A New Take On Pork Shoulder

If it's August , that means one thing - you've exhausted grilling every type and cut of meat available.However there's a cut of meat you may not have tried yet - or at least over an open fire. It's pork shoulder - usually a cut reserved braising on chill fall or freezing winter days. Surprisingly it's also perfect for summer eating too,

Alison Roman explored this new side of pork shoulder in yesterday's New York Times Food section.
Shoulder is usually reserved for braising in a Dutch oven.It's one of those cuts that gets retired during the warm weather, only to become popular in the fall when cool days arrive. Yet , this cut can be sliced into pork chop like pieces and grilled. They should be cooked hot and fast - not the typical one hour in a Dutch oven.This makes the fatty bits char and crisp, which only add to the flavor. Some may worry that this won't thoroughly cook the meat and make one sick. Not to fret.According
 to USDA, United States Department of Agriculture, pork can have an internal temperature of 145 degrees F to be considered safe. (have a meat thermometer handy to gauge the temperature). This should give you medium rare meat, perfectly pink and juicy.Flavoring them is a cinch. Try a sprinkle of sea salt and fresh ground pepper. Another variation is citrus juice, chili paste and fish sauce. They can be marinated for up to twenty-four hours in advance.

Preparing the meat may be a  bit more labor intensive . The pork shoulder should be cut crosswise into one inch thick steaks, Ms. Roman cautions that some pieces may not stay in the steak shape, depending on the cut and shape of the shoulder bought). Season with salt and pepper, place in either a shallow baking dish or resealable plastic bag. You can just leave it at this if you want just the pork flavor. For Ms. Roman's marinade combine fish sauce, light brown sugar and sambal -  hot chili paste, garlic and half a cup of lime juice, Mix in a bowl to dissolve the sugar.Pour half  the mixture over the chops and let marinate for fifteen to twenty minutes while the grill is being fired up. You don;t have to worry about leaving it out. That's fine. The grill at this point should be "screaming hot" as Ms. Roman puts it.Once on the grill, the pork should be a deepened brown color and lightly charred on both sides. Each side should be grilled for only two to four minutes each. Let stand in a  shallow baking dish and pour the rest of the marinade. Serve with rice noodles or rice. Top with lettuce , shallots and mint. Serve with grilled citrus for squeezing.

Try a pork shoulder chop for a new grilling experience. It's get you out of the barbecue doldrums  and into exciting new territory. Don;t wait for fall to eat it. It's perfect now for a summer meal.

What Is Southern Cooking?

One of the most identifiable cuisines in the US is Southern. It's known for fried chicken and peach pie, biscuits and sweet iced tea. Yet what exactly is it? Soul food? An offshoot of African cuisine? Food of the rich? Food of the poor? Food of the whites? What should it really be called?

Julia Moskin tackled that question in an article in today's New York Times Food section. She visited Atlanta, heart of the cuisine to speak with two defining chefs, Todd Richards and Virginia Willis. Both ,like many other Southern chefs are chipping away at the stereotype of what the food  should be. More and more immigrants are pouring into the cities and coasts, fusing their recipes with these centuries old ones. There is Korean- Southern fried chicken, Vietnamese Cajun crawfish, and tacos stuffed with barbecue.Yet the question remains - just what exactly is Southern cooking?Many are reluctant to see it as a black-white divide however Chef Willis did wonder that aloud during their interview with Ms. Moskin.Many of the cooking traditions and techniques can directly be traced to Africa, invented by home chefs for both their own families and the families that either enslaved them or employed them.However Chef Richards has another take on it. It's necessarily about race but more about class and place he argues.Blacks and whites  may not have been eating together but they were eating the same dishes.

Yet soul food has come to mean black food while Southern and country refers to white cooking, even though both cuisines have exactly the same recipes.Both chefs have mirror backgrounds and food experiences.Their mothers washed collard greens and peanuts in the family washing machines (!), their recipes for potato salad are nearly identical with not too soft potatoes, hard boiled eggs, pickled relish, mayo, mustard and paprika. Ms. Moskin asked them to bring another Southern specialty  - pimento sandwiches, a filling composed of cream cheese, mayo, pimentos and shredded cheese. Both came up with their own variations.Ms Willis used it as a topping to a tomato pie,while Chef Richards added thick cut bacon and sauce from a can of Mexican chipotle chiles on toast and topped with juicy grilled peaches.Both chefs have written cookbooks, Chef Richards has Soul while Ms.Willis wrote Secrets Of The Southern Table: AFood Lover's Guide Of The Global South.Chef Richards approaches from the perspective of an African American while Chef Willis comes from a Southern white angle. Both are self taught although Willis also learned from her mother and grandmother. What they cook is Southern cuisine, just variations. It evolves constantly thanks to immigrants and new chefs with their own interpretations.

