Rôti de Porc au Lait and Parsnip Puree

Phew, I don't know about you all, but it is really hot this evening, and has been all day. Not much to do but hang around the apartment drinking water and laying under the ceiling fan, or if you are me, cooking with full burners and the oven on. Yep, I'm crazy. But I figure it will take a couple of very delicious dinners to convince Husband J to start fanning me with palm fronds and spritzing me with Evian all day.

Few weeks back I made a dish much more suited to the cooler weather--rôti de porc au lait (pork roasted in milk) with parsnip puree. If you'll all turn your hymnals to page 173, you'll see a very mouthwatering picture of a golden pork roast being basted in creamy milk. The reality of this dish is not exactly how that picture makes it look, but it is tasty.

First things first, obtaining a pork loin roast. Obviously the only place I can ever go for pork is my trusty vendor, Cedarbrook Farm. At their stall I learned the difference between a European pork loin roast (bone in, skin on) and an American pork loin roast (skinless, boneless, but with a very nice layer of fat lining one side). Since the recipe calls for boneless, I went with the American roast. I carted this home, and put it in the fridge, and then into the sink in an ice bath, to thaw.

To cook the roast, first brown it on all sides in a large pot.



Pork bubbling away in a mix of olive oil and butter.

While searing the pork, I chopped up the veggies used to create the milk sauce: carrot, leek, onion and garlic.



Mise en place for the veggies. The upper right bowl contains garlic confit, which I threw into the parsnip puree on a whim.

After the roast had been seared, I set it aside, and added the chopped veggies to the pot to caramelize over high heat.



Next, I added flour and the milk, and a bouquet garni.



This whole mess gets brought to a boil, then the pork is added, and the pot turned down to a simmer. Then the lid goes on the pot to cook for 1 hour.



So far, so good. While the pork cooked, I made the parsnip puree. This is insultingly easy--just chop the parsnips, boil until soft, strain, and pulse in a food processor while adding some salt, white pepper, and a full stick of butter. (Yesss.) I also added some garlic confit, as I said earlier, for a little kick.

After the hour, I removed the pork from the pot, and set it aside to rest. I decided to skip straining the sauce, and instead pureed the entire mess, veg and all, with my stick blender, until it formed a creamy orange sauce.

Then I cut into the pork, and was met with this:



Oh good lord... the pork didn't cook more than half an inch into the roast! At this point our dinner guest had already arrived, and I started panicking. I shoved the entire thing into the oven for a half an hour, and was met with still rawish pork coming out of the oven. In a despair spurred by not desiring to make people sick and get sued, I decided to cut the pork up and saute the slices until they were done. This seemed to work, so I slathered the sauce onto the meat and served.



Not the prettiest shot of dinner ever, but hey, nobody died.

The pork was very succulent, the sauce was delish, but the real star of the dinner was the butter--I mean parsnip--puree. I haven't eaten many parsnips in my time but this has made me a convert, as they are sweet, creamy and delicious.

I was a little sad that the sauce was not the white, creamy, milky sauce featured in the photograph, but other bloggers who have made the dish before me have also come out with a rather chunky orange sauce instead, so I figure I must be doing that bit right.

It took me a while to think of why the pork just did not cook at all according to the recipe, but I think it's because the massive chunk of meat just didn't defrost properly in the time I gave it. Next time I guess it's straight into the ice bath as soon as it's brought home, rather than into the fridge first.

Lessons learned: Do a better job at defrosting. Parsnips are freaking fantastic, especially with a stick of butter mixed in them.

Next week: Steak au Poivre.

Côte de Porc à la Charcutière and pommes purée

Sounds fancy doesn't it? But no! It's just pork chops with onion and mustard sauce. After another stressful week, I wanted a dish that was simple, and didn't involve any deep frying of meringue in duck fat, or wrapping quail around bits of foie gras (all that to look forward to, I promise). The pork dishes in the Les Halles Cookbook, however, are all nice and simple and straightforward. I decided to eschew the pork tenderloins with garlic confit and bacon due to their needing to be refrigerated overnight, and chose the next, simpler pork chop recipe.

