Krautsalat

On two occasions on our trip to Südtirol back in the fall, we had a very simple cabbage salad called Krautsalat as a side dish with our meals. Both versions were of thinly sliced young cabbage dressed simply with oil and vinegar. It was one of those rare dishes that was more than the sum of its parts; we could not believe how good it was.

Roasted Steelhead Trout with Krautsalat

Recently on a rare foray to Trader Joe's, we stumbled across a pile of really young cabbages, really tight and dense and of conical shape. As much as I have wanted to make Krautsalat back here in the US, I was waiting to find just the right young and tender cabbage. Like potatoes, for cabbage, the freshly harvested young variety is far superior to that which is old and harvested months ago, storage cabbage.

Thinly Sliced Cabbage

There are many ways to thinly slice cabbage. When I was a kid, we had dedicated sauerkraut cutters, basically huge, bench-mounted mandolines. Today, a mandoline or a benriner would do the trick, or perhaps even the slicing blade on a food processor, though, to me, that cuts the cabbage too coarsely. I prefer to use a knife, so after quartering the cabbage and cutting out the core, I lay the quarter flat and slice it superfine with my handy-dandy knife.

Kneaded and Dressed Krautsalat

After slicing the cabbage, I sprinkled it with just a little salt, tossed it well to distribute the salt, and left it on the counter for 20 minutes. Then I roughly kneaded the cabbage to yield something approximating a fresh sauerkraut. After draining off the resulting salty liquid, a touch of rice vinegar and a drizzle of olive oil completed the dish.

Ann really loved this version. I preferred the version that we had in Italy in which the cabbage was dressed without salting or squeezing. Both are delicious. It's a shame that we cannot get decent cabbage at the store (not even a pretty looking Savoy). I'm going to have to make another trip to Trader Joe's on the far outskirts of town. It will be worth the hassle of getting there if they have more of these cabbages.

Sweet Potatoes

Man, the restaurant life really sapped my enthusiasm for cooking! My love for the kitchen, even to this day, has not recovered and I retired from the business five and a half years ago. I used to think nothing of spending joyful hours in the kitchen, but now there are days when I can barely be bothered to go back in the kitchen for two minutes to throw together a ham sandwich.

Kitchen Mojo: Sweet Potato Cakes, Pork Tenderloin, Cole Slaw, Chipotle Honey

Just after retirement from the restaurant, I had no love for the kitchen. But these days some five-plus years hence, my love of cooking comes and goes. In the last ten days or so, my kitchen mojo is finally on the wax, at least temporarily. That's a good thing in that I have accumulated of a bit of winter fat and I need to eat better. Also, my body is longing for fresh vegetables, something that it quite usual for me in this cold vegetable-challenged season. That longing in part spurs me to action in the kitchen.

Though many vegetables are now available 365 days a year, thanks to a worldwide supply chain, old habits die hard with me. I try to use ingredients only in season, though I have relented a bit from this imperative in recent years. Back in the restaurant days, as a seasonal restaurant supplied by local farmers, we were limited in winter to storage vegetables from the previous growing season, our farmers bringing us only the tiniest amount of fresh produce from their expensive-to-heat greenhouses.

Winter therefore meant sweet potatoes, bushels and bushels of sweet potatoes. Out of necessity, we had to find creative ways to use them so as not to bore ourselves or customers. Fortunately, the sweet potato is as equally useful as a regular potato and therefore lends itself to a myriad of preparations: boiled, mashed, baked, chips, fries, grated for latkes, and even hashed.

Exercising all my creativity, at one point during my restaurant career, I hit upon a sweet potato hash that quickly became a customer favorite when accompanying our Berkshire x Ossabaw pork, wild boar, Moulard duck, or any of the venison that would come and go on the menu throughout the course of the winter: red deer, white tail, caribou, or elk.

The hash at the restaurant would have started in a vast sauté pan with cubes of our slab bacon, or house-cured pancetta if we were between slabs of bacon, cooked just enough to release a bit of fat. Into the sauté pan would go diced onion and cubes of raw sweet potato. Like any hash, it would stay on the flame until the bacon was rendered, the onions browned, and the sweet potato cooked all the way through.

