Pulled Pork, sloppy and juicy and oh so tasty.

Necessary Equipment

5 Quart Cast Iron Dutch Oven (You probably could duplicate most of the results with a slow cooker, but I do not have one.)  I happen to LOVE this one — and it is always a reasonable price at Amazon.   Lodge Logic 5-Quart Double Dutch Oven and Casserole with Skillet Cover

Heavy tongs.   No really.

Ingredients

• Pork – Half Shoulder (BONE IN and with skin!)
• 1 Cup Sugar (I prefer “Sugar in the Raw”)
• 10 Stalks of Scallion, washed and chopped into 2 inch lengths.
• 2 Whole Garlic Bulbs, washed and peeled.
• 2 Green Chinese Chilies, washed, halved and seeds removed, then chopped.
• 3 Inches (roughly) of Ginger, wash, peel, cut into large chunks.
• 1 Orange, peeled then cut roughly into six-eight slices.
• Salt, Paprika, Thyme, Peppercorns  (Rough seasoning, a teaspoon of each will do just fine.)
• 2 Cups Water
• 1 Cup Soy Sauce
• 1 Cup Red Wine
• 0.5 Cup Balsamic Vinegar
• 0.5 Cup Whiskey

Okay, this sounds like work but it really isn’t that bad.

1. Heat up your dutch oven, add a little bit of oil.
2. Wash your pork shoulder in cold water, then sear it on all sides in your dutch oven.  For the love of your hands, please use your tongs and wear gloves if you have them.  Don’t burn the living daylights out of yourself!
3. Pull the shoulder out and set it aside (if you have the dutch oven I have, you can set it right in the cover on your oven! 
4. Add your “wet” ingredients to the pot and let it come to a simmer.  I like to do my prep of items like the orange, peppers, scallions and such while the liquids are coming to a simmer.   Toss your other ingredients in as you are preparing.
5. When all items have come to a nice simmer, push the floating items to the side and put your pork shoulder in, SKIN SIDE UP.  IT should come up to about the skin without submerging completely.
6. Cover and put in preheated oven at 300 degrees.  Cook as such for 4-6 hours.
7. Check on your shoulder.  When the bone simply lifts out with absolutely no effort, you’re ready for stage two.
8. Remove all meat, then remove the bone.  Set aside the bone if you wish for later prep.
9. Strain the sauce of all solids, then pour back into dutch oven or a slow cooking device of your choice.

Okay.  So here’s the thing, you COULD serve it as is.   You could take the meat, chunk it out or pull it apart, and cut up the skin for serving to the brave and the bold.  You COULD just take the strained sauce and reduce it a bit, and use it for the pork.  But what is the fun in that?  So here’s stage two, which is quite easy.

1. Take your sauce, pour it into a nice slow cooker.  (I use a Thermos cooker myself.)  If you don’t have a slow cooker of any sort, you COULD go right back into the dutch oven!
2. Making sure you’ve removed all bone from the meat, chunk the meat if necessary to fit in your slow cooker.  Drop the results back in the sauce.   Leave the skin on, or if you’re scared you COULD just remove the skin.  But again, what would the fun be then?
3. Once you have just the sauce (strained!) and the meat, cook this AGAIN for as long as you can.   My latest batch cooked for an additional 15 hours before serving.   You can choose to pull the pork apart with two forks, or serve it chinese style as big chunks of pork.   Serve with Rice, on bread, but whatever you do, serve it with a generous pouring of the sauce!  The end result is a very tender pork with a sauce that is glorious with just rice or any bread. 
4. You can go further. Take the strained out “stuff” from the sauce, which should be a very potent and fragrant mash with big chunks of ginger and whole peppercorns just sitting in there.   I took this mixture and blended it down to a fine mash, then mixed it with broth made from the bone.  This yields a extremely potent sauce that I’m saving, but I imagine COULD be served with some of the meat if you were daring enough.   I have a jar of this in my fridge at the moment to experiment with.