Pork chops are not something I cook with much regularity. Like brussels sprouts and liver, they were something that my mother didn't like much, and so she never cooked them when she could help it. Dad, however, loves all things pork, and would ask for them at dinner from time to time. Mom had no idea about how to cook pork, though, and pork chops would invariably come out of the oven tough and leathery. My sisters and I would sing "wooooo... woo... woo... can't cut this!" Which, in retrospect was mean, but hilarious.

So, no pork chops for me, and none for Husband J either, as his parent's didn't much like pork chops. But I'm willing to give Tony a chance with a mediocre cut of meat, so let's go!

First, I made some garlic confit for a salad based off of the Ad Hoc at Home valencia salad (frisee, oranges, olives, almonds, and roasted garlic vinaigrette), which has nothing to do with the dish, but made the house smell outstanding.

Next, I peeled the potatoes, and put them in a pot to boil. Meanwhile, I seasoned the pork chops with salt and pepper.



The chops get sauteed in a pan of olive oil and butter, four minutes a side until they are nicely seared.



Once sauteed, the chops go into the oven for eight minutes to cook through. Meantime I had Husband J mash the potatoes, while I boiled a cup of cream and a metric ton of butter. This got added to the potatoes for the mashing process. (I didn't get pics of this, as it's mashed potatoes, for heaven's sake.)

While Husband J mashed, I made the sauce for the chops. I chopped an onion and dumped it into the saute pan that I'd cooked the chops in, and added some flour and white wine to scrape up the fond.



Once the wine reduced, I added some chicken stock and let that reduced. Finally, I whisked in some demi-glace, mustard, and chopped cornichons, and the sauce was finished.

I served the chops with a side of potatoes, topped with sauce:



I just need to comment how not appetizing this looks. The cookbook has some lovely pics in it, but none of them really seem to be of the finished dish. Case in point, this recipe features a lovely browned chop, with no sauce on it. The sauce in my photo is a really peculiar brown with bits of green cornichon, and looks really horrible.

The taste, however, was outstanding. The sauce was absolutely spectacular, and gave the chop a very nice tangy flavor. The chop itself was very tender, and not in the least bit overcooked, but with no pink in the middle. For sure, this is a great way to cook a chop.

The potatoes were...well... mashed potatoes. I snuck in some garlic confit while mashing, and the recipe boasts that they are "just a little bit better," but they're just mashed potatoes, nothing better, nothing worse (even for all the butter I put in). The sauce was great on top of them, though.

And a bonus pic of the salad, which went beautifully with the dish:



I have to nominate this dish "best weekday dish," since it is so easy and quick to make. It's the opposite of the extremely indulgent sea scallops, being relatively low in fat, inexpensive, and easy to cook (and doesn't make your house smell like fish for a month). It has Husband J me sold on pork chops (though I still can't wait for tenderloins, garlic and bacon!)

Lessons learned: Pork chops do not have to taste like leather; a mashed potato is a mashed potato; French food is not all that photogenic, but it sure is tasty.

Next week: Possibly some salad d'onglet!

Poulet au Pot

Phew, what a refreshing break! Thanks everyone for being patient, and coming back to read some more.

After the rather exotic coeur du porc last time, I decided to go with something a good deal more familiar and homey, and what better than poulet au pot--that is, chicken-in-a-pot?

Poulet au pot, as I discovered from the magic that is google, is a recipe that dates back over 500 years, and is a Sunday Staple in the French countryside. It's basically a stuffed chicken stewed in a pot with veggies, and served with crunchy cornichons, salt and mustard in its own broth. The internets even report that Henry IV declared that every French family ought to be able to have poulet au pot once a week, the start I suppose of that great political promise "a chicken in every pot."

I made sure to wake up extremely early on Sunday, so to take the best advantage of the farmer's market's bounty (particularly the whole chickens from Smith Meadows Farms, which are snapped up very quickly in the mornings). I got there so early, actually, that I had half an hour before the "starting bell" and had to grab a coffee at (uch) Starbucks to bide my time. It turned out to work well, because I was able to scope out which stands had the veggies I needed for the stew, and could map out the best route through the market in order to maximize my take. Farmer's market strategies... I don't know whether that's uperyuppie or megahousefrau.

