitchen string.

2. Bring pork and water to a boil in a large pot, skimming froth, then reduce heat to a simmer. Add tied herbs, 20 garlic cloves, quartered onion, oregano, peppercorns, and 2 teaspoons salt and gently simmer, uncovered, until pork is very tender, about 2 hours.

3. Strain broth through a large sieve into a large heatproof bowl. Return broth to pot. Discard mint and cilantro.

4. Transfer cooked onion and garlic to a blender with 1 1/2 cups broth and purée until smooth (use caution when blending hot liquids). Add purée to broth. Discard bones and coarsely shred pork into broth.

5. Meanwhile, slit chiles lengthwise, then stem and seed. Heat a large cast-iron skillet (or heavy skillet) over medium heat until hot, then toast chiles in batches, opened flat, turning and pressing with tongs, until more pliable and slightly changed in color, about 30 seconds per batch. Transfer to a bowl and pour 2 1/2 cups boiling water over chiles. Soak, covered, until softened, about 30 minutes.

6. Purée chiles with 1 1/2 cups soaking liquid, chopped onion, remaining 6 garlic cloves, clove, and 3/4 teaspoon salt in cleaned blender until a smooth paste forms, about 2 minutes.

7. Heat oil in cast-iron skillet over medium heat until it shimmers, then add chile paste (it will spatter) and cook, stirring occasionally, until slightly thickened, 5 minutes.

8. Add chile paste and hominy and simmer 5 minutes. Season with salt.

About two months ago, I left New York for Madrid.  I moved into a packed apartment in the center of the city, leaving my comfortable Brooklyn kitchen for the great unknowns of someone else’s dishware, metric measurements, and gas stoves. In the past few weeks, I have finally felt settled into my place enough to light up a match and start cooking.

In Madrid, eating-out options, whether or not they are fast food, trend heavily toward the meat and bread category.  People grab bocadillos when they are on the run, normally of the meat-and-cheese-on-baguette variety.  A popular lunch option is the menu del día, an incredible bargain where three courses plus bread and beverage (even wine!) can be had for about 10 euros.   I’ve only once seen a truly veggie option on one of those menus.  All of which is to say that when I was thinking about things I wanted to cook for myself I got no further than fresh vegetables.  This being Spain, land of acorn-fed pigs whose cured legs go for about 90 euros a kilo (look at all those continental measurement units!), I decided to add some cured pork to whatever I came up with.

I came across this adorable story-and-recipe combo on Smitten Kitchen, in which Deb from SK relates to tale of Michael Anthony of Gramercy Tavern wooing his now-wife with scrumptious cauliflower dishes.  That dish called for cauliflower and lots of little things mixed together to impart some flavor to our faint friend – capers, almonds, raisins. I decided to put my own spin on this, even though I am not wooing anyone!, and make my own cauliflower mix for one of my first serious cooking forays in Spain.

Cauliflower, garlic, and lomo sauté 

Ingredients:

- one head of cauliflower
- quarter pound of lomo embuchado, julienned.  Lomo is thinly sliced pork cured with garlic and red pepper.  It imparted extra savory flavor to the cauliflower since it released both pork grease and seasonings into the mix.  Any cured pork will do, depending on what is available where you are.
- Two cloves garlic, chopped
- Splash olive oil
- One pat of butter.

Slice the cauliflower as uniformly as possible into thin pieces.  Feel free to remove large pieces of the stalk, as they do not cook at the same rate.  Sauté in a large pan (I used a wok) three to five minutes on medium heat in olive oil, until the florets begin to brown and soften up.   Turn heat to medium-low.  Add the garlic and the butter.  Stir continuously for three minutes.  Add the lomo.  Stir for three more minutes or until lomo becomes slightly crispy, remove from heat.  Add black pepper and serve.

A few weeks ago a friend of mine hosted a dumpling making party, which might as well have been a slave labor party. Elbow deep in ground pork, for hours we folded dumpling after dumpling, many of which we consumed, but most of which now reside in my friend’s freezer. Fortunately, good company and copious supplies of beer kept us dumpling technicians happy through our assembly of over 300 dumplings.

However, absent such a congenial atmosphere, in New York it is often difficult to stir up the energy to make fresh gyoza – especially with a bag of 50 frozen beauties from Vanessa’s or Prosperity just a train ride away. But with the homemade dumpling the wrapper turns out thin and crispy unlike the chewy and gummy skin of the frozen dumpling. And the salty pork and soy are balanced by the mild and sweet flavor of fresh chives and Napa cabbage.

