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!
For this porky treat I give thanks to the Home Sick Texan, whose great blog inspired my Yankee attempt at a Texas classic. The only experience I really had with refried was some sorry attempts at New York “Tex-Mex” joints, and some canned versions that I would heat up and eat with an egg. Once I made my own batch, I had the revelation I often have with food , where I see why people love a dish when it is done with care and thought. With fresh beans and attention to technique and ingredients, these beans had none of the pasty, almost chalky flavor I had associated with refried beans.
Read more…
Beans, Porcine Revolution, Refried Beans
Manteca, or lard, is another by product of my homemade bacon. When you done frying up your bacon, you should save the drippings left over in the pan in a small jar. Same goes for when you make chicharones or anything else that renders fat from a pig. This pork fat can be stored at room temperature, and used as a cooking fat that adds flavor like no canola oil ever can. I keep some in my pantry in a small jar that used to hold jam. When I asked a friend of mine from New Orleans how he makes red beans and rice, he told me that first you fry up a pan of bacon after coming home from a night of drinking, eat it up with your friends, and go to sleep. Then, start cooking your aromatics in the bacon grease the next morning. This is a perfect example of why the Grub Blogger loves New Orleans cooking, and why they don’t need a Porcine Revolution, because they have been doing it for years.
This post is part of the Porcine Revolution.
Porcine Revolution
Posole is right there in the front ranks of the Porcine Revolution. Caldo gallego is great – really great – but it has some beef and chicken. Posole goes straight to the essence of pork, mostly by the use of pig’s feet, whose gelatinous loveliness gives this stew its rich, deep pork flavor without the thickness that comes from the salt pork used in caldo gallego. Posole is a Mexican stew, that comes in red, white and green (like their flag). I like the red version, so that is what I have made here. Posole is a fixture on weekend menus at real deal Mexican restaurants. I used to enjoy it at the Red Hook Ballfields, before that scene died out. I give a big shout out to nathanscomida.blogspot.com. Nathan’s got a good thing going on over there with detailed photos and recipes from the heart, one of which inspired my posole rojo. I started off with an assortment of the most inexpensive cuts of pork from the local supermarket.
Read more…
Mexican, Porcine Revolution, Posole
I fell in love with the (mostly pork action) food scene at the soccer fields after seeing a short video on some webpage, going down to Red Hook pretty much every weekend to chow down on the Mexican, Central American and Colombian grub dished up by the vendors who lined the outskirts of a soccer field. The soccer fields have been documented very well by J. Slab on the Porkchop Express, and I suggest you check out his site for the full run down. The Grub Blogger will say that he was part of the initial rush of folk who likely lead to the evisceration of this great scene, which was reduced to trucks vending out grub from the street adjacent to where the real action used to be. There is definitely a feeling of guilt for having told everyone who would listen about this special scene, and then watching as it got overwhelmed, and eventually on to the radar of the health department and food licensing agency of the City of New York. Still, I had many good times there, and was introduced the to the huarache, a sort of super-taco made from fresh masa and filled with whatever was on the griddle. Read more…
Mexican, NYC Food Places, Porcine Revolution
Caldo Gallego (basically, Galician Stew) is a childhood favorite of the Grub Blogger. If I weren’t eating at home or at a Chinese restaurant, I was chowing down at La Tacita de Oro on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. They specialized in comida china-criolla. Everyone who worked there was Chinese, but you ordered in English, and they yelled into a microphone down to the basement kitchen in Spanish. A totally normal place for me as a kid, but pretty wild thinking back on it. Apparently, there had been a steady stream of Chinese immigrants to Cuba over the years, and many fled Fidel’s revolution for the States to continue their journey as entrepreneurial migrants. La Tacita had two sides to their menu. One with classic, Chinese fare and the other with Cuban food. Every once in a while they would have caldo gallego as a special, and I loved it. Ate it right up through high school, until, sadly, they went out of business. The broth was slight thick, with small pieces of some sort of pork, delicious bits of chorizo, potatoes, a few white beans and something green. Read more…