I stopped first at Smith Meadows and asked for the biggest chicken they had (Tony's recipe calls for a 6 pounder; the biggest I could get was 5 lbs) and a pound of chicken livers. Only--disappointment--they had no livers that day. I'm beginning to think there's some kind of Smith Meadows conspiracy against me, where they don't have precisely the thing I need each week (because of course all farms must cater to my needs at all times). Oh well, at least I got the chicken. Next I stopped by the Cedarbrook Farm stall to pick up some sausage for the stuffing. They were out of "country rope," but did have loose sausage stuffing outside of the casing--perfect! I thanked them for the heart, and reported that it tasted like roast beef. They looked at me like I had sprouted two heads, but tried to be polite about it. I guess the thought of cooking pig heart is just a little too much crazy at 9:00 in the morning, even if you are a farmer. It's going to be fun when I ask them for pig livers for the upcoming pate....

Then I loaded up on veggies and hauled my take home. Next to Whole Foods for cornichons, livers, cream and bread while the chicken and sausage defrosted in the refrigerator.

In addition to the chicken-in-a-pot, I decided to go with the "pot" theme and make salted caramel pots-de-creme from a recipe I found on Tastespotting at the blog "A Bowl of Mush" and have been dying to try. I need to get on some of the desserts that are actually in the book, but they're so few, while the main courses are so many, I'm trying to space them out. So as a bonus, I'll tell you about my experience with this recipe, even if it doesn't exactly go with the theme.

After getting back from Whole Foods, I started the dessert by melting sugar, sea salt, and a little water in a pot til it got caramelized and liquidy. The recipe calls for stirring constantly, but I found that by leaving the sugar alone, then stirring it up a bit and leaving it alone again, the caramelization process went faster, but still didn't burn. Then I took the caramel off the heat to add the cream. This proved troublesome, as the caramel immediately turned rock-hard and stuck to the bottom of the pan, refusing to mix with the cream at all. I had to allow the cream to heat slowly and melt the caramel in order to incorporate.

While the caramel melted into the cream, I started preparing the stuffing for the bird. First I mixed a cup of bread cubes with some more heavy cream, then added parsley and shallot. Next I chopped up a half pound of chicken livers into a liver-y mush, and added them plus the pound of sausage meat to the mix. The stuff looked a bit slimy thanks to the livers, but I bucked up and stuffed the mess into the bird. There was a good bowlful of stuffing left over, even after I crammed the chicken to the breaking point, so I baked it in the oven as dressing.

Raw stuffing. Yup that red gobbety stuff is chicken liver and possibly blood. Mmm.

Tony calls for sewing the chicken's butt up with a trussing needle and thread, but by the time I'd overstuffed the thing to the point of livery stuffing oozing out of its cavity (nice mental picture there, right?), there was going to be no sewing, that was for sure. Also, I couldn't find a needle and thread at the Whole Foods. I figured once I got the stuffing in and propped the chicken up inside the pot, the stuffing would stay reasonably intact.

Finally, I chopped up the veggies (carrots, parsnips instead of turnips, celery, garlic, onions), and added them and a bouquet garni to the pot, and set them to simmer for two hours.

Chicken and veg simmering together

Back to the custards. By now, the cream had melted the caramel sufficiently so that I had caramel infused cream instead of rock hard caramel sitting in a pool of cream. I cooled the caramel cream and added it to a mix of egg yolks, sugar, and vanilla. The mix filled four ramekins reasonably well (enough for Husband J, Neighbor C, Friend I and me), so into the oven it went for about 50 minutes to bake.

By this time the chicken stew was smelling amazing, bubbling away on the stove, and the extra dressing had come out of the oven sizzling, and filling the kitchen with a rich meaty aroma. Husband J, Neighbor C and I all had bites, and the stuff was really out of this world.

Cooked dressing, glistening with delicious fat.

After the chicken simmered for two hours, I threw in a chopped up head of cabbage and a couple of red potatoes, and let the stew simmer for another 30 minutes. Then the pot came off the heat, the chicken came out of the pot, and I carved it up, giving everyone a chunk of white meat, a chunk of dark meat, a spoonful of stuffing, and some veggies, and some broth on top. Cornichons, salt and mustard went into the extra ramekins on the table for everyone to spoon out as much as we liked.