I have never been one to like sweet food (I'm that guy who does not eat dessert) and I have always frowned on sweet sweet potato preparations. Properly cured sweet potatoes have enough natural sweetness on their own that they really don't need any added sugar, except perhaps if they are being served as a dessert course. But I do make a slight exception for my sweet potato hash.

Just as the hash is cooked is where the sweetness comes in, though not via added sugar (at least not raw sugar). At this point, we'd add dried sweetened cranberries (or cherries) and then flambé the whole shebang with a good slug of Bourbon. Ann is not a fan of the sweet woody and vanilla notes that the Bourbon imparts nor has she ever been a fan of fruit in savory dishes. But this hash ticks my boxes: creative, savory, smoky, and oh so tasty.  For more on the hash technique see here and here.

I have finally got enough distance from the restaurant and its sea of winter sweet potatoes to want to prepare sweet potatoes again at home. So, to accompany a roast pork tenderloin, I made this hash again, omitting the bacon to keep the dish a bit healthier. In spite of Ann not being a big fan, every once in a while, I make a dish because I like it. My usual MO is to only cook the things that I know that Ann loves. Mea culpa.

I actually cooked two tenderloins and put the second one in the fridge along with a small amount of leftover hash, the perfect starting point for a leftover-based dish the next evening. But how to change it up so that it would be different enough from the night before? I didn't have enough hash left to serve one person, let alone two, so I thought about ways to stretch it. And it occurred to me that if I roasted a sweet potato, mashed it, and incorporated the leftover hash into the mash, I could make sweet potato cakes.

I find myself using rolled oats instead of bread crumbs or panko to bind things these days: meatloaf, meatballs, potato cakes, and so forth. The results are fantastic and to my mind, at least, the complex carbs in rolled oats are a healthier option than the more simple bread carbs. Although I put a little panko on the surface of the sweet potato cakes to yield a nice crust, I bound the cakes with oats.

Sweet Potato Cakes, Bound with Rolled Oats

Once I had made the sweet potato cakes and put them in the refrigerator to set up, the full dish came together in my mind: sweet potato cakes, thinly sliced pork tenderloin, a bit of my vinegar-based cole slaw that is always in the fridge, and a drizzle of spicy chipotle-honey (chipotle purée, honey, water to thin, and salt to taste).

At least temporarily, my kitchen mojo is back and functioning at a decent level and I'm still making good use of winter storage vegetables: sweet potatoes, onions, cabbage, and carrots. And Ann is going to forgive my use of sweet dried fruit and Bourbon in the sweet potato cakes.

Brined Roasted Steelhead with Fennel-Orange Slaw

We end up eating a fair amount of steelhead trout and salmon, to the point where I am looking for ways to cook it other than on the grill or in a steel pan. I remember years ago at the restaurant, sometimes I would brine and roast fish and that's what I decided to do in this case. Brining gives fish a silky, sexy texture and this piece of steelhead was amazingly moist and delicious.

Brined Roasted Steelhead with Fennel-Orange Slaw

It's hard to come up with garnishes for dishes in the middle of winter because so few things are in season. Fortunately, winter is a great time for both citrus and fennel. On spying a nice fennel bulb at the market, I brought it home to make into slaw for the steelhead. Haricots verts have very good shelf life and are not too bad during winter, so I brought some of those home to roast as well.

Brining Steelhead

A decent brine is a tablespoon of Kosher salt per cup of water. For this brine, I put two tablespoons of salt and a tablespoon of sugar in a pint of water. The steelhead was in the brine for about two hours. Even ten minutes in the brine improves both texture and flavor. I did not salt the fish otherwise.

Fennel-Orange Slaw

This fennel-orange slaw could not be any simpler to make. It contains one fennel bulb, core removed and shaved, the segments of two large navel oranges, and a bit of shaved red onion. It is seasoned with salt, sugar, red wine vinegar, and the orange juice that I squeezed from the oranges after removing the segments.