Oh, by the way, I’ve been informed that the sauce, which you will have plenty of, is also great for serving up some other styles of dish.   Take peeled, softboiled eggs and simmer in the sauce for about an hour.  The eggs will absorb all of the sauce, yum. 

Enjoy!

The results were quite… Good…  As in, nearly fell out of my chair good.

I served…

• Garlic Bread
• Snow Peas and Bacon
• Portobello Mushroom with Onions
• USDA Prime Ribeye with a Merlot/Mushroom/Balsamic/Cocoa sauce

I… can’t really move at the moment.  Pardon me while I waddle over to the beanbag…. 

Rough notes/recipe under the cut.

Drying the Steaks…  (Shortened version of aging meat)

1. Selection of any steak, especially a Ribeye, should be executed with care.  For tonight’s meal I bought a four pack of Ribeyes from Costco — and I looked specifically for steaks with really good marbling.. (Look for fine spider patterns of fat.  Ribbons are not good, and if its lean, its not going to be tasty.  Trust me.)
2. Set yourself up a drying rack.  Make sure you use plastic or metal, NOT wood.  You want lots of airflow on a maximum amount of surface area of your cuts of steak!
3. Pat dry the steaks with some bounty (IMPORTANT), then set them on your rack near the back of the top rack of your fridge.   Remember, you need ALOT of air flow and they have to stay cool.  If your fridge is packed full, ignore this step!   Let them dry a couple of days.  If you’ve been successful, your steaks should FEEL a bit more like bricks, the excess moisture will be gone.  They should smell clean and “meaty”.  If they have brown spots, or are damp, or they smell “bad”, don’t ignore your nose, they’ve gone bad.

Prime Ribeye – Cast Iron Pan – Pan Fried   (Adopted from Alton Brown)

1. Take your steaks out, dry them (if you haven’t been aging them) and set them up to warm up to room temp.
2. You’ve got a Cast Iron Skillet or Grille right?  No?  Go get one.  Come back when you have it.
3. Drop your skillet in the oven, and fire that oven up.  The Hotter the Better.  No really, you want this pan rocket hot.  I set my oven to 505.
4. Take your hopefully warmer steaks, and season liberally with Peanut Oil, Salt and Pepper.
5. Is your skillet rocket hot?  Good.  Put the skillet on your stove, and fire up the gas.  (I hope you have gas..)  On high.  Let the skillet get hotter.  No really.  Have your steaks ready, and have tongs.
6. Everything ready?  Good.  Use your tongs, you don’t want to get near that skillet.   Drop your steak on the skillet.    Hear a screaming sizzle?   Good.   60 seconds, then flip to the other side for another 60 seconds.   You want a really nice brown sear.  (Healthy?  Hells no.  I never promised healthy.)
7. 60 seconds per side right?   Okay, flip your steak again and cut the heat down to medium.   Now, here comes the test — if you’ve got a long griddle or grilling pan and can adjust heat to vary depending on area, move your steak to the less than screaming hot side.  If not, oh well.
8. Depending on the cut and how thick your steaks are, your time may vary here.   Set a mental timer for about 8 minutes, but remember that results may vary!  I was working with inch thick steaks.   Cover steaks for about 2 minutes, uncover, let sit on medium heat for another 4-5 minutes until you see blood (or just moisture) seeping out the side and top.   Run heat back up to high, flip, sizzle for another 40 seconds.
9. Take your steaks and pop them on a drying rack or plate so they can cool for about 2 minutes, let the meat rest.
10. Enjoy.

Steak Sauce

1. You’ll need Red Wine or Merlot, Balsamic Vinegar, Olive oil, mushrooms (I used the cast off pieces from cleaning the portobellos),  DARK cocoa powder, a dash of flour and salt.   Amounts?  Um… sorry, I didn’t track, I was winging it..  Call it 2 parts Red Wine, 1 part Balsamic, 1 part mushroom, a dash of olive oil, flour and salt..  Oh, and a spoon of the cocoa.
2. Dice your mushrooms up, toss in pot.
3. Add your Red Wine and Vinegar.   Add cocoa powder.   Heat to a simmer, reduce to low, allow to simmer.  STIR OFTEN.
4. Add salt, olive oil, season as you wish.
5. Add flour, simmer further.   I allowed this to reduce for a good 30 minutes.
6. Pour lightly on steak.
7. OM NOM NOM.