The result was better than I could have imagined. I'm always skeptical about boiling food, coming from the Irish tradition of "chuck it into the pot and boil it till it's grey" school of cooking by ancestry, but poulet au pot makes for one spectacular chicken. The meat was super tender, falling off the bone, but the breast meat was not at all dry. The stuffing inside the bird spilled out in a nice, well-cooked pile, adding some meaty richness to the dish. The veggies were all cooked to perfection, especially the very delicious cabbage and potatoes. All of it went wonderfully with the briny mustard and cornichons. Husband J feels that it is the chicken stew equivalent of a pastrami sandwich, with the meaty goodness nicely balances with the tart mustard and sour pickle. In fact, he liked it better than the poulet roti, because the meat was so tender and soft in this dish, and the combination of veggies and condiments were perfect. Everyone ate a big plateful, barely saving room for dessert (the dish is surprisingly filling).

The caramel pots de creme were again the big hit of the night (notice how everyone loves desserts best?) with everyone cooing over their salty caramely goodness. I topped them with whipped cream and a sprinkle of sea salt, and it was the perfect end to a great meal. The caramel cream was an even bigger hit than the fruit tarts if you can believe it.

Uh, and sorry about the lack of photos on this post. The dishes got snapped up before I could really take a camera to them. I'll definitely be making this dish again, so I might try to supplement this post with future poulet au pot photos.

Lessons learned: Sometimes chucking it into a pot and boiling it is the best way to cook. No matter what, everyone loves dessert best. Anything tastes good with mustard, salt and pickle. Chicken livers are pretty freaking tasty.

Next week: Frisee aux lardons (BACON SALAD, an oxymoron if I've ever heard one) and Coquilles Saint Jacques avec Champagne (sea scallops in champagne sauce). But what for dessert?

Coeur de Porc a'Larmagnac

Didn't think I'd do it, did you?

Perhaps you are aware of the various recipes in the Les Halles Cookbook. Perhaps you own it. Perhaps you thought to yourself "nahh, she'll crap out before she gets to the hardcore stuff."

Perhaps you know what this is, and are blown away by my sheer audacity.

Or perhaps you are clueless and are thinking to yourself "doth my high school French deceive me? Is she cooking a coeur of a porc for REALS?"

The answer? Yes. Pig heart with Armagnac. There are a lot of interesting recipes in the Les Halles Cookbook, including an entire section labeled "Blood and Guts," which involves the cooking of various types of offal, or organ meats. Some of these recipes I know and love, specifically boudin noir (blood sausage) with caramelized apples. Some, however, are very exotic and include kidneys, livers, and in this case, a pig heart. So follow along as I man up to the challenge of my first "Blood and Guts" recipe.

First things first: secure a heart.

Well of course the only place to go is my trusty pork vendor, Cedarbrook Farm. I e-mailed them to ask if they had a heart available, and they responded that they had not one, but TWO, count them, TWO hearts, for $3 each. Can I just say, after the $15 roasted chicken, that this is probably the best bargain in the Les Halles Cookbook so far? I mean, pastured, farm raised organic pig hearts are incredibly freaking cheap. Perhaps because no one in their right mind would willingly put one in their mouths, but THAT IS BESIDE THE POINT. So heart problem solved. I got both, as one heart serves two, and I wanted to have enough for brave Neighbor C, who volunteered to try this potentially delicious and/or nasty dish.

Next, Armagnac. Armagnac is french brandy distilled from white grapes and aged in black oak casks for a minimum of two years. I'd never drunk Armagnac before, but now seems like as good a time as any to try. We have a pretty good liquor store just outside my metro stop (doesn't have awesome things like creme de violette and orgeat syrup, but does have my favorite absinthe and a good wine selection), and they had three types of Armagnac for my choosing. The sales guy told me he'd start me out with "entry level Armagnac," which made me giggle, and of course I chose the one that had a box with a guy sporting a rocking mustache on it.

"Bristles."

That night Husband J and I cracked it open, and WOW. I'm normally not a huge brandy or cognac fan, but this Armagnac put both to shame with its smooth texture and delicious flavor, which I won't try to describe here because hello, pretentious liquor critics suck. But it's damn tasty, so if you haven't tried Armagnac, give ol' mustachio a shot, ok?

And next, chicken stock. I used up my last bit of stock in the soupe au pistou, and was looking forward to roasting another chicken and using the bones in another batch of stock. Fate, it seems, thought differently. When I took my nice organic Whole Foods chicken from the fridge and opened its packet, it smelled rank. The damn thing was rotten, and even had a week to go before its "sell by" date! Ugh. I chucked the entire thing, and ordered delivery fish curry.