Gyoza (or potstickers, as they are known in English) are staples of both Chinese and Japanese cuisine. In Japan they are the culinary specialty of Tochigi-ken, a prefecture just north of Tokyo that is best described as the New Jersey of Japan. There they are served in restaurants and at storefront shops in malls and train stations. Freshly made, they arrive on your plate as a single mass, stuck together by the heat of the frying pan, requiring you to pull each dumpling free before you eat it. The filling is almost always pork and chives, though you often find cabbage and sometimes shiitake mushrooms.

Some assembly required, but certainly worth the effort.

Gyoza

For the filling:

1 pound ground pork
1 cup napa cabbage, chopped
1 cup chives, chopped
½ cup chopped shiitake mushrooms, chopped
2 garlic cloves minced
½ teaspoon sesame oil
Soy sauce, red pepper, salt, pepper to taste

1 package gyoza wrappers (available at Asian supermarkets)
A bowl of warm water mixed with a tablespoon or so of cornstarch

Sautee the cabbage and the mushrooms in a little vegetable oil over medium heat until they are soft. Cool.

Combine the rest of the filling ingredients, then add the cabbage and mushrooms. In truth, the filling is really up to you – adjust it to taste for spiciness and flavor. Mirin or sake are good additions, as are shiso leaves or scallions. Vegetarian dumplings with cabbage, mushrooms, and carrots are also quite tasty.

Now here is where starts to get a little tricky. Assembling the dumplings takes some practice. I can make passable dumplings, but in Japan my malformed gyoza were universally laughed at (literally). Don’t worry, you will get the hang of it, but trust me, there will be a few oddly shaped ones along the way.

First, take a wrapper in one hand. Place a SMALL ball of the filling mixture in the middle. I emphasize small because the one sure way of messing it up is trying to overstuff them. A teaspoon of filling, maybe a teaspoon and a half.

Dip an index finger into the cornstarch water and wet the outer edge of the wrapper halfway around. Starting from the left side, fold the dry side over the wet, and press to seal all along the edge up to about a fifth of the way up. Then take the dry side, double it back on itself to make a crease, and press the dry side onto the damp one another fifth of the way up. Continue to do this until the dumpling is sealed.

Once all the dumplings are assembled, time to cook them. If they are well sealed they could easily be boiled or steamed. But you’ve come so far, you might as well go all the way and pan fry them.

Start by heating a little vegetable oil with a few drops of sesame oil in a well seasoned pan over high heat (a nonstick would make it easier, but then there is something about potstickers that don’t stick that seems to violate the point). Place fold side up next do each other in the pan. Don’t be afraid to crowd them in there. Let them fry for about a minute and a half or two minutes, and then pour between a fifth and a quarter of a cup of cold water in the pan, cover, and turn the heat down to medium. It will steam and it will crackle. It will sound like an unholy inferno in there. Whatever you do, do not remove the cover. Do not check up to see how they are doing. They won’t appreciate it. Let them steam for 4 to 5 minutes, undisturbed, before removing the lid and turning off the heat. Pour in a little more cold water to loosen them and, if you’ve done it right you should theoretically be able to flip them out onto a plate in a solid mass. In practice, however, I find it is best to just remove them with a spatula.

The classic dipping sauce is just soy sauce, rice vinegar, and chili oil, but spicy Japanese mayo is also good (mayo, sesame oil, chili oil, and shichimi, which is Japanese “seven flavor chili pepper” available at Japanese specialty stores)

Freeze the extras, and I guarantee it will be a long time until your next visit to Vanessa’s.

For me, while living in Brooklyn, that meant that I bought all my produce at the Park Slope Food Co-Op, so almost all of it was local and/or organic, but — deep dark secrets revealed — when I ate meat, usually I bought it at the much cheaper and much more convenient C-Town, just down the street from my apartment. Okay, I admitted it, and no gods of free-range chickens smote me with lightning.

Now that I am in Minneapolis, however, I find that the reverse is true. Organic/local vegetables here are astronomically priced, while it is actually quite possible to find free-range everything for incredibly decent prices. Go figure. And so, I have watched as my balance of grocery money and shopping time shifts to pursue non-confinement meat/eggs/dairy, while I worry slightly less about the provenance of my produce.