Dry Rub: Fish Tacos

I wrote recently on dry rubs and this post is a continuation of that. Fish tacos are a staple of our diet, being delicious, easy to make, and if done properly, pretty healthy. While a lot of restaurants and taco trucks deep fry their fish for tacos, at home, I prefer to either bake or sauté the fish, after giving the fish a bit of a spice rub. This way they're both tasty and healthy.

The fish we use most often for tacos is decent enough inexpensive rockfish, of which there are a dozen or more species just off our coast here in Oregon. Don't confuse it with Striped Bass which is known as rockfish all through the mid-Atlantic. At other times, we may use Pacific cod.

Our rockfish here is mild and as fish go, edible enough, but not outstandingly flavorful, so I don't mind giving it a good spice rub to give it a flavor boost. If I had access to and could afford more sought after species, I wouldn't be giving them a spice rub and I wouldn't be serving them as tacos.

Fish Tacos with Slaw, Cilantro, and Roasted Garlic-Chipotle Salsa

For fish taco rub, I use a very simple mixture of ground ancho chile, freshly ground cumin, granulated garlic, salt, and Mexican oregano. I don't put any really spicy component in this rub, preferring to bring the heat in a salsa to put over the cooked fish.

Fish Taco Rub

Fish Ready for Oven

Tender Juicy Fish Ready to Make Tacos

After coating the deboned fish fillets in the rub, I put them on a sheet tray in a 350F oven until the fish just firms in the center of the fillets. You can see in the photo how moist they are, yet they flake apart readily.

Delicious, easy, and healthy, fish tacos make a wonderful quick meal that anyone can make at home.

Dry Rub: Pork Butt and Chicken

June 17, 2023: This post contains an updated recipe for my butt rub. The new recipe yields about four cups of rub, enough for a few pork shoulders. It has a slightly different and better flavor than my original recipe.

I have created a lot of dry rubs in my life and professional career. The impetus to use dry rubs came early on when I frequented a barbecue joint where the smoked chicken was of another planet. I memorized the flavors of the rub on that sinful chicken (I have that kind of flavor-centric mind in that I am blessed to be able to taste a dish and then reproduce it) and carried them with me for many years until I had the ability to smoke first chicken and then turkey for myself.

From that base rub, I have branched out many ways. We made all our own spice mixes at the restaurant. One that stands out was our all-purpose pork and chicken rub, which we always called Butt Rub. Now I see somebody has copyrighted that term. Another is our Cajun rub which we called Magic Dust. Again, I see somebody copyrighted that term. I could have beat them to it!

We made a lot of other spice mixes including garam masala and ras el hanout. And at one point, I had a consulting gig with a food manufacturer to create pastrami and other rubs. That was a lot of fun playing with spices. But in this post, let's talk basics of roasting rubbed chicken and then look at a rub for it.

Dry-Rubbed Chicken, Ready for the Oven

As you see in the photo above, the basic idea for a dry rub is to coat the meat in a spice mix before roasting, grilling, or smoking it. At the restaurant, we used to pour massive amounts of rub over the meat and coat each piece individually. But for small home quantities, I place the meat in a large seal-top bag, add a decent amount of the spice mix to the bag, seal it, and shake it around until all the surfaces of the meat are covered.

Use as much or as little spice as you like. Some people think that a solid coating like this covers up the meat inside. I agree to a point, but our chicken and pork today are so bland that I think the spice helps. Consider also that the spice is only on the outside and that the meat inside the crust is unspiced. But, if I had a great piece of Mangalitsa, Berkshire, or other heirloom-breed pork, I surely would not spice it heavily, if at all. Nor a great fowl.

As for roasting, during my years at the restaurant, I taught all my cooks the art of roasting meat on slabs of onion. I don't remember where I picked up the technique, but the onions keep the meat off the bottom of the pan, give the dish enough moisture to get started steaming away, and then they baste and soften in the delicious fat in the bottom of the pan for hours. The result is something that is so sexy good that we almost never wanted to serve the onions to customers. Almost. The onions most often ended up flavoring and thickening a stock that would become a sauce for the meat. The onions you see above ended up flavoring an incredible white bean soup.

