Pork and Potatoes

So Ann has this habit of picking up people wherever we happen to be, and if she likes them well enough, inviting them to dinner. Such was the case recently when we met Evan and Justin around the fire pit at our local pub while we were getting a couple beers after a movie two Fridays ago. Ann decided that they were coming to dinner along with Justin's fiancée and soon-to-be wife Maria, who was not in attendance around the fire.

Ann also decided that I was making pulled pork. To be fair, she did ask me to make pulled pork, but she knows that I will never refuse her requests if I can fulfill them. Besides, I am too happy to cook for anyone who is a good human and a good eater. I'm no longer in the restaurant business, so my tolerance for picky and high-maintenance eaters is nil, having had to cater to such people all my life. But for good people, I will gladly cook any time and any place.

Ann, Maria, Justin, and Evan
We Had a Great Night with Great People, Food, and Wine

I still approach dinners at home the way that I would at the restaurant. Even though we changed the menu every day at the restaurant, we would start the week off by sketching out where we wanted the menu to be by the weekend, and trying to pull as much of that prep forward into the earlier part of the week when we were not as insanely busy as on the weekend.

Ditto for dinner at home. On the day of the dinner, I don't want to have spent the entire day prepping such that I am too tired to spend quality time with my guests. So when I sketch out a menu for a dinner, I try to spread the work out over multiple days. In this case, the menu was not very complicated so for the Saturday night dinner, I started with some small tasks on Friday.

The menu was straightforward:

Whipped Goat Cheese with Puttanesca Topping

Slow-Roasted Pork Shoulder

Scalloped Potatoes with 'Nduja

Green Salad with Pickled Shallots, Spiced Pecans, Pomegranate Seeds, and Pomegranate Vinaigrette

Pulled Pork, 'Nduja Scalloped Potatoes, Green Salad

The tasks that I could do ahead on Friday I did on Friday: making the dry rub for the pork, spicing the pecans, and making the puttanesca topping for the whipped goat cheese. I've covered my spice rub for pork ("Butt Rub") in detail before and you can find a recipe here. I pretty much followed the recipe except for when I tasted this batch of rub, I wanted both a bit more sugar and salt which I added.

"Butt Rub" for the Pork Shoulders

Spicing pecans is a useful technique and we used to make many pounds at a time at the restaurant as they were a key component in certain dishes, such as our Fall Salad, a mix of cubed roasted winter squash, cubed Asian pear, and Cajun-spiced pecans, all dressed in a vinaigrette made from local apple cider reduced 8-fold, and served molded in a ring mold with a flourish of just-cut micro-arugula on top. [I sure miss the days when our growers would deliver living flats of microgreens to the restaurant, micros that we would clip seconds before they hit the plate.]

I used to toss the pecans in melted butter and then add some spice rub and mix them well to coat them with the spices. And that was good, but I noticed that when one of my line cooks prepped the pecans, they always tasted way better than mine. I watched her when she made the next batch and saw that she heated the pecans and butter together in a pan until the pecans were well-roasted before coating them in the spice mix and a generous pinch of additional salt. Even an old chef can learn new tricks.

While at the restaurant we used our Cajun spice mix (aka "Magic Dust") to spice pecans, I wanted for this dinner to echo the same flavors in the pork, so I used the pork rub to spice the pecans. I have found that menus hang together better if you can echo some flavors throughout, but not so much as to be tiresome.

Spicing Pecans: Cook Until the Pecans are Roasted

Spicing Pecans: Tossing with Spice Mix and Salt

The next Friday task was to start in on the goat cheese that we would have for our pre-dinner appetizer course with sparkling wine. The idea for this appetizer was to whip some fresh goat cheese to a light, airy, and spreadable consistency and then to top it with a highly-flavored olive oil.

But what to top the goat cheese mousse with? I wanted to be a bit creative. When I start thinking about creating dishes, I am often influenced by ingredients on hand, dishes that have appealed to me recently, or some other external input. In the restaurant, I would often, when in need of inspiration, walk into our well-stocked pantry (We stocked 15 different types of rice, for goodness sake!) where I would surf the shelves, seeking ideas.

In the case of this appetizer, I have been thinking a lot recently about making a chili-garlic crunch as that has been all the rage in the last year or two, and for good reason. Moreover, I have been thinking about spaghetti alla puttanesca as those bold flavors really appeal to me.