Sunday morning arrived, and I rolled out of bed to pick up my hearts. The Cedarbrook Farm rep at the stand was very nice, asking me about the dish and wishing me luck. She handed me two nicely vacuum wrapped packets, beautifully labeled.


I headed down to the next meat stand, as they often sell chicken stock... but no such luck, they had none that day. Which is why, though I swore up and down I would use no shortcuts in this project, I am using... shudder... store bought chicken stock. Forgive me Tony, for I have sinned...

Anyway, no more crying over the chicken stock that was not meant to be. Time to roast some garlic.

Coeur de Porc a'lArmagnac requires the making of garlic confit from the "miscellaneous meez" section of the book. Garlic confit is essentially roasted, salted garlic, and is horrifyingly easy to make. Just chuck a bunch of unpeeled garlic cloves onto some aluminum foil, drizzle with olive oil, salt and add a sprig of thyme, roast at 350 for 30 minutes, and you are set. Makes your house smell awesome to boot. Husband J attacked the confit once it was made, and it was all I could do to save some for the sauce.

Before

After

I also set up to make roasted fingerling potatoes, salad, and a plum tart with the Italian plums that I found at the market. I figured just in case the heart turns out to be horrible, we'll have something to wash away the taste... and if it's sweet, so much the better.

Apparently I have embraced the "elegant spiral" after all. Go me!

I know you are all thinking "Okay ENOUGH with the bitching about the chicken, the neurotic back and forth and the freaking garlic! We want to see the money shot, bitch, where is the fucking HEART?"

Here you go:


Mmmm doesn't that look tasty? Look at all those nerves, and veins and... stuff.

While the hearts defrosted in an ice bath, I utilized some leftover back fat (haha, back fat) from the rillettes, rendered it in a sautee pan and sweated some onion and herbs until soft.


Then I trimmed the fat from the top of the hearts, and stuffed them with the onion mixture.

I am so hardcore.

Well maybe not stuffed. The recipe calls for stuffing the ventricles with the onion mixture (pleasant thought, I know), but the hearts I have obtained are split down the middle, presumably for easier cooking. That's great, but now I have not much space for stuffing. I settled on stuffing what I could, and ladling the rest over the hearts to cover. Into the oven they went for 20 minutes (double the time for one heart).


I opened the oven once to check on their progress, and the smell that wafted out was, well, good. It smelled rich and meaty and hearty. It smelled like a good boudin noir smells.

After the hearts were cooked I covered them with foil to rest while I made the sauce. This part is a little dicey, as it involves cooking down the Armagnac in a pan over a gas flame. "The Armagnac will probably flame up," says Tony, "so watch out." Oh my god. I should note here that I'd already set off the smoke alarm with my roasted potatoes (remember why you never roast potatoes any more? Because that always happens.) I had visions of flames licking the kitchen ceiling. I called Husband J into the kitchen. "I'm going to need you to stand by with the fire extinguisher," I said.

"Are you kidding?" he asked, incredulous.

"Do I look like I'm kidding?" I shot back. He trotted off to get the fire extinguisher.

My best friend.

I heated the shot of Armagnac in the pan. Here my bravery gave out, and I controlled the temperature so that it reduced but did not flame up. Then I poured in the *shudder* store bought stock, reduced some more, and then stirred in the pan drippings from the hearts. The garlic confit went in next, as well as a hefty knob of butter. I may have reached a saturated fat event horizon with this sauce.


Finally, with the sauce made, I sliced the hearts very thinly until they resembled nothing so much as a nice fillet, instead of a scarily shaped organ. At this point, I decided to be brave again, so I grabbed a slice and popped it in my mouth. Husband J watched with wide eyes. "How is it?" he asked.

I chewed. "It tastes like... roast beef!"

And it did. Exactly like roast beef. With a little bit of a chewy texture, and an undertaste that signaled the organ-ness of the meat, but otherwise you could put it on a sandwich with mayo and provolone and never tell the difference.

No really, it's roast beef. Try it.