No, this is still not an absolute ideal, but it is important to eat sustainably in all senses of the word — not just that the food you are consuming is sustainable itself, but that it is sustainable for you. That means: You’re not going broke buying it, you’re not driving way out of your way to get it, you’re not killing yourself figuring out how to cook it. That means that you will keep eating that way, not give it up because you went whole-hog (sorry, I couldn’t help myself) too early. Or cold turkey. Or some other food pun.

While my philosophy is basically do what you can, if you can stop eating confinement meat, then that is what you should do. Factory farmed meat is basically the root of all evil in America. Okay, maybe I go too far, but some evils are certainly attributable to factory farming: pollution, corn surplus, health issues, myriad social injustices for the workers. There’s also the enormous issue of the inherent rights of the animals, but I will let Jonathan Safran Foer speak to that.

Unlike Safran Foer, I am not willing to go vegetarian, nor do I think such a stand is really necessary with the great meat producers that exist, if you only seek them out. As reasonably priced as it is, however, I can’t really afford to buy sustainable meat as the main portion of every meal, nor, honestly, am I really inclined to. I like having some days where I eat no meat, or where I eat meat only as a small part of a dish — not out of any ethical stands, but simply out of my tastes and health.  And so, I have resolved to eat less meat, but better meat, because that is the stand that I’m both ethically and financially comfortable with.

It’s still not a black-and-white issue for me. What am I going to do when I’m out at a restaurant? At someone’s house? Well, probably I’m going to eat some factory-farmed meat. What should you do if you can’t afford or find non-confinement meat? Don’t eat meat one day a week (maybe Monday, because then you have an alliterative reminder). If you are a poor and overworked twentysomething, you probably already do eat a meatless meal every week, if not several. Feel good about that!

So here is a meal I call meat-optional. I was, in fact, the culprit who even added meat in the first place, because I had just started my non-confinement kick and was excited about it and saw some really beautiful free-roaming boneless pork chops tempting me from the butcher case. Here again, though, the meat is more of a seasoning — there is less of it than of either the tofu or the Brussels sprouts — and you could certainly do away with it completely.

Brussels Sprouts with Caramelized Tofu (and Pork)

Adapted from 101 Cookbooks

Serves 4

Ingredients

-       1 lb. Brussels sprouts, rinsed and cut into 1/8-inch wide ribbons

-       1 lb. extra-firm tofu, patted dry with a paper towel and cut into 1-inch segments

-       5 cloves of garlic, minced

-       ½ c. pecans, chopped (I used TJ’s Sweet and Spicy pecans, which were awesome in this; if you use regular ones, toast them first to bring out the flavor)

-       6 Tbsp. brown sugar

-       salt

-       Optional: 1 boneless pork chop, cut into 1-inch segments

-       Optional: some brown rice to go with

1. Heat a splash of vegetable oil in one skillet. Add tofu and sauté until golden, flipping occasionally, about 5 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, if making pork: Heat a splash of vegetable oil in another skillet. Add pork and sauté until cooked through (also flipping occasionally), about 5 minutes. Add pork to pan with tofu.
3. Add garlic to tofu/pork. Stir in sugar. Season with salt. Cook a few more minutes, until everything is covered with caramel. Remove from heat.
4. Meanwhile, in a second skillet (either the pork one or a new one, or you can wait til the tofu is done and use that one, but I hate waiting that long), add some oil. When oil is hot, add shaved Brussels sprouts. Season with salt. Cook until some sprouts are browned and all are cooked through (they will be bright green). Remove from heat.
5. Serve tofu/pork on a bed of Brussels sprouts (over rice?), with a sprinkling of pecans on top.

(Ed. note – despite this smart-ass picture, a pork “butt” is actually the shoulder of a pig. Go figure.)

Like “freedom,” “love” or “lite,” “Barbeque” is one of those words that has been robbed of meaning from over usage by the American public. When someone tells you that they are “having a barbecue,” what they most likely mean is that they are grilling some hamburgers or hot dogs over high heat. They are dead wrong.

“Grilling” and “Barbequing” are about as similar baseball and jai-alai. Real barbeque means low heat and a long cooking time – usually with big, tough pieces of meat that can’t be serviced any other way. In a cow, the classic cut is a brisket, but the real barbeque standby is a pork shoulder.

The perfect pork shoulder is smoked with applewood or hickory for around 16 hours – for that reason it can be sort of prohibitive to a home chef. But smoke only flavors the pork so much. The real flavor of barbecued pork comes from the fat rendering through the meat, and that’s easy to get from a conventional oven.