And there you have it, this topping is the answer to the question everyone has been asking: What if chili-garlic crunch and pasta puttanesca had a baby?

Chili-Garlic Crunch
Boiling Olive Oil Poured over Chile Flakes and Fresh Garlic

I started by making a simple chile-garlic crunch. While heating a cup of olive oil on the stove, I put 7-8 cloves of minced garlic, a couple tablespoons of chile flakes, and a tablespoon of dried basil in a heat-proof bowl. When the oil got very hot, I poured it over the mixture, instantly frying it, and let it cool on the stovetop.

Whipped Goat Cheese with Puttanesca Topping

Once the oil cooled, in went the remaining ingredients: minced anchovy fillets, brined capers, oil-cured sun-dried tomatoes, and chopped green olives. Then Ann and I tasted the mix and adjusted it. The oil seemed too prominent, so I added some acidity in the form of first a touch of balsamic vinegar for sweetness and acidity, then a touch of red wine vinegar for straight-up acidity. A bit of salt helped round out the flavors (surprising to me that it needed salt because of the anchovies, capers, and olives).

I left the mix on the counter overnight to macerate and for all the flavors to come together: it takes time for flavors to infuse into oil. The flavors were definitely better on Saturday morning than Friday afternoon. We left the whipping of the goat cheese to minutes before our guests arrived and one the mousse was spread on a plate and topped with the oil, I scattered on a large handful of chiffonaded fresh basil to lighten and freshen the appetizer.

Slow-roasting 15 pounds of pork shoulder is an all-day affair. A prior post outlines my method in which I bring the roasts up to 165F, wrap them, and return them to a very slow oven to bring them up to a final temperature of 195-200F. Despite it being an all-day affair, I couldn't bring myself to get in the kitchen until after my morning coffee, so I did not get the two shoulders into the oven until just after 9am. Accordingly, they were not ready until roughly 7:00pm.

Spice-Rubbed Pork Shoulders Ready for Oven (or Smoker)

Pork Shoulders at 165F, Ready to be Wrapped and Put Back in Oven

Fall-Apart Tender Pork Pulled Using Tongs

To go with the pulled pork, I had the idea to do scalloped potatoes with thyme and 'nduja, the Calabrese spreadable salame. I was hoping that the 'nduja would melt into the cream and I was not at all disappointed. I built the casserole by putting a layer of sliced raw yellow potatoes in an oiled gratin, then topping the layer with a sprinkle of salt, fresh thyme, little dots of 'nduja, and a drizzle of heavy cream, continuing in this fashion until the gratin was full. It baked for an hour, covered, in a moderate oven, and then uncovered for another half an hour or so until it browned on top.

Building the Potato Layers

The Finished Potato-'Nduja Gratin

To act as a foil for the rich pork and potatoes, I wanted a green salad with a relatively acidic dressing. I decided to put spiced pecans, pomegranate seeds, and pickled shallots in the salad and because the pomegranate was really ripe, I got a good bit of juice in the process of knocking the seeds out. That pomegranate juice would form the basis of the dressing when combined with whole-grain mustard, Sherry vinegar, agave nectar, and extra virgin olive oil, all buzzed together with the immersion blender.

Greens with Spiced Pecans, Pomegranate Seeds, Pickled Shallots,
and Pomegranate Vinaigrette

Pickled Shallots Put up in December

By the time the potatoes and pork came out of the oven, we had been talking and drinking wine for a good hour and perhaps 90 minutes. Everyone was ready to eat and it all turned out wonderfully. We continued the merriment well into the evening when someone, Ann I think, suggested opening a bottle of Port.

1992 Quinta do Bomfin Port

By the time the Port was opened and decanted, a lot of wine had been consumed and we had all got a hankering for something a little sweet to go with the Port, despite having gorged ourselves on pork and potatoes. I stood at the counter and assembled crackers topped with Cambazola cheese and fig compote, the remainder of the compote that we made at Christmas to give to our friends.

This 375ml 1992 Quinta do Bomfim is fully ready to drink; the tannins have mellowed and the fruit on the wine is no longer improving. This is unlike the 750s of 1977 Warre's whose tannins are still rough and youthful. I can hardly believe the $16.95 price sticker on the bottle!

It was a great night chez nous and I thank our lovely dinner guests for sharing in the merriment with us!