Over the slices went the sauce, and we trucked our dishes over to Neighbor C's for a double feature of trashy reality TV: TA2 and "My Antonio". Between the three of us we cleaned up the potatoes and most of the heart, and demolished a good two thirds of the plum tart, which was the favorite of everyone involved (thanks, Oprah!). But everyone went for seconds on the heart, which made me incredibly happy. Another success.

So, would I make it again? Well, honestly, probably not. It was a good dish, but more rich than I like my food (and that's before the butter sauce), and the special ordering of the heart tends to be something I'd rather forego. But I'm glad I made it and glad I ate it, as I'm well on my way to true culinary badassery.

Lessons learned: Just because "offal" and "awful" are homonyms does not mean they should be conflated. Heart tastes good, like roast beef, but slice it thin anyway so it doesn't look like you're gnawing on a big nasty organ. Armagnac is delicious to drink and to cook with, just make sure you don't start fires. Never roast potatoes, ever. Sauce is always better with roasted garlic and butter. Sometimes even the best of plans fall through and you have to use nasty store bought stock.

Next Week: Break time. I have a packed Sunday that involves other people cooking for me, so although I might consider doing a small dish or appetizer, it's more likely I'll take a break and return on October 4 with something new and delicious. Stay tuned, please!

Rillettes: Tasting Day

Today is Wednesday! The shredded porky goodness of the rillettes have been snuggling up together for three days, which means it is time to taste them.

What should be a glorious, victorious day started out with some disappointing news. Dad, alas, will not make it into the US this weekend after all, so plans for family dinner may have gone to naught. Now two of us have two whole tupperwares of shredded pork meat covered in back fat to eat. By ourselves. This had better taste pretty freaking delicious in order to be worth the twin heart attacks we will so clearly be having.

So Husband J and I sat down to our meal, which consisted of sliced baguette, rillettes, and spinach salad with cherry tomatoes. (A lot of salad.)

Now, one thing I wasn't sure about is what to do with the back fat. Tony doesn't really say what to do with the stuff when you actually get around to eating it. I ended up just peeling it off and saving it to wrap the leftovers.

As I scooped the pork into the ramekin, I started to get a bit concerned. I mean, let's face it. The stuff looks like cat food. But then all pate looks kind of like cat food, so maybe we are kind of on the right track.

The rillettes:

Yup. Cat food.

As for the taste, well, actually I surprised myself yet again. These are GOOD! Despite the cat food looks, this is actually a very nice pork pate type dish. Husband J and I thought it might taste more like pulled pork with french spices instead of barbecue sauce, but it is more of a classic pate flavor. And hey, I made (kind of) pate that tastes like (actual) pate, first time ever. Yay me!

We ended up eating the full ramekin on about half the baguette, so now I feel like I have gained about 20 pounds of pure pork fat. Even still, it was a good summer dinner, since it's served cold, and goes great with the salad.

Of course now we still have a tupperware and a half to go. This stuff is very filling. Maybe we should have family dinner after all. Anyone who wants to help us eat these, please leave comments. Because I need more comments!

Rillettes du Porc, Basic Pie Dough

Today's Les Halles adventure is a truly frenchified dish, rillettes du porc. This is the first dish I got really excited about cooking from the Les Halles Cookbook because it looks intimidating at first glance, but actually requires very little labor on the part of the cook. It's also the dish that Tony rhapsodizes about in the introduction to the cookbook as being the thing that convinced him to take the job as executive chef at Les Halles restaurant in the first place.

He tells the story in the introductory section of the cookbook, how he went to an interview with Jose de Meirelles and was unimpressed with the shabby, dirty looking restaurant, nicotine stained ceilings blazing in the noon New York sun. The interview concluded with an invitation to dinner at the restaurant. Tony decided to pass on the job, but mentioned the free dinner offer to his (first) wife Nancy. She, hungry for steak frites, insisted he keep the dinner appointment. When the two pushed their way into the now-crowded, darkened restaurant, it was clear a magical transformation had taken place. He stared, astounded at the menu at dishes he hadn't seen since his childhood summers in France, and the first dish he orders is "a crock of lovely, extravagantly fatty rillettes." By the time he finished dinner, he decided to take the job, and the rest is food-memoir-and-travel-tv history. (It's a good story, and better the way he writes it, so I encourage you all to buy the cookbook or get it from the library even if just for this three-page story.)