Once the chicken is rubbed and resting on its slabs of onions, I generally cover the pan with aluminum foil and put it in a slow oven to roast. You want to cook the chicken to the point where it is fork tender, but will still hold its shape. This batch took about two hours at 350F. A batch the week before only took 90 minutes. Chicken thighs, because of their fat content, can be roasted uncovered if you prefer to crisp the skin to ultimate goodness. The chicken you see below, I roasted uncovered. Yes, the skin was sinful.

Roasted Chicken, Rice, and Cole Slaw

The pan of chicken thighs (because dark meat rules) gave us a wonderful dinner served with cole slaw and rice, over which we put a little of the pan drippings. That was one fine southern-inspired meal.

The next day, the leftover chicken became chicken tacos, after I picked all the meat off the bones. Whenever I roast meat, I always plan on having leftovers to repurpose in the following days. We sprinkled some of the leftover spice rub onto our tacos and topped them with leftover cole slaw, the same ingredients repurposed in an entirely different form.

I also saved all the bones and skin from picking the taco meat and simmered that with all the roasted onions and defatted juices from roasting the chicken to make a spicy chicken stock. After I removed the bones and skin, the spiced chicken stock and roasted onions made a fabulous soup, when simmered with a couple of cans of white beans, then smoothed out with the immersion blender. That's another tip for you: if you are throwing out bones and so forth without making stock, you are missing out on great flavor.

Butt Rub for Barbecue-Style Chicken or Pork Shoulder

Until recently, I did not have a recipe per se for my pork and chicken rub. When we were making rubs for the restaurant, I would have scalable recipes for the cooks to follow, such as 3 parts salt, 2 parts cayenne, and 1 part ground thyme. Now at home, I just wing the mix, so there is some variation between batches, which is perfectly OK for me and my home cooking.

The key to a good chicken or pork rub is to find a balance between spice, salt, and sweet, with enough complexity to be interesting. Spice is provided by paprika, smoked paprika, cayenne, black pepper, and mustard. Sweet comes from sugar, allspice, nutmeg, coriander, and fennel. Complexity comes from basil, oregano, and garlic. Although many recipes call for brown sugar, I prefer granulated white sugar because it is less moist and the rub runs freely rather than clumping and becoming pasty.

I don't use very many pre-ground spices which is why the recipe below calls for whole spices. Ground spices go off in flavor much faster than whole spices. I highly recommend the Waring Professional Spice Grinder, if you grind a lot of spices. If you don't, you will never recoup the $300 price tag. There are lots of inexpensive grinders that will work although they won't be able to grind the whole batch of spices below in 15 seconds!

The following will yield about four cups of the rub.

Pre-ground spices:

1 cup sweet paprika
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup granulated garlic
3/8 cup Morton's Kosher salt

1/4 cup smoked paprika

1/8 cup coarsely ground black pepper

2 tablespoons ground cayenne pepper

Spices to be ground: 

1/4 cup whole allspice berries

1 whole nutmeg

1/8 cup brown or yellow mustard seeds

1/8 cup cumin seeds

1/8 cup coriander seeds

1/8 cup fennel seeds, ground

1/8 cup dried basil

1/8 cup dried oregano

Place all of the pre-ground spices in a bowl large enough to hold a quart of spice rub. Then grind all of the whole spices (and the basil and oregano leaves) in a spice grinder until smooth and add to the bowl. Mix well.

After mixing, I sample a bit of the mix and adjust it to my liking. Needs more salt, add it. Not spicy enough for you? Add more cayenne. And so forth. Just be careful with the sugar: if you are grilling over direct flame, the sugar quickly goes to caramel and then burns. Some char is delicious; a lot can ruin a perfectly good meal.

Take this as a base recipe and see what you can do.