All very simple.  Smells wonderful.  Going to fall over now.  Enjoy. 

Here, have some salty egg…

Mmmm, its bubbling away nicely now.

My aunt gave me two fresh Bitter Melons (Or Bitter Gourds for some of you) from her garden last week.

Cut them up, cleaned out the inside.. Defrosted some london broil, sliced that up thin. (I don’t have flank steak and didn’t want to go shopping, k?) Salted lightly. Tossed in nice hot wok with some peanut oil, fried for about a minute, then tossed in a liquid mix of sugar, soy sauce, a little more oil and some water. Let that sizzle for about two minutes, then tossed in a slurry of corn starch and some more soy, tossed and served on top of rice.

Bitter Melon is an acquired taste, but I’ve been craving it for months now. Mmmmm… *settles in and gets back to work with a bowl of warm rice and melon*

I’m still sleepy, and won’t say much except to pass on my HUGE thanks to everyone who attended and made the event a success!  Everyone had food, snacks, and people respected my request to BYOB if they wanted drink.

Food, Drink, more Food, decorations, and prep – $300 Seeing 30 people invade apartment, 20+ of them squeezed in simultaneously – Priceless

Special hugs and thanks to Annachichan, P. and M. (Liberty Provocation), mossgreen, jvowles, and my family who came early, hung out, helped out, dealt, cooked, cleaned, etc etc..   Too much to go into detail now, but later when I’ve recovered perhaps I will.  XD

However, the summary of weekend would probably be, “OM NOM NOM, Fish and Chips,  Bread Pudding in Bacon Custard, Wasabi Ice Cream, OMFG Cook Chili now, That’s no Castle that’s City College, Chicken n’ Waffles, Make my Cake Mmmmm Butter, Ribs, OM NOM NOM NOM, Party, How could we have eaten all that, OM NOM NOM, blackjack again, How much Jack did Jim drink, The Cake Is NOT A LIE, oh look its the great wall of aluminum, Mmmm Pearl River Mart, OM NOM NOM PIZZA, OM cupcakes, Camera Mecca, bye bye everyone, annnnnd clean clean clean…”

Oh yes, gallery of weekend is up on flickr..

Date: Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Time: 6:45pm – 9:45pm
Location: Monster Sushi – Chelsea
Street: 158 West 23rd Street
City/Town: New York, NY

Special Guest – the Patricola.
Special Password – “fishcakes”

He came by night – a man by the name of Patricola…
Invading on a Wednesday. How rude! But we know just how to fight back. We will STUFF HIM SILLY!

The Time : Wednesday July 16th — 6:45PM.
The Place : TBD..

Ping me if you’re coming!

Thursday night, June 5th – 7:15pm to 10:15pm.

Via Brasil
34 W 46th Street

Reservations will be for 7:30 — but if you’re coming you must tell me by noon.  LET THERE BE MEAT!

Thursday night, June 5th – 7:15pm to 10:15pm.

Via Brasil
34 W 46th Street

*edit*  -  We’re going to go Brazilian, but we’re not going to do all you can eat – simply crazy on costs.  This place looks good, we’ll give it a go!

Anyhow, same rules as always – come one come all but just let me know you’re coming!

1. Seeing Patrick Stewart in Macbeth.

2. Getting obscene amounts of sleep.

—

Cooking dinner for the parents now.   The usual “Dad went to market and bought meat” meal – steak, mushrooms and onions sauteed, salad, whatever else happens to be fresh.  Trying a different marinade for the mushrooms, a little bit of salt, pepper, hot sesame oil, olive oil, etc.  Test toasts over the fire seem to imply it will be quite tasty.