To make barbeque at home, get a whole pork shoulder or just a Boston Butt from the grocery store . They run cheap at about 1.50 a pound. Throw it in the oven at 220 degrees at it should be falling apart after 12 hours. For a slightly more authentic experience you can finish it for a few hours over a smoky fire – a standard grill will serve if you just don’t add too many coals and throw a few apple wood chips on top – but the butt will taste good regardless.

Do this on a Sunday and you’ve got sandwiches all week.

As I posted on Tuesday, I recently made dinner for my new roommates. Not being able to fit all the wonders into one post, I decided to split it into three. Tuesday we saw the hors d’oeuvres and the wine, and next Tuesday we’ll see the chocolate pudding dessert. Today, though, the meat of the meal.

Literally. Let’s talk about some meat. We don’t talk about meat all that much at FJ, both because of concerns of localness/sustainability and also because…well, because we’re po’ and often cooking for just ourselves, and so despite the occasional splurge or reasonably priced roast chicken or the now ubiquitous butter burger, we often stick to veg product (and bulk food items, and bacon). And that’s a shame, because meat is delicious, and doesn’t absolutely have to destroy the earth.

Another reason I think a lot of you might avoid cooking much meat, or slightly nicer cuts of meat, is because you don’t know how to do it. For one thing, that’s silly. Meat is not that hard to cook. For another, this recipe makes it even sillier, because it is so, so very easy.

This is a recipe from the October issue of Bon Appétit, and comes originally from a restaurant in Durham, North Carolina. It’s a southern take on an Italian dish, and the mix is interesting and profitable. After all, what is polenta if not almost exactly like grits? Both are ground corn (basically cornmeal, but a coarser grind), though polenta is usually yellow cornmeal and grits are usually white. There are also such things as hominy grits, which are ground hominy (hominy is corn that has been soaked in lye or lime to remove the husk), but those are a bit out of the purview of this blog, or at least of this post.

Anyway, back to the meat: Again, I repeat, this pork roast could not be easier. Get yourself a good piece of meat. I could only find a boneless roast (the recipe calls for bone-in pork rib roast, which will have slightly more flavor than boneless), but it was still a beauty, and at $10/lb., $15 of meat was more than enough to feed three people.

Now, you could really just follow the recipe starting with browning it in a pan (which will caramelize the outside and develop flavor) and then roasting it, and you would have a great final product. This recipe steps things up a bit by adding a brine, which I had actually never done before. The brine means you need to plan ahead a little and get started the night before, but it is super-simple. The idea of a brine is it helps keep meat moist and juicy, while also imparting a little bit of flavor. I would get into the science of it, but this article does it more thoroughly than I ever could. Take my word for it, though: brining works. How do I know? This was one of the juiciest little porkers I’ve ever had, and certainly ever cooked myself.

There are just a few things to remember when you’re brining. You want to measure things pretty carefully, though no need for absolutely exactly, because if you put too much salt in, the meat will taste, duh, too salty. Similarly, you don’t want to let the meat sit in the brine for much longer than the recipe recommends because, a little less obvious duh, the meat will get too salty. But follow the recipe and you’ll be good to go. (This recipe says “chill overnight,” so it’s a pretty wide time range; you don’t, however, want to let the pork sit in the brine for two nights, say.)

Other than that, I think the recipe is pretty clear. Onto brief notes on the sides:

Kevin already explained how to cook collard greens last week. In the interest of ease, and not having to obtain a ham hock, I just followed the Bon Appétit recipe, which is a little different in one big way: it doesn’t have any pork in it. So normally I would avoid a wimped out recipe like that, but since it was being served with pork, it seemed kind of valid to dial down the porkiness just slightly. They were great, and I learned the valuable trick that if you totally oversalt greens (hypothetically speaking, of course), a good dousing of red wine vinegar will completely counteract your error.

As for polenta, I deviated pretty far — or as far as one can with a dish as basic as polenta — from the Bon Appétit recipe. First, I substituted low-salt chicken broth (I had some leftover from the greens) for half of the water. Second, I added a liberal dusting of cayenne, which I think is really important to pep things up. It stood me in good stead with my roommates, who both commented that they liked that I seasoned it so confidently. Especially in this pretty rich meal, a little spice is great (and a great complement for the sparkling red wine). Also, I don’t know why the recipe says it takes 30 minutes to cook; I used yellow cornmeal, basically, and it took about 3 minutes. Maybe it would thicken if I cooked it longer? More likely, I think, I was supposed to use a coarser grind, but yellow cornmeal is what I could find, and it’s probably what you’ll find, and so you should count on 3 minutes.