SOuthern cooking should just be known as  regional cooking.It is not black or white, rich or poor. It 's like any other cuisine, old cooking techniques being updated with new ingredients and keeping the old ones.

Grab Cooking

What happens when you're just too wilted to make a meal?Or if you don't want to trek through a heat wave to the grocery store? You grab cook. Look through your fridge, freezer and pantry and pluck out anything you can use to create a dish. It's a challenge but a fun one using whatever's on hand..

The ingredients to make a good grab dish should be veggies and meat. However cans of beans and sauce can also be included in the recipe.I tried this when I just did not feel like heading out in sweltering temps  just to get lunch. There was a can of chickpeas which was only bought for aqua faba (see yesterday's post), peppers and half an onion. Grape tomatoes,always a must have, looked appealing. Perfect to create a fun and colorful salad. The onion was finely chopped as was the pepper. The chickpeas  and tomatoes were added next as was the fresh parsley I had around.A simple vinaigrette dressing was all it needed and    voila  a refreshing , yet substantial lunch for a ninety degree day.Salads are one of the easiest grab meals because you can grab this and that to create a surprisingly hearty , yet ;light dish Vary the veggies.You can even use canned or steamed ones.Left over meats are great in grab salads. You could even make a chef's salad using last night's barbecue . Try ham in a broccoli and string bean salad. Grilled steak is good with just lettuce and tomatoes. Have ice berg lettuce? Grab it and turn it into a tasty wedge with bacon, tomatoes slices, and a home made dressing using mayo, oil, vinegar and anything else you find.

Grab meals can also extend to cooking too.Eggs make the best grab cuisine ingredient, Add three or four to chopped spinach leaves, tossed in some minced garlic and fry. It becomes a tasty omelet, easy  to make and easy to eat.Turn it into a sandwich by placing quarters on toasted bread. Sub in chopped green peppers and it becomes the filling for the classic Sicilian sub sandwich. Add a can of tomatoes  or fresh ones , some chopped garlic and you have the classic Piedmontese uovi e pomodori, a warm weather favorite.Make sure there's plenty of Italian bread for the last. If it's a cooler day you can combine whatever you can get your hands on for a tasty hodgepodge soup. Start with bouillon cubes and add  odds and ends in the soup pot.This is also a good time to use up those little scoops of rice or pasta.Desserts can also be part of grab cuisine. One of the most fun is the take on Eton mess. This classic British dessert  and a favorite of the brothers Windsor, is made with broken meringues, fruit and whipped. cream. I had leftover Nabisco chocolate wafers, a ton of strawberries and blueberries and whipped cream in a canister. Lsyer the cookies  even the broken ones with the fruit (you don;t have to have berries, bananas and pineapple work just as well),and top with a generous squirt of whipped cream. Sub in ice cream for whipped cream if you have any handy.

Grab cuisine is the way to cook during these impossibly hot days. Check your fridge, kitchen and pantry, grab what you can and create. You'd be surprised what you can make with whatever's around.

When Life Gives You Aquafaba

Aquafaba is one of the newest darlings on the food scene. It is the siren for foodies like myself and I was over eager to bake aquafaba meringues.How hard could it be? It seemed everyone who ever made the little puffs of sweetness had success. I knew I would too.

I was wrong.

I started with the right ingredients.

Bean water from Rienzi chickpeas.

Sugar

Salt  and cream of tartar

Flavoring - peppermint

Even chocolate chips.Everything was whipped up, in first my standing mixer

I thought it was going well, although the liquid refused to get thick with stiff peaks.I then tried a balloon whisk on my hand mixer. Nothing happened.I added the peppermint extract and chocolate chips.Bad, bad ,bad idea. The fluff turned to liquid right quick.

I had to pour it on this.

covered in parchment paper.