Cole Slaw

It's been a very long time since I made cole slaw. This is most likely because it is something that I made or handled every day at the restaurant. We always served a big pile of tangy slaw with our exceedingly rich crab cakes, as a foil to the fat and as a palate cleanser. More importantly, making slaw daily let us use whatever vegetables our farmers were bringing to us, no matter the season. It always seemed important to give our loyal farmers a market for their fruits and vegetables.

Cole Slaw

My wife was scared of my slaw long ago when we met because she had known slaws only with gloppy mayonnaise-based dressings. I'm not a fan of this creamy slaw myself, so I always dress my slaw quite simply with rice vinegar and granulated sugar, with a bit of salt to taste. I can't give you a recipe for the dressing for I literally scatter a handful of sugar and a bit of salt on the vegetables and pour over a bit of vinegar. I mix it well and taste. If it needs more acidic bite, in goes more vinegar. If it is too acidic, a bit more sugar will balance it.

It's best to make your slaw early in the day to give the dressing time to wilt the vegetables a bit before dinner. Though it is delicious right away, it gets better with age, to a point. It helps to turn a new batch of slaw every couple of hours to redistribute the dressing. Although you can slice your vegetables with a food processor, I always use a knife. It takes work, but the texture is better and you can work on your knife skills at the same time.

While cole slaw derives from words meaning cabbage salad and while cabbage is the principal component, you should not hesitate to be creative with your slaws. Any fruit or vegetable that is firm enough to slice and that is edible raw is fair game. I made this one from white cabbage, cucumber, carrot, radishes, and an apple.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of the things that I remember having put in slaw, each one I made being a function of the season and what was on hand.

Cabbage: white, red, napa, Savoy, brussels sprouts

Firm Leafy Greens: cavolo nero (Tuscan black kale), kale, collards, gai lan (Chinese broccoli), bok choy, choy sum, endive, chicory, Swiss chard

Other Brassicas: broccoli, cauliflower, broccolini, stem broccoli, rapini, stem mustard. Broccoli and cauliflower stems are great in slaw, peeled and thinly sliced.

Root Vegetables: turnips, rutabagas, kohlrabi, carrots, horseradish, radishes (red, breakfast, daikon, Korean), hard winter radishes (watermelon, black, etc), sunchokes, crosnes, beets, celery root, sweet potatoes, parsnips

Other: asparagus, cucumber, cucamelon, fennel, celery, green beans, pole beans, shaved corn, peas, sugar snaps, snow peas, rhubarb, artichoke hearts and stems

Herbs: lovage, parsley, cilantro, chives

Squashes: summer squash, winter squash (butternut slices really well)

Peppers: I don't like the flavor of raw peppers in my slaw, but many people do. They are all fair game, spicy and mild alike.

Onions: yellow, white, red, torpedo, green, cipollini, leeks, green garlic, chives. Onions can dominate, so I only use little bits for complexity, typically red and/or leeks.

Hard Fruits: apples, pears, Asian pears

How off the wall can you get? I once did a slaw including napa cabbage, beets, fennel, and orange segments that I served with fennel pollen-dusted grilled trout. I tend, when using beets, to keep them sliced separately from the rest of the slaw and mix them in just at service, to keep them from turning the slaw entirely beet red, unless I am aiming for a red slaw for presentation purposes.

The things that I avoid for slaw form a much shorter list: tender greens (salad greens, mustards, spinach, etc.) that will not stand up to the dressing, really starchy things that are not great raw (potatoes, eggplant), watery fruits (tomatoes, berries, melons), peppers (out of personal preference, though a bit of habanero in a slaw can be awesome), okra, mushrooms, and shell beans.

Grilled Halibut Tacos

After a week of fairly miserable weather, this week has started off beautifully with a chance to get out and hit the grill. Over coffee Monday morning, Ann suggested fish tacos for dinner. I thought that was splendid idea.

Grilled Halibut Tacos with Curtido and Cilantro

Later in the day, I texted Ann, "slaw or salsa on the tacos?" She decided on slaw and so I made a batch of curtido, the quintessential Salvadoran slaw that always accompanies pupusas. Mine is made from green cabbage, carrot, red onion, salt, oregano, and lime juice. It is crunchy and tangy and the perfect topping for a bit of grilled halibut.

