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I made this poor man’s porchetta a few weekends back, and it was a big success. My pork shoulder was around five pounds (we had seven for dinner), and yet it still cooked in about two hours. Delicious, and even with all the diners, enough leftovers in the freezer for two further meals (for our little family, at least).
After we had the pot pie, I covered a pound of black beans with an inch of water, and left them to soak overnight. They cooked up pretty quickly the next day, with a tablespoon of cumin and a couple of smashed garlic cloves. I guess close to two hours isn’t that quick, but I’m a pessimist when it comes to cooking beans from scratch.
Here’s what I did to make a surprisingly excellent black bean soup.
I cut three slices of smoked bacon into batons, then cooked them over medium heat until a fair amount of fat had rendered out and they were a little shy of crisp. I removed the bacon with a slotted spoon, then added a chopped onion and two minced garlic cloves to the hot fat. After they had softened, I dumped in three cups of cooked beans, a cup of the beans’ cooking liquid, and three cups of that chicken stock. Then I added two tablespoons of the adobo from a can of chipotles. I let the whole thing simmer for maybe twenty minutes, stuck the immersion blender in to partially puree the thing, then added back in the bacon and stirred in some chopped cilantro. A squeeze of lime at the table (ok and some oyster crackers) and we were off.
I roasted a big chicken on Monday.
We were left with plenty of leftover (mostly white) meat, as well as the carcass. On Tuesday night I made a batch of stock from the carcass and the contents of my stock bag in the freezer (various ends of vegetables, as well as a bunch of chicken wing tips).
Wednesday, I made pot pie, and boy was it good. Here’s how.
In my cast iron pan, I sauteed two carrots, a stalk of celery, a medium parsnip, and a medium onion (all chopped) in maybe three tablespoons of butter. After these had gotten soft (I think I let them get a little too soft, actually), I sprinkled on two or three tablespoons of flour, and let that cook for a few minutes. Then I added a few handfuls of the leftover chicken, maybe a half a cup of green beans cut to one-inch lengths, a similar amount of frozen peas, two or three tablespoons of chopped parsley, three or four cups of the chicken stock, and a quarter cup of cream. Salt and pepper too. I brought it to a simmer, and then laid a pie crust on top of the skillet, brushed the crust with egg, and put the whole thing in a 375º oven for about fifty minutes. (I had made two pie crusts the week before—taken from this pot pie recipe—and had them in the freezer.)
The pie emerged golden and at least somewhat flaky. Inside was an intensely savory stew that ended up giving me some pretty bad heartburn. Oh well. It was delicious though.
Back in the mid-1950s, he was employed by Sports Illustrated, briefly. He reported to work, was asked to write a short piece on a racehorse that had jumped over a fence and tried to run away. Kurt stared at the blank piece of paper all morning and then typed, “The horse jumped over the fucking fence,” and walked out, self-employed again.
-Mark Vonnegut, on his father
From the beginning, he’s been the only indispensable white male rock dancer of his generation, the only one worth imitating in mockery. I consider the moment in the “Patience” video when he does slow-motion snaky slide-foot dance while letting his hands float down as if they were feathers in an airless room—one fleeting near-pause in their descent for each note that Slash emphasizes in his transition to the coda—the greatest white male rock dance moment of the video age. What Axl does is lovely, I’m sorry. If I could, I would be doing that as I walk to the store. I would wake up and dance every morning like William Byrd of Westover, and that would be my dance.
-John Jeremiah Sullivan, “The Final Comeback of Axl Rose”
We had this chicken the other night, and it was definitely good. With rice and roasted carrots.
London comes back to me at odd times. The other night, for no discernible reason, I was hit by the memory of one of our favorite London meals. Cay Tre is a very popular Vietnamese restaurant on Old Street, just a few minutes walk from our old place. Yes, I know there are better Vietnamese restaurants in London, but Cay Tre is often excellent, and it had the benefit of being practically on our doorstep. And cheap.
It became a near-weekly ritual: I’d put on my shoes and jacket, call Cay Tre to place our order, and get going. When I arrived at the restaurant, some seven minutes later, our food was being bagged up. K would often get the “wokked pho noodles with duck,” but I remained loyal to my favorite. I liked many of Cay Tre’s other dishes, but nothing approached the simple deliciousness of their Chilli Pork Chop. Salty, crispy, fatty, savory from the onions, fiery from the chilis—it’s no surprise this was my jam. Last night I tried to recreate it at home; it wasn’t exactly as good as the original, but it was pretty close!
Chilli Pork Chop
1 large onion, sliced thinly
1 large garlic clove, minced
4 chilis (I used jalapenos), seeds removed, sliced into rings
4 butterflied pork chops (or any thin boneless pork cutlet)
flour
2 eggs
panko crumbs
vegetable oil
cilantro
1. Slice onions and chilis, mince garlic, and combine in a bowl. Set aside.
2. Take pork out of the fridge, and flatten a bit by drumming in a crosswise pattern with the back of your chef’s knife. You want them no thicker than 3/4”. Season with salt, and maybe some pepper too.
3. Put maybe 1/4 to 1/2 an inch of oil in a heavy, wide skillet. Heat on medium-high.
4. Prepare three dishes/shallow bowls: one with flour; one with two eggs, beaten with a tablespoon of oil; and one with panko. Season each dish with salt and pepper. When oil in pan reaches 340ºF, dredge pork chops in flour, then egg, then panko. Shake off excess flour before moving to the egg, let excess egg drip off before moving to panko, and really cover the sucker in panko crumbs, pressing them on to make them stay.
5. Then into the pan, two at a time if your pan is as big as mine, to fry. Three to four minutes a side? Turn them when the one side is a deep golden brown. Cook until the pork reaches 137ºF, then remove to a paper-towel-covered cooling rack. Repeat with remaining chops.
6. Pour off all but a tablespoon of oil from your pan, then toss in the onions, garlic, and chilis. Cook, tossing frequently, until just softened, maybe three minutes.
7. Now your pork has rested a good five minutes. Slice into finger-width pieces and put on plates, topping with a good amount of onion, garlic, and chili mixture, and a small pile of cilantro. Serve with rice, and some sort of green vegetable. Sriracha at the table, especially if your chilis aren’t especially fiery, would not be out of place.
The artist who uses the same energy and genius that Homer and Isaiah had will find that he not only lives in the same palace of art as Homer and Isaiah, but lives in it at the same time.
-Northrop Frye, quoted by Mark Edmundson, here.
Roast chicken tonight, done with my usual spatchcockery, alongside this farro with roasted cauliflower. Except I couldn’t find farro for less than $8.95, nor the similar (but cheaper) spelt berries, so I used wheat berries. Two things to remember for next time:
1) Probably cook the wheat berries (or whatever) in a bigger pot. I used our smallest, and even after an hour and a half, I don’t think they were as cooked as they should have been.
2) Skip the dressing in the linked recipe and just use your standard vinaigrette. I found the sesame oil and mustard off-putting together.
Otherwise, not a bad combination. I have, somewhat overnight, become a cauliflower eater.
The chicken went into the oven with nothing more than salt and pepper. No oil, no garlic, no herbs. It was delicious.