It came out like this

A giant flat crisp. Yes,I was gutted.I wanted , cute puffy meringue kisses. What I got instead was a layer of gook.,Being thrifty.I decided to bake it as required, in a 250 degree F oven for an hour and a half. Surprisingly, the meringue pizza came out OK, with one side,perfectly crispy while the other was gooey and chewy..

What did I do with this mess? Put Eton in front of it and came up with a spin on the classic English dessert. I broke off pieces of meringue and layered it with whipped cream. Chocolate chips were tossed over it all for more flavor. It went from a disaster to a delicious and fun dessert.

I think my chickpeas and myself are better suited to this.

A tasty grab anything salad(More on that tomorrow)

A Heirloom Cholay For The Weekend

Weekend meals are always a slapdash affair, A quickly grilled burger or tepid takeout. A better choice is an easy but very flavorful Indian choley or chole.Again , the Food Flirts, Sheila and Marilynn Brass come to the rescue with a recipe from their Heirloom Cooking With The Sisters (St.Martin's Press). The original recipe is from their English friend, Katy. She learned how to cook this from her mother, Viru, who was an expert on Indian cuisine.

Ingredients:

1 (19 oz.) can of chickpeas
1 (28 oz.) can whole tomatoes (I used the diced one from Tuttorosa)
2 medium potatoes boiled. ( I cheated here and microwave  boiled them)
1 tablespoon butter softened to room temperature (I subbed in I Can't Believe It's Not Butter)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil (again I veered off and used olive oil instead)
1 teaspoon cumin seeds (if you can't find them, ground cumin works just as well)
1 teaspoon garam masala
1 teaspoon curry  powder
1/4 teaspoon red  chili powder
1 cup chopped onions
1 large clove garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons lemon or lime  juice

Drain chickpeas in a colander and rinse with cold water.(i'm saving the aquafaba for meringues - stay tuned for that)

Drain tomatoes in colander, then cut in 1/2 inch dice (or you can buy already diced tomatoes as I did). Set aside in another bowl.

Peel and cut potatoes into one inch pieces and place in a third bowl( I left the skins on  - it's a matter of taste)

Melt butter with oil in saucepan over low heat.

Add cumin seeds. Turn up heat slightly and stir with a wooden spoon until cumin seeds sizzle.

Add garam masala, curry powder and chili  powder and stir to mix.

Add onions and garlic and continue cooking until softened 2 to 3 minutes.

Stir in diced tomatoes.

Add chickpeas, potatoes and salt and cook , stirring until chickpeas and potatoes are heated through 4 to 5 minutes.Remove cholay to serving dish and let cool to room temperature.

Pour lemon or lime juice on top before serving.

As with any Brass sister recipe, this was a huge hit with everyone taking three helpings each. I didn't add the citrus juice. I felt it was just as tasty without it. The spices were a wonderful mix  that worked well with the veggies. The only thing missing was the Indian flatbread naan to wipe the bowls clean.

I will be making this classic a lot in the future . It was easy  and delicious - the perfect stew for any night of the week.

Recipe page 58 of  Heirloom  Cooking With The Brass Sisters (St Martin's Press)

Heirloom Recipes From The Brass Sisters

Sheila and Marilynn Brass are the cooks with the books.The stars of the popular PBS show Food Flirts wrote two great books Heirloom Cooking With The Brass Sisters and Baking With The Brass Sisters (both published by St. Marten's Press). I tried their corn fritters and had an instant hit  - and an empty plate. The recipe is a tad labor intensive but worth it,.The recipe originated in 1910 from a woman the Brass Sisters called The Church Lady of Mansfield,Ohio. This recipe is one of her earliest, with her recipes cards spanning forty years of cooking.

Ingredients:

1 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
2 eggs separated
1/2 cup milk ( I used Soy Good's coconut milk. It worked in perfectly)
1 tablespoon butter melted (this was subbed in with Miyoko's Vegan Butter)
1 cup canned or cooked corn (for more color and flavor I used Green Giant's Fiesta Corn
2 tablespoons butter softened at room temperature (again Miyoko's was used here)

1 cup sour cream
1/4 cup cooked chives

Place flour, baking powder, salt and pepper in a mixing bowl and set aside.(the combined dry ingredients below)

Beat egg yolks in a separate bowl.

Beat in milk and melted butter.

Add dry ingredients and gently stir to combine. 

Gently fold in corn.

Beat egg whites until stiff in a bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the whisk attachment.

Fold egg whites into batter.