I prefer grilled fish in my tacos, though most restaurants tend to use fried fish. I don't really want batter on the fish if the whole thing is in a tortilla, either corn or wheat. Your mileage and your tacos may vary.

Memorial Day 2016

Thanks to crashing out super early on Sunday after our hike, I woke really early on Monday and having a very rare two-day holiday, I set in right away on yardwork, getting the trumpet vine and the three wisteria pruned and a bunch of other miscellaneous things neatened up before Ann came downstairs. I took a break and joined her on the deck for a cup of coffee, a rare treat for us these days to have coffee together, not having to be somewhere.

After coffee, we set in on a bunch more yardwork including weeding and planting the garden, removing a very invasive lemon balm, digging out a Euonymus that was not sited correctly and not happy where it was sited, planting a dozen roses, and transplanting to new beds a slew of volunteers including purple coneflowers, coreopsis, and even a maple tree.

About 1pm, we had mostly finished all the yardwork we were going to do for the day and set off on a quick 3-mile walk about the neighborhood where a new crop of wildflowers was waiting to be seen. While we were out walking, I noticed that none of the black locust trees are blooming this year. The same frost that killed our wisteria blooms must have done the same to the locusts. Pity.

Deptford Pink

Crown Vetch

Ox-Eye Daisy

Sulfur Cinquefoil

Golden Hawkweed

St. John's Wort

Back at home, we decided to cool down on the patio in the shade of the vines with a bottle of Vinho Verde, our first of the year. Its light green apple flavor is so refreshing.

Vinho Verde on the Patio

My Girl!

Ann wanted to see how good my new camera is at bird photos. Not very. The camera is probably just fine, but my 28-135mm lens doesn't have the speed or the reach to do the birds justice. I'm putting a 70-200mm lens on my wish list, small enough to hike with and handhold, but with considerable more reach than the 135.

Male Cardinal Below the Feeder

Mockingbird Guarding the Native Honeysuckle Berries

At noon, I took a break from gardening to run in and throw these ribs in a slow oven. They're coated in a rub that I make myself. I fancied that I might smoke them and grill them and the whole nine yards, but once it became clear that I was really involved in gardening this Memorial Day, I opted for the easy way out in a slow oven.

Ribs, Ready to Cook

Cabbage and Chinese Broccoli Slaw

Pigging Out!

Just today the scales told me that I have lost 25 pounds since Christmas, a pretty good milestone. I just nibbled at breakfast and skipped lunch in order to be able to feast on ribs and slaw. And two portions of each I did have. I kind of regretted eating so much food, but not really! Damn those ribs were good!

Empanadas

During dinner on Sunday while we were feasting on enchiladas, Ann mentioned something about loving empanadas and how we should (I should) make them some time, so I resolved to make empanadas on Monday night. And to go with them, I made a cabbage slaw called curtido and an avocado and tomatillo salsa verde.

Empanadas, Curtido, Salsa Verde

Ready to Roll

I've been using the same empanada dough recipe for years, even at the restaurant. It's a little finicky and crumbly, but it makes the best empanadas ever. I must have ripped it off from somewhere because it is written in English units of measure, even using cups for flour. The vast majority of recipes that we develop for the restaurant are done in metric units and by weight. I rolled and cut the pastries and Ann filled them. I had a good time poking fun at her for being messy and I think she had a good time being mock offended.

Picadillo Dulce of Pork

You can stuff just about anything inside an empanada. Black beans are among my favorites, but this time I decided to do a sweet and sour ground pork called picadillo dulce. I had to keep it less on the picante side because Ann's mom Mary can't handle the heat. I usually add golden raisins and almonds (both showing the Moorish heritage of this dish) but for this filling, I decided to keep it simple. I cooked the ground pork with finely minced red onion, cilantro stems, garlic, and green olives seasoned with cumin, oregano, cinnamon, and pimentón (smoked paprika). Once this cooked out, I added sherry vinegar and brown sugar to taste to yield a sweet-tart final product.