Caldo Gallego, Porcine Revolution, Salt Pork
Chicharones are pure pork goodness. The only ingredient is a fatty piece of pork, cooked to a crisp in its own rendered fat. The Grub Blogger loves these guys, and tries hard to only munch on them as a special treat. When I buy a pork belly for making bacon, I use the meatier part of the trim to cook up a batch to share with my lady. These are nice in the morning with some eggs and toast, taking the place of bacon. You can also chop them up into small pieces, and use as hard-core, homemade bacon bits in salads, or, my favorite, as a garnish on tacos. The key here is to render off some of the fat from the pieces, and then brown the meat and fat slowly to produce a crisp nugget, with a little chew to some of the fat. This is a very easy recipe, once you have the pieces of pork belly. Place in a cold pan and slowly heat up with a cover on the pan. Flip every once in a while, and cook until dark golden and crispy. Read more…
Porcine Revolution
Salt pork is a nice thing to have in your freezer. I had bought it before for my pre-Porcine Revolution caldo gallego – a tasty, but very softcore version of the caldo that I have come to love. You can buy it in the meat section of the supermarket, and it is a bit of a scary scene: watery, opaque whiteness with the thinnest hint of a pink piece of meat. Clearly an industrial by-product, with a jelly-like consistency. But, it flavored my old caldo, so I was happy - until I found out that I could make my own, very simply and as a by-product of homemade bacon. A coup within a coup. Just take the trimming from the pork belly from your bacon, dice up into about 1 inch pieces, coat in dry cure (see homemade bacon post - link above) and put in fridge for six days, turn over, and leave for six more days. Then rinse well, and use or freeze. Can be used for beans, stews (like caldo gallego) or collard greens. Read more…
Charcuterie, Porcine Revolution, Salt Pork
Homemade bacon. I didn’t know it was possible. I just figured it came from either a small farm or an industrial plant. I don’t remember how exactly I got my hands on Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn’s Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing, but it was inevitable, and I read that I could make my own bacon. A life changing moment, really. And easy. Really easy, and the scraps made pork salt – another thing I thought only came out of some industrial wasteland as a byproduct that only the truly poor or insane would want. Charcuterie has the playbook for sweet, breakfast style bacon; savory bacon (think pasta sauce, collard greens or whatever could use some pork flavor) and the salt pork (which the Grub Blogger uses to flavor beans, soups, stews, etc.). So, with 100% credit going to Ruhlman and Polcyn, here is my Brooklyn Bacon.
Read more…
Bacon, Charcuterie, Porcine Revolution
As a supplement to my post on spare ribs, here are photos of some baby back ribs, using pretty much the same technique. The baby back ribs comes from the smaller portion of the ribs that are a bit sweeter and less fatty than spare ribs. This photo set has pictures, as well. I use a chimney starter to get the coals going, which is basically just a cylinder of metal with a handle and coiled grating on the bottom. Stuff a few pieces of newspaper in the bottom and load up the top. This keeps the charcoal together and gets it all ignited quickly and efficiently. When the coals haved “ashed over” (meaning there is a fine layer of white on the top of the coals), you can dump them into the bottom of the grill. Baby back ribs are a little harder to cook than spare ribs, because they are leaners and smaller. This means keeping the temperature nice and low and checking them every half-hour. When an individual bone comes free from the the rack with ease, get them off the heat so they don’t overcook and become dry. Read more…
Grilling, Porcine Revolution, Ribs
For this porky treat I give thanks to the Home Sick Texan, whose great blog inspired my Yankee attempt at a Texas classic. The only experience I really had with refried was some sorry attempts at New York “Tex-Mex” joints, and some canned versions that I would heat up and eat with an egg. Once I made my own batch, I had the revelation I often have with food , where I see why people love a dish when it is done with care and thought. With fresh beans and attention to technique and ingredients, these beans had none of the pasty, almost chalky flavor I had associated with refried beans.