Melt two tablespoons butter in a large frying pan over medium heat.

Spoon one tablespoon batter into pan for each pancake, pressing down gently on them,once they are formed to make them thinner.

Cook pancakes until tops begin to bubble around the edges about two minutes. Turn and cook until the undersides are golden brown , about two minutes more.

 Serve immediately, topped with sour cream and chives. They can be kept warm in a 200 degree F oven for no more than 15 minutes. Store any leftovers in a cover container in the fridge. They can be refried.

I didn't  have any leftovers because they were a huge hit and eaten as they landed on the draining towel. This old classic is our new family favorite.

Recipe , page 56 in Heirloom Cooking With The Brass Sisters (St Martin's Press,2008)

Flirting With The Brass Sisters

Marilynn and Sheila Brass are the stars of the delightful half hour PBS show Food Flirts. It's equal parts cooking and travel show as the sisters from Winthrop, Mass. go to various Massachusetts restaurants and garner recipes from some of New England's best cooks and bakers. They have also written amazing cookbooks such as Heirloom Cooking with The Brass Sisters and Baking With The Brass Sisters (both from Saint Martin's Press). Marilynn and Sheila were good enough to grant Foodie Pantry an interview.word

1.   I apologize for being late to the party with Food Flirts. I fell for it from the first episode. It’s an entertaining show - how did it come about?

In 2010, we were doing a 1-hour Holiday Special for the Cooking Channel.  We were going to bake and cook with the firefighters at our local Taylor Square Firehouse in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  We met with Bruce Seidel, the then Vice President for Programming and Development at the Food Network and the Cooking Channel, for lunch at Morimoto’s Restaurant, in New York City.  We ordered black cod, which was cooked, and everyone else ordered sushi.  We had never had sushi before.  Bruce asked us if we had ever eaten sushi before, and we said, “No.”  He asked if we’d be willing to try it.  Since we were at Morimoto’s Restaurant, and he was an Iron Chef, we felt that it was one of the safest places to eat raw fish.  Bruce, at that time, was the Producer of Iron Chef America. 

We ate the sushi, and it was actually very good.  We started talking with Bruce about all of the foods we hadn’t eaten or tried, or prepared, and he asked us if we’d be willing to try eating and cooking and baking those foods?  It was a sort of “fish out of water” approach.

We did the Holiday special.  A couple of years went by, and we were writing a cookbook, BAKING WITH THE BRASS SISTERS for St. Martin’s Press.  We saw online that Bruce had left the Food Network and the Cooking Channel and started his own Production Company, Hot Lemon Productions.  We contacted him to congratulate him.  We talked, and he said that he still wanted to do a series with us.  We told him that we had to finish BAKING WITH THE BRASS SISTERS first. 

We spoke on the phone several times, and Bruce came out to Cambridge to shoot some film.  He wanted to see what we would be like when he shot the footage.  He also wanted to see whether we could do the long days it would take to shoot a series.  He was thrilled with the footage he shot.  We were in our seventies then.  Sheila is now 81, and Marilynn is now 76, and we like to say that we are “overnight successes.”  It took us only 79 and 75 years to become Co-Executive Television Producers.

We all worked hard to raise the funding for the series, and PBS was interested in airing it.  Last April, we went to New York City to attend the James Beard Foundation Awards Show and Dinner.  We were one of three finalists for The Best Television Series on Location.  Although we didn’t win, it was an honor to be nominated.  The winning series traveled all over the world shooting.  We shot in Cambridge, Somerville, Dorchester, Boston, and Provincetown, Massachusetts.  They had a very large crew.  We did our series with six people and two culinary assistants.  Everyone helped clean the bathroom.  Bruce cleaned off Sheila’s car and vacuumed the rug.  The days ranged from 10 to14 hours, mostly 10 hours.

2.   What has been the response from the public?

We have heard from viewers all over the United States and Canada.  They love the show!  We have received comments from young people and older people.  We like to say, “It’s not just what you put on the table, it’s what you bring to the table!”  THE FOOD FLIRTS is a celebration of the multi-ethnic cultures of America.  As Sheila said, “It’s food without borders.”  We would love to see a return to civility where people learn that they are very much alike when they sit down to eat together.