Ann's Handiwork

I always seal my pastry with egg wash and crimp the edges with a fork, then do a final wash of egg on top. This is how it has always been done in my family. Some people crimp the edges by hand and others roll the crust over on itself to form a lip. They all achieve the same thing: sealing the goodness of the relleno on the inside. After Ann finished sealing all the empanadas, I put them in a moderate oven until they were a light golden brown all over, about 40 minutes.

Curtido Fresco

To go with the empanadas, I wanted to do something light and fresh, so I opted for a quick cabbage slaw that the Salvadorans call curtido, a slaw that is usually fermented like kraut or kimchee. I call this curtido fresco because there is no malolactic fermentation: it's eaten within hours of being made. It is finely shredded white cabbage, red onions, and carrots seasoned with lime juice, rice vinegar, salt, oregano, a splash of olive oil, and a touch of agave syrup to take a bit of edge off the acid. Left on the counter for a few days to ferment, this would be a very fine curtido indeed. Ann said it needs a bit of heat and while I love to put finely slivered hot chiles in curtido, there is no way that my mother-in-law could handle that.

Salsa Verde

I had it in mind to do chimichurri for a dipping sauce for the empanadas, but I was suckered in by an avocado at the market. I ended up making a smooth green sauce of avocado, canned tomatillos, rice vinegar, and cilantro. This sauce is addictively good!

Tacos and Tomatoes

Back in the spring, I got an email out of the blue from Martha, an old friend of the family. She and her first husband were great friends of my parents and I saw a lot of her during my days in Charlottesville. But the last time I saw her was 31 years ago. I went my way to Texas and she went her way to Missouri. She and her husband Bob have recently moved back to Virginia and she reached out to me, wanting to catch up. So she and Bob drove up on Sunday and we caught up and had lunch together, standing around the kitchen counter.

Pulled Pork Taco with Salsa Verde, Cotija, and Spicy Curtido

On my day off, especially for lunch, I really am not into cooking all that much. Whatever I make for lunch needs to be something that can be prepared in advance and/or doesn't take more than about 15-20 minutes of active work, so I decided to roast some pork shoulder and serve it as tacos. That way, the oven could do all the work while I had coffee with Ann.

The pork I rubbed down the night before and put in a slow oven when I awoke on Sunday morning to deal with the dogs. The slaw I made at work a couple days before: cabbage, all manner of peppers, carrots, red onions, habaneros, garlic, spices, sugar, vinegar, and oil. I also brought home some salsa verde made from roasted tomatillos, poblanos, cilantro, and roasted garlic all slowly cooked down in pork stock and then blended to make a smooth sauce, whose acidity I adjusted with a touch of lime juice.



Tomatoes with Cotija and Cilantro

And I decided that we needed to have a very quick tomato salad to go with our tacos, mainly to take advantage of the most amazing tomatoes of the year. I sliced the tomatoes and laid them on a platter, sprinkled them with salt, cotija cheese, and cilantro. Less than two minutes from start to finish.

Pig and Pinot

Sometimes the unrelenting nature of the restaurant business gets to us and so it has done the past couple of weeks, October being among the very busiest of times at the restaurant. It is incredibly difficult to have a meaningful relationship when the other woman is a restaurant. And so Ann and I just needed some us-time before I get started on another very busy month that will see us catering two large dinners at Delaplane Cellars.

In my copious spare time at the restaurant, which is to say none, I managed to find time to put together a plan for Sunday, thinking all the while that Carter would be off at Tom's house working to make some cash. I decided to make a frittata for brunch with a Bloody Mary for each of us and then I thought that we could walk around the State Arboretum of Virginia in the afternoon to take advantage of what I thought would be beautiful fall weather. While we were walking, I would have a pork shoulder in the oven going low and slow and that would be awaiting our return. Or so went the plan. Most of it happened, but that's not the important part. The important part is that Ann and I got to spend a great day together without having to be anywhere or do anything.