Anything else? The timing is important here, as it is whenever you’re cooking more than one thing. Start the pork, then prep the collards, then do the polenta at the last minute. Oh yeah, I didn’t make the pan jus for the pork. There, I admit it. When there’s a nice piece of pork sitting there, rested, ready to go, do you really want to be doing more work and dirtying another pot? You can make it, and I’m sure it’s wonderful (and please report back in the comments if you do), but I’ll tell you, the drippings that collected in the pan when I sliced the pork were enough for me.

And now, without further ado, the recipes!

Pork Roast with Pan Drippings
(Adapted from Bon Appétit)
Makes 3 to 4 servings.
Ingredients:

- 16  cups  water, divided
- 1 cup coarse kosher salt
- 1/2 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
- 1 small onion, quartered
- 1 small head of garlic, unpeeled, halved crosswise
- 3 fresh thyme sprigs
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
- 1.5 lb boneless pork roast (or 2 lb. bone-in pork rib roast – should be 3 ribs)

1. To make brine: Combine 8 cups water and next 7 ingredients in large pot. Bring to boil, stirring until salt and sugar dissolve. Add 8 cups water. Chill brine uncovered until cold, about 2 hours. Place one 2-gallon resealable plastic bag inside another 2-gallon resealable plastic bag. Place pork in doubled bags. Pour brine over pork. Seal bags; place in roasting pan. Chill overnight.

2. To prep pork: Preheat oven to 350°F. Remove pork from brine; discard brine. Rinse pork, then drain and pat dry. Sprinkle pork generously with pepper. Heat heavy large skillet over medium-high heat. Add pork roast to skillet and cook until browned on all sides, turning frequently, about 6 minutes. Transfer pork to roasting pan.

3. To cook pork: Roast pork about 1 hour, until it has a slight crust on the outside and doesn’t drip pink juice when you cut into it. Remove pork from oven; tent with foil and let rest 15 minutes. Transfer pork to platter. Cut pork crosswise into slices. Transfer to plates; spoon pan juices over.

Braised Collard Greens
(Adapted from Bon Appétit)
Makes 3-4 servings.

Ingredients

- 2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) butter
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 1 onion, chopped
- 3 garlic cloves, chopped
- 2 pounds collard greens, Swiss chard, or broccoli rabe (rapini), thick stems trimmed, leaves coarsely chopped
- 2 cups low-salt chicken broth
- 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

1. Melt butter with vegetable oil in heavy large pot over medium-high heat. Add onion and garlic and sauté until tender, about 6 minutes.
2. Add greens and sauté until beginning to wilt. Stir in broth; bring to boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer until greens are very tender, stirring occasionally, about 45 minutes. Stir in vinegar. Season with salt and pepper.

Cayenne Polenta
(Adapted from Bon Appétit)
Makes 3-4 servings

Ingredients
- 2 cups water
- 2 cups low-salt chicken broth
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup polenta or yellow cornmeal
- 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
- 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
- good sprinkling of cayenne pepper (be careful, the heat hits you in the aftertaste, so test carefully)

1. Bring water, chicken broth, and 1 teaspoon salt to boil in heavy large saucepan. Gradually whisk in polenta; whisk constantly until mixture is smooth and begins to thicken. Reduce heat to medium-low and cook until tender and thickened but still creamy, stirring constantly, about 3-5 minutes. Stir in butter and Parmesan cheese, dust with cayenne pepper, tasting carefully. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Behold the lowly ham hock. The extreme end of a pig’s leg where it attaches to the ankle, the hock is fatty, thick-skinned, and full of tendons and gristle. It is not a cut of meat to toss on the grill with a  little salt and pepper, but with a little thought and a lot of (unattended) time, you can use this inglorious cut of meat to make some spectacular food.

And let me tell you, ham hocks are cheap. If you buy meat, even infrequently, you know how expensive it is, especially these days with the rising cost of feed corn. But the big and meaty ham hock pictured above set me back about $3.50, and this week I’m going to show you how I used it to make two deeply flavorful dishes for dirt cheap. First up, Southern-style collard greens.

Southern food or soul food, which arose from the abhorrent tradition of slavery in our country, makes use of many foodstuffs that were once considered scraps – vegetable greens, meat trimmings, offal, etc. – to make some of this writer’s favorite foods of all time. And while there is no mitigating the horrors of slavery, it is a testament to the ingenuity and determination of those who suffered under it, that they gave America its greatest native cuisine.

