If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. If you are unfamiliar with RSS feeds, click here. Thanks for visiting!
Beginnings. I have been looking out over the food landscape for a while, and, now that I am riding on the seas a bit with this blog, I starting thinking about what finally pushed me to start posting (for my background in cooking, see my About page). I started thinking about what I love about food, and keep focusing on incredible meals I have eaten or made with pig. I also noticed that pig is a pretty hot topic in restaurants, books and online. All of this crystallized when I made my own bacon after deciding I couldn’t find the real sort of stuff I had tried a few times while on vacation in Vermont or in a rural breakfast spot somewhere around New Orleans. We’re talking thick, meaty slices of pork, with fat that is not soggy or burnt, but instead somewhere between creamy and toothy. Bacon that you don’t just consume, but savor. Read more…
NYC Food Places, Porcine Revolution
Spare ribs are the larger set of ribs on the underside of a pig. These are meatier and fatter than baby back ribs (which I love, too). This dish is pure pork. Ribs with some seasoning, smoke, and a slathering of homemade barbeque sauce - nothing more. I cook my ribs on a Weber grill, the kettle version which is 22 1/2 inches in diameter. With anything smaller, it is hard to get a full rack of ribs on the cooking grate. The smoke comes from wood chunks (these were hickory) that are soaked in water for an hour, or so, so will not burn on the grill. These chunks will be placed directly on to the hot coals. Flavor comes from a spice rub and a dash of barbecue sauce, which is optional. The real magic here comes from a few hours of low heat and smoke, making the tough ribs tender and infusing them with smoke flavor. I highly recomend The Cook’s Illustrated Guide to Grilling and Barbeque for anything related to the grill. Read more…
Grilling, Porcine Revolution, Ribs
For this example of porky love, I went to my favorite cooking resource, Cook’s Illustrated. I recommend that anyone interested in home cooking subscribe to their website at http://www.cooksillustrated.com/. The beans come out sweet and smoky, with a supporting pork flavor from the salt pork, and small bites of toothy pork from the bacon. This is an inexpensive, easy way to get the most out of white beans, which can be pretty bland. Although usually a side dishes, I will eat these on their own for a small, but very satisfying dinner. This will destroy the Pork ‘n Beans in your supermarket canned foods aisle. The beans absorb all the flavors as they slowly become tender, but the slow cooking keeps each bean pretty much intact, giving a nice layer of texture to the final dish.
Read more…
Bacon, Baked Beans, Beans, Porcine Revolution, Salt Pork
Beginnings. I have been looking out over the food landscape for a while, and, now that I am riding on the seas a bit with this blog, I starting thinking about what finally pushed me to start posting (for my background in cooking, see my About page). I started thinking about what I love about food, and keep focusing on incredible meals I have eaten or made with pig. I also noticed that pig is a pretty hot topic in restaurants, books and online. All of this crystallized when I made my own bacon after deciding I couldn’t find the real sort of stuff I had tried a few times while on vacation in Vermont or in a rural breakfast spot somewhere around New Orleans. We’re talking thick, meaty slices of pork, with fat that is not soggy or burnt, but instead somewhere between creamy and toothy. Bacon that you don’t just consume, but savor. Read more…