Brunch: Bloody Marys and Frittata

We ate brunch rather earlier than I wanted because I needed the oven free to roast the pork. For the frittata, I sweated a bit of onion with Surry sausage, then added the eggs, ricotta, chives, and grated pecorino. In no time at all in a very hot oven, it had gone golden brown around the edges and puffed beautifully in the middle. It turned out that Carter would not be leaving so Ann woke him in time to join us for a late breakfast. While the frittata was in the oven, I mixed up a Bloody Mary for each of us and garnished them with skewered lime and olives and a branch of lovage from the back porch. Lovage has delicious but unique celery flavor, stronger than regular celery, and we love it.

The Bloody Mary is something of an art form at our house and our efforts are far from the watery tomato juice cocktails that most bars serve. I made the mix on Saturday afternoon and like many things that need time to come together, it was better for having sat in the refrigerator overnight. I started with tomatoes, celery, and a little poblano chile which I pureed in the big blender. To this I added four elements of heat: chipotle for a little smoky back of the throat stealth heat; red Thai curry paste for a slow burn with vegetable notes of galangal and cilantro root; a small boatload of horseradish for its nasal cavity gymnastics; and for all purpose heat, about a tablespoon of Calabrese chile paste with its smoky lip-stinging goodness. The other ingredients were salt, olive brine, lemon juice, and lime juice.

Pork Shoulder Before Roasting

Just before we sat down to brunch, I put the pork shoulder in the oven for dinner. This is half a shoulder from a Red Wattle x Duroc hog from a farm in nearby Shepherdstown WV. I decided to cook it very simply so that we could taste all its delicious porkiness unmasked, so I rubbed it with my standard pork shoulder rub and put it on a layer of onions on a sheet tray. [Those onions would prove to be the best part of the dish, having been caramelized in pork fat for hours!] I put the shoulder skin side up so that as the inch of subcutaneous fat melted, it would baste the meat. After sealing the whole thing in aluminum foil, I put it into a slow oven (275F) for the next 8 hours. Can you imagine what the house smelled like on Sunday? Pork Heaven for those of you without imagination.

My pork rub is salt, brown sugar, pimentón, cayenne, white pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder and is very similar to rubs used by all competition BBQ teams. Sometimes I add a little ground thyme, but my spice mill died, the restaurant being hell on small appliances. Although you can buy lots of commercial rubs, if you have access to a lot of spices, making your own is trivial.

My Infamous Farmers Market Slaw

What better, I ask you, with pulled pork than some really fresh cole slaw? I make a batch at the restaurant each day from hand-sliced vegetables from the market. Naturally, each day's slaw varies. I kept it simple at home. Our version was red and green cabbage, carrots, and a touch of celery. The dressing is nothing but plain granulated sugar and rice vinegar plus a sprinkle of Kosher salt. Right after brunch, I chopped and mixed the slaw and left it on the counter to work and soften until dinner.

We took our drinks out to the patio to enjoy the fall sunshine, but that lasted only about ten minutes before we threw in the towel and came back inside to watch movies. The temperature was really nice, 50ish, but the wind was screaming out of the northwest at 10-15 miles per hour, simply no fun at all. The wind put an end to my plan to go walk around the arboretum and enjoy the day outside. So we enjoyed ourselves inside instead.

Looks Like the Vultures Got This Pork Shoulder

I had no sooner taken the pork out of the oven than Ann had attacked it! We stood around the counter and rolled little burritos of pork and cole slaw. I also made a little dipping sauce for the pork: rice vinegar, salt, and a squirt of sriracha. This is a sauce typical of parts of Virginia and the Carolinas: no tomato, no sweet, and very thin. It's my kind of sauce, this so-called mopping sauce used for basting pig while it cooks, made without sugar to keep it from burning.

Chief Vulture in Charge

The wine star of our day was this bottle of Sonoma Coast Pinot from William Knuttel. It was just the right bottle at the right time and for us, had a perfect balance of fruit and acid with enough restraint and finesse to satisfy us both.

A Delightful Bottle

A great weekend, all in all. Starting with brunch and bloodies and finishing with pig and Pinot. What more could a person want?