And now, since there is no good transition from slavery to recipes, a jump.

Pork, greens, and time. That’s pretty much all this recipe requires. I’m talking about collards today and using a ham hock, but this technique works for turnip greens, , chard, dandelion greens, or even kale and could just as easily utilize a ham bone, fatback, bacon, or whatever other pork you’ve got in the fridge.

First, put your ham hock in a large pot, add water to cover, and bring to a boil. Some hocks come pre-seasoned or pre-smoked. If yours is, wait to add salt until later so that you can taste the greens and see if they need it. Pre-seasoned meat basically means pre-salted meat, so additional salt may not be necessary. Incidentally, if you don’t live in the South and don’t see hocks in the grocery store or at your butcher, just ask. They probably can get them. Pork shanks and pig’s knuckles are similar/identical cuts.

Once your pork boils, reduce the heat to simmer. Meanwhile, wash and cut your collards. Begin by removing about the most of the stems. Fancy-pants chefs will tell you to remove all of the stem, even up into the leaf, but given how long you’re going to boil these, that seems like a waste of food and time to me. Wash the collards well in several changes of water since, like all greens, the tend to hang onto a lot of dirt.

The easiest way to chop greens – and prepare yourselves for another cooking vocabulary lesson, kids – is to chiffonade them. Cookbooks will often tell you to prepare leafy herbs this way, and it is just a fancy (read French) word for rolling the leaves up before you cut them. To do this, stack the leaves after you wash them and roll them up like a cigar. Then chop across the roll so that you get 1/2 inch discs like this:

(A safety note: Since I was fiddling with the camera in my other hand, I wasn’t paying attention to how I was holding the greens in the picture. Whenever you are chopping or cutting anything, you should always curl your fingertips back to be even with or behind your first knuckle. It will feel a little strange at first, but you get used to it, and keeping your fingertips is worth the effort. No one thinks they’re going to cut the end of their finger off until they do. Alright, enough nagging.)

Since the leaves of the collards I had were so large, I went back across one time cutting these discs in half. They were so tender after cooking that this was probably not necessary. Do what you like. Add the chopped greens to the pork water, bring it back to a boil, and reduce to a simmer again. Cook for an hour to an hour-and-a-half. The long cooking time makes the greens incredibly tender and allows them to maximize their absorption of porky goodness.

I also added red pepper flakes to my cooking water, which is great if you like things a little spicy. Err on the moderate side though, as the flakes actually release more heat the longer you cook them. Cooked collards are often dressed with vinegar (apple cider is best), which I like, but is far from necessary. Most soul food restaurants in the South also have pepper vinegar on the table, which is just white vinegar with a lot of hot green peppers in it. It’s delicious, but tough to find north of the Mason-Dixon.

Most important of all: Do NOT throw away the cooking liquid. It is called pot likker (as in liquor, not licker) and should be used to dress the greens, dip cornbread, or for other purposes to be revealed on Wednesday.

After cooking, the ham hock should be cooked through and relatively tender. If you like, you can cut the meat off the bone and mix it in with the collards. A good idea, but I had bigger plans for this hock, so I stuck it and my pot likker in the fridge and dug into my collards.

They were, as Paula Deen would say, pretty good eatin’, ya’ll.

After all, who wants chocolates or roses when they could have pork? Or at least this kind of pork.

I’m talking about the kind presented in this beautiful, beautiful, enticing book. Written by third-generation French butcher Stéphane Reynaud and produced in a gorgeous volume by the art publisher Phaidon, this book is actually viscerally thrilling. The first 45 pages — called “Pig-Killing Time at Saint-Agreve” — describe Reynaud’s family, his town, his friends, and the roles they all play in the butchering process. The next 300 pages give recipes from his restaurant, each illustrated with a full-page color photo and covering the varied categories of barbecued pork, ham, pates and terrines, wild boar, and blood sausage. I have never been much of a fan of blood sausage, but I would give it another go in Reynaud’s hands. Every recipe looks amazing, and all the directions are short and sweet, as are the adorable pig cartoons that run throughout. No wonder this book was an immediate bestseller in France, where it also won the French Gourmand Cookbook Award. The hardest part is going to be picking the first thing to cook, although I will probably steer clear of the Stuffed Pig’s Ears. But it has a recipe for Stuffed Pig’s Ears! How amazing is that?