So what are rillettes du porc? Basically, it's boiled, shredded pork, stored under slices of fat, and molded like a pate to be served spread over slices of baguette as an appetizer. I'm making them this weekend for a family dinner next weekend in honor of dad's visit. My dad lives as an expat in a Middle Eastern country, and whenever he comes back to the US for a visit or business, the first thing he looks for is a big serving of pork. Rillettes seem like the perfect, porky gluttenous dish to serve him, particularly since Ramadan began yesterday, and he (a non-Muslim) is forced to snatch quick bites in his office while the rest of his colleagues fast. Rillettes also have to be made at least three days in advance to allow the flavors to marry, which is why I'm making them this weekend for next weekend's dinner.

On to the dish!

I knew just where I was going to get my pork for this dish--the Cedarbrook Farm stand at the farmer's market, which provides the most delicious pastured pork. I am a huge fan of their hot Italian sausage (of which they were providing free samples while we waited in the line--BONUS!) and their bacon. I was waited on by the must cherubic little boy who sweetly asked me what I would like from their truck.

"I need some serious pork from you today!" I said, to differentiate myself from the masses who were snapping up the Italian sausages after tasting the free samples (posers... I liked the sausage BEFORE it was cool). "Do you have pork belly?"

Angelic little boy conferred with his mom, who was working with the register.

"Not til September!" he reported.

What is this?? Pork belly not in season? I was not aware that there even was a season for pork belly, though I suppose it makes some sense. Well never mind, Whole Foods was bound to have something I could use. I ordered a pound of pork shoulder (though as I discovered it only comes in 3 pound packets) and a pound of back fat (hahaha, back fat back tack tack back fat back...). After obtaining some veggies, peaches, yogurt and butter from the market stands, I left Husband J with the bags while I ran to the Whole Foods to find some belly. Only when I got there, there was no pork belly to be had. I skimmed the butcher stand, remembering to check the refrigerated cuts section, but still no darn belly! Oh well, I decided, grabbing two pounds of bacon. What is bacon but pork belly that has been cured and sometimes smoked? I got the thickest, fattiest, least messed with bacon I could find, which would just have to do.

I was feeling a little despondent as I walked back to the house in the hot Sunday morning sun. But I had to remind myself that I'd done the best I could, that salted pork belly was probably not going to taste too different than non-cured belly, and that however you slice it, I was the winner in this situation, because I was the one walking home with TWO POUNDS OF BACON!!!

Only, I wasn't. I walked in the door, and found Husband J slicing up some peaches into little bowls of greek yogurt for our breakfast, and pouring coffee.

"Did you find the pork belly?" he asked.

"Nope," I said, "so I got bacon. See?"

I reached into the bag and got a handful of parsley. Bay leaf. Two slices of Norwegian Jarlsburg. Thyme. Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap. But no bacon. I'd left it at the register.

Gallant Husband J grabbed the receipt and trotted back to Whole Foods to fetch the bacon while I seethed, steamed and sweated, and used up all our ice in an ice bath to defrost the pork shoulder.

Pork Shoulder defrosting in its package. I looove you Cedarbrook Farm!

When the bacon arrived, I chopped it up into sliced chunks and threw it into the big stock pot.

mmm. Bacon.

The pork shoulder had about defrosted, so I cut the three pound cut into thirds, and chopped a third into chunks. The shoulder even had a layer of skin on it, which to my credit, I was NOT grossed out by. Mostly I thought to myself, "cool, skin" because although I am not awesome enough to actually slaughter a pig and cook it for my dinner, I feel that buying pastured pork with the bones and skin and all is a good way to get to that point.

Pork shoulder chopped. At the top is the branded or stamped bits of skin. To the right of those is my Whole Foods receipt, used to claim the bacon. To the right is my 8.5 inch Wusthof chef's knife. She is my very favorite knife. I call her "Vera."

The pork went into the pot along with some fresh herbs (parsley, bay leaf, thyme) and four cups of water.


I turned the heat on to low, and we are set to cook for six hours. Now there is something kind of morally reprehensible to me about boiling bacon. Bacon, like all the most delicious foods (onion rings, paneer pakoras, beignets, calamari, mars bars) should be FRIED. And I can't help but thinking of that bit in Better Off Dead where the mom boils the bacon and it turns green and disgusting. But the French have apparently been boiling bacon for centuries, and who am I to argue with the French and Julia Child?