3.   Have you thought of “flirting” in other cities, such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc.?

Yes, we have thought of shooting in other cities, and even other countries.  We always come back to a kitchen, usually ours in Cambridge, Massachusetts to mash up the two cuisines we’ve learned about.  We are going to be exploring ways to find more funding so that we can do more seasons.  At this time, we managed to shoot in New England, but there’s a great wide wonderful world out there.

4.   Any chance you’d come to my state, New Jersey, the diner capital of the world? 

We love diners!  We love the informality and congeniality of them.  We love diner food.  We have great respect for people who own or work in diners or both.  It is a hard life, but the sense of community is marvelous.  As for New Jersey, we think of tomatoes and blueberries.  There is nothing so unique as a “Jersey Girl!” We would love to be honorary “Jersey Girls.”

5.   Marilyn and Sheila, how did you become interested in the history of cooking and baking?

Our mother, Dorothy Katziff Brass taught us how to cook and bake when we could just about reach the kitchen table in our second-floor kitchen on Sea Foam Avenue, in Winthrop, Massachusetts during the 1940s and 1950s.  We lived in a three-decker near the beach.

As teenagers, we found that we were buying copies of GOURMET Magazine, and we loved them.  There was a lot of information in them about food history, travel, and lots of challenging recipes.  Later, when we were in our twenties, we started to buy copies of THE WOMEN’S DAY ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COOKING, which could be purchased in the local supermarket for about $1.68 a volume.  We both collected our own sets of 12 volumes.  Later we started collecting the TIME-LIFE books on cooking all over the world.  Even later, we decided to collect cookbooks.  We collect two kinds of cookbooks – printed cookbooks, and handwritten Manuscript Cookbooks.  We joined the Culinary Historians of Boston.  We love meeting people and learning about the food they eat and how to cook and bake it.  Knowing what people eat tells us a lot about how they live, how they buy food, nutrition, culture, and how they teach others how to cook and to bake.

6.   I love the ice cream molds you brought  out in the “Thailand Meets Tres Leches “ episode. When did you start collecting and where do all of them come from?

When we were about seven and twelve, we visited a cousin who worked in a grocery distribution center in the Wharf section of Boston.  He gave us a gift of some small tartlet pans used for sweet pastry and savory pastry, such as appetizers.  We still have them.   When we started buying and selling antiques about 42 years ago, we bought our first mold, a copper and tin jelly mold for a dollar at a house sale.  It had an ear of corn motif on its top.  We started doing research, and we found and collected food molds that are made of copper, copper and tin, tin, pewter, and porcelain.

We also collect menus, culinary ephemera, and culinary antiques.  We have more than 5,000 items in our collections.

7.   You also collect recipes and cookbooks from the 1600s on up. Again how did this come about? Can those recipes be used today?

About 30 years ago, we started buying handwritten Manuscript Cookbooks at yard sales, flea markets, house sales and book shops.  Everything old is new again!  Manuscript and printed cookbooks can serve as inspiration for today’s cooks and bakers.  Because everyone’s stove was different years ago, and heated by wood or coal, the woman or man who used it knew how to stoke it and clean it.  Stove temperatures were inconsistent.  Flour and sugar were different then, and the texture and composition of ingredients were different.  It mattered which mill you obtained your flour from.  Fannie Farmer was one of the first to standardize measuring ingredients.  So, the old recipes have to be “translated” for modern cooks.  We test the Heirloom recipes for our cookbooks six to ten times each.

8.   What do you think of today’s cooking and trends like the Paleo diet?

We don’t know a lot about the nutritional aspects of the Paleo Diet, but it’s interesting that people are exploring the really old ways of eating.

9.   Both of you love baking and cooking. What are your favorite recipes and can you share them with us.

The recipe for Brown Sugar Brownies is wonderful.  It has appeared in both HEIRLOOM BAKING WITH THE BRASS SISTERS and BAKING WITH THE BRASS SISTERS.  The recipe in BAKING WITH THE BRASS SISTERS was changed slightly.  We’d have to discuss this between ourselves and talk with you about this.

The last - the famed Foodie Pantry I have to ask question

10)   Which sister is the better cook? Who’s the better baker?

This is a very hard question to answer.  We both bring something different to our cooking and baking.  We approach cooking and baking differently, but with what we like to think is genuine creativity.

Sheila is very precise in baking and cooking, and Marilynn finds that she can improvise as she cooks entrees.  However, Marilynn can be precise when she bakes and cooks, as well.