Summer Dinner

Occasionally, I have the great fortune of being put in charge of cooking for people with deeper pockets than my own. On a recent summer getaway, I was lucky enough to devise and prepare dinner for thirteen vacationers, who specifically requested "seafood risotto" and who, because of health reasons, could not eat red meat. I settled on a warm peach, beet and mint salad; a squid, clam and fish risotto; and a nine pound roasted pork shoulder inspired by Mario Batali's pork shoulder alla porchetta.



For the peach, beet and mint salad I halved six under-ripe peaches and seared them face down in an extremely hot skillet, flipped them, and cooked them covered for several minutes. I let them cool enough to handle with bare fingers, then sliced them. I roasted the beets whole in a 550° oven until they were tender, cooled them under cold water, peeled and sliced them. I arranged the beets and peaches on a platter and scattered julienned mint leaves over them.



For the risotto, I settled on coarse cut squid, little neck clams and cubes of a wonderful dense white fish whose name I had never heard before and immediately forgot. Unfamiliar with the fish, I ate a slice of it raw once back in the seclusion of the kitchen. Normally I dislike raw white fish, but this was quite delicious. If only I could remember the name! Texturally reminiscent of shark, it was robust enough to maintain its shape and not flake apart or dissolve into the hot starch bath of the risotto.

There are many recipes for risotto. In my experience, it is a superlatively easy dish. What I take to be the rudimentary steps are these: create a rich and oily base (shallots and whole garlic cloves in olive oil, say), add raw Arborio rice and let it sit in the hot oil for quite a while (the heat opens up the rice's pores), pour in a generous amount of white wine and stir (this locks a subtle wine taste in the center of each kernel), cover with broth and cook down and recover with broth until the rice is just shy of starchy (the richness of the broth will largely determine the richness of the risotto), add loads of black pepper and Parmesan cheese. In this case I used a relatively light vegetable stock.

For this risotto, I sauteed the three seafoods individually with rosemary, parsley, shallot and garlic, deglazing the pan with a hearty dose of white wine, and set them aside. When the risotto was creamy and just past al dente, I stirred in the seafood and its rich brined wine, along with grated Parmesan and coarse black pepper.



The pork roast I prepared was deeply indebted to Batali's recipe for Tuscan suckling pig. I dispensed with the jelly rolling and the egg wash and basically sauteed an unholy amount of shallot, garlic, fennel bulb and rosemary in olive oil and slathered the mixture over the pork shoulder, the flesh of which I had filled with knife sliced pockets of garlic clove. I cooked the 9 lb shoulder at 150° F from eight or so in the evening until eight in the morning, then let it rest all day before reheating it an hour or so before serving.

I believe Batali's cooking instructions go like this: put the pork in a very low oven and go to bed, in the morning take it out and let it sit until you want to eat it, then heat it up.

A note on garlic: in both the risotto and the pork marinade, I employed a new favorite method of using garlic. I find garlic poses one of the simple koans of cooking: cook it too long and it develops an unpleasant burnt garlic flavor reminiscent of cheap everything bagels or garlic salt; cook it too little and you come away with a sharp and intense raw garlic flavor that turns off many diners (though not this one). Instead (and I think I learned this from Batali by way of Heat) saute double or triple the amount of garlic, but leave it in its paper. After long exposure to heat, the garlic reduces to a smooth paste (effectively roast garlic) that can be easily squeezed out of its natural packaging. This paste produces a rich flavor of garlic that is less piquant than its raw brethren, without the dissuasive burnt flavor garlic often has. I think I used a head of garlic for the risotto, a second head of garlic for the marinade, and a third to fill the perforations I had made in the pork shoulder with a paring knife.

It made for a delicious and hearty meal. A million thanks to my hosts!

Peaches

Growing up in the West, one hears a lot of stories about Native Americans: their tracking abilities, their benevolent and heroic use of the coup stick, their methods for scalping and for removing arrows, their metaphysical union with the natural world, their rain and sun dances, and their use of pigments and natural dyes, among many other things. But perhaps more than any other skill, one hears of the Native Americans' ability to use every part of the animals they hunted and killed. As a child I entertained myself by trying to imagine what, literally, you would have to do in order to use, literally, every part of an animal the size of a Volkswagen.

The hide, of course, would have many uses as a natural fabric. The muscles would be delectable on the spot, eaten raw, or after being sun dried, smoked or roasted. The blood would serve as a potent source of water and nutrients. The bones could be sharpened, or used as bats and clubs. The teeth would work handily as buttons or ornaments. The fat could be eaten, used for fuel, lubricant, or as waterproofing. Other than delicacies, the internal organs could be used for a variety of purposes, according to their shape and material composition. The intestines could be used as containers or as cord. The stomachs and bladder would serve admirably as canteens. The tendons and veins would make excellent rope or string. Nearly every remaining part -- the eyes, the tongue, the esophagus, the lungs, the spleen -- could be eaten; but to use every single part, to let nothing, literally, go to waste, would require not only an open mind and nimble imagination, but a kind of moral focus, a meditative obsessivity, in comparison to which our behavior as fanatics in the cathedral of excess stinks of flatulent laxness and degeneracy. Especially in the spans of poverty Ms Vidal and I cross through, I try to use everything in my kitchen. When I eat an apple I eat the seeds, the core and the stem. When preparing beets, I use the greens as well as the flesh. But still, my meditative obsessivity falters; I let Attention leak away into Distraction; Imagination fails under the furrowing tread of Habit.

Recently, I made a quick meal for Ms Vidal, who sat hungrily grumbling in the other room. We had, as usual, a scant variety of options in the larder. Determined to make something delicious, using available supplies, I set about in that thoughtless trance, the Zen-state, that fuels all creation. I cut up two zucchini, some cold chicken leftovers, and a stalk of green onion growing on the sill. I fried them at maximum heat in the cast iron, spooned them into a bowl, and seared a halved over-ripened peach -- enough past its prime to be garbage -- in the skillet, much as Mitch the Mexican used to do with tomatoes. The other half of the peach I sliced as best I could and gave them a quick turn in the skillet before folding them into the zucchini and chicken mix. I garnished the lot with the seared half peach, slices of cold feta and some paprika. This I served with a cold glass of white wine. Chief Joseph I am not, but I am trying.