Next, time to make some basic pie dough from the "miscellaneous meez" (ugh, so precious) section of the cookbook, for tonight's dinner of zucchini/tomato/leek quiche. There aren't any quiche recipes in the Les Halles Cookbook, but I do make a mean quiche, and am evangelical about handmade pie crusts. Premade does NOT taste the same, or feel the same, or ANYTHING the same as a simple, easy homemade crust. I have made plenty of crusts in my time, but now is a great time to try Tony's recipe.

Today it's time to try a crust technique that I've never done--pie crust in the food processor. I've heard it's the easiest, best way to make a pie crust, but what can I say... I'm old school and tend to use a fork. I put 2 cups of sifted flour into the processor, along with sugar, salt, a stick of butter and a beaten egg (really? Never used an egg in pie crust either). Blended all of this until it was a mass of crust.


Then I added a tablespoon and a half of water. when the crust came away from the sides of the Cuisinart, it was time to roll it into a ball, cover in plastic, and refrigerate.

Pulling away from the sides of the Cuisinart.

The pork continued to simmer on the stovetop, filling the house with pork-smelling goodness. I sat down for a break to watch a DVD of The French Chef with Julia Child that I got off Netflix (to husband J's dismay--he'd wanted either The State or Mad Men, both of which were ahead of The French Chef in our queue. But both had "long waits" so The French Chef it was). Julia was cooking tripes a la mode, holding up an entire cow stomach for our viewing pleasure. Between putting together the quiche (bacon, egg, cheese, veggies sauteed in bacon fat), the pork simmering on the stove (more than half fat itself) and the tripe on the tv, I was beginning to feel a little ill.

Once properly cooled, I rolled the pie crust out on my silicone mat. To my great dismay, the crust was a little too dry, and cracked immediately. I frantically patched it together, but by the time I had it rolled out and ready to get into the pie pan, it cracked again. I had to console myself with piecing it, bit by bit, into the pie pan, and pressing it together first with fingertips, then the heel of my hand for an even surface.

FRANKENCRUST!!!

At least it was marginally in once piece at this point. I filled it with zucchini-onion mixture, then bits of bacon left over from the rillettes and cooked the way God intended (that is FRIED), then some halved cherry tomatoes from the market, and covered it with a mix of eggs, milk, cream, and cheese. Popped that into the oven for about an hour.

Some people would have arranged the tomatoes and zucchini artfully, perhaps in an elegant spiral. Those people can suck it.

By this time, Julia was showing us how to fillet whole fish, and roast and serve them by pulling their tails apart and stuffing them through their mouths, as if they were throwing up their own tails. I was feeling seriously sick at that point.

"I should have made salad," I groaned.

"Is the quiche ready?" asked Husband J.

Almost. The quiche was golden brown at the end of the hour, and out of the oven it came, ready for our dinner.


To my astonishment, frankencrust actually tasted really good. It wasn't rock hard, as I feared it would be, but buttery, light, and flaky, the way a good pie crust should be. It got a bit heavy at the edges, but that's it. I managed to get down a small piece of quiche, but that was about all the grease I could handle for one night. Husband J procured a dry riesling that was acidic enough to make me feel a little better. It was practically a salad.

After dinner, the pork was ready. I drained it in a colander, then, in batches, shredded the pork with two forks.

This really does not look appetizing.

Shredding the pork

"Feel free to shovel some still-warm pork into your face," recommends Tony when you get to this step. "You know you want to."

Well actually I was still feeling sick and did NOT want any pork. But I managed to feed some to Husband J, who gave it an enthusiastic double thumbs up.

Finally, the shredded pork gets stored in small plastic containers under a layer of back fat. It has to marry for three days, so we'll try one of the containers on Wednesday (with a SALAD) and report back on how it tastes!

Covered in back fat. Haha. "Back fat."

Lessons Learned: Pork belly has a season and it starts in September, which is not now. "Back fat" is hilarious to say. Don't leave your bacon at the Whole Foods, but if you do, it's easy to get back. Making too much bacon-centered foods in one day while watching Julia Child cook tripe will make you feel very sick, so try not to do that.

Next time: Tasting report on rillettes du porc.