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!

Caçolet Paisan

Cousin Sasha is in town and to take advantage of the beautiful weekend weather we visited a certain public park on the bank of the Potomac to have ourselves un asado tipico Argentino. Only, this being Gringolandia, we grilled pork ribs along with our morcilla.

Ms Vidal and I made a careful study of Argentine barbecue during our residence in Buenos Aires. The principal differences between ours and theirs are these:

1. Argentina is a superlatively carnivorous society. During a recent government-mandated increase in beef prices one woman lamented to the press, "My 31 year old son Rodrigo lives with me. I fear that he will starve. What am I supposed to feed him, chicken?" Truly, chicken, pork, fish and anything else that doesn't have magenta colored flesh are all considered a separate class of flowering plants. The reason for this is simple: Argentina's vast, unpopulated countryside is home to the world's largest migratory population of prime-grade free-range beef, though rampant soy-speculation and an unprecedented drought have severally denigrated the living conditions of the bos felix argentinus. Despite this, Argentines still cling tightly to their traditional bovicentric way of life. Although prices fluctuate, the value of Argentine beef as measured in quality/cost remains among the very highest in the world. What would be sold in Chicago as extraordinarily fine prime-grade sirloin is a relatively common piece of meat to Argentines. Argentine beef cuts vary enormously from those practiced by American or British butchers, and contrary to the Northern predilection for aged beef, the Argentines try to keep the time between slaughter and grill to a minimum.

2. While Ms Vidal and I cherish the regional and even county-to-county varieties of American barbecue, which Lo Paisan considers to be the first, if not finest, American culinary invention, the parameters of our consciences were shattered by the revolutionary aspect of Argentine barbecue. The asado is typically a private affair, done on a (relatively) small scale in parks, back yards, campgrounds, or the grassy median between directions of traffic on the highway. The method requires absolute simplicity. Meat, salt and wood are the only requirements. Wood is burned into coals in a separate fire and a few, small, smoking embers are arranged beneath the grill. The meat, often accompanied by a variety of sausages and offal, is adorned with nothing more than coarse salt, if salt is used at all. The fire is kept going and new embers are continually added as the old ones grow cold, until the flesh, self-basted in its own slowly rendered fat, reaches a tender, smoky medium rare. It is a method dependent on time, which necessitates time together, which necessitates close and amiable relationships built on patience, trust, and a love of food. Perhaps in a country with as unstable a political history as Argentina's the asado has become so deeply embedded in society because it produces clans -- groups of trusted friends outside the sweep of politics, like moonshiners or fishing buddies -- unified over the shared consumption of blood, smoke and salt.

Sasha and I stopped at Eastern Market for a slab of pork ribs, bought at around $2.00 a pound from the geniuses at Union Meat Company, a couple of morcillas from Canales Quality Meats, and a baguette. With a magnum of Georges Duboeuf's cuvée rouge safely stowed in the bota bag, a jar of kosher salt and a bundle of split pine, we made our merry way to our paradisaical riverine asado. The ribs turned out wonderfully. The morcipan, the first I've had in nearly two years, were delicious, but had a tangy, tannin-like, granulated taste like no morci I ever et in Argentina. Sated, we returned with several smoky flame-browned ribs.

The following night, unsure what to prepare for a starving Ms Vidal, I decided to try my hand at caçolet paisan -- the left over ribs stewed in white beans. I fried two minced onions and two minced carrots in the cast iron while the great northern beans came to boil, then added the ribs to the skillet with the penultimate tablespoons of the fresh garden thyme that came in the mail last Christmas, along with some whole peppercorns. I let these cook slowly while the beans, once at a boil, rested with the burner off their proscribed thirty minutes. Once that time had passed, I scooped the contents of the skillet into the beans, along with some ketchup, mustard and red wine vinegar and brought the lot back to a boil. An hour later Ms Vidal's hunger had overcome her patience so, the beans being just tender enough to be palatable, we ate a nice pork and white bean soup. I continued to cook the remaining beans, however, as I wanted to carry my experiment in caçolet paisan to its enviable conclusion.

The following evening, I removed the rib bones and stray pieces of cartilage from the beans and poured the still soupy mixture into the cast iron skillet, brought it to a boil over a flame, then coated the top with a generous application of paprika and olive oil, and put the skillet in the broiler. Four times I let the surface brown and develop a membranous, paprika flavored crust. Four times I broke the crust with gentle admonitions of a wooden spoon, gently separating the beans from the sides of the skillet, until, after the fifth browning, the beans possessed a lovely brown crust under which the beans still sopped in the concentrated juices of the soup.

While a proper cassoulet, containing at least one duck, several pounds of meat and various sausages, is indubitably superior to caçolet paisan, yesteray's version, prepared off the cuff with leftover ribs, two onions, two carrots and a bag of beans, made for a delicious and satisfying meal.

Porcine Canticle No. 1

Then a bit of money appears and one can do a little shopping. Never before had I understood the third-world vision of the American grocery store, the Allen Ginsberg vision of its technicolored, lysergic acid plenty until last week when we visited the emporium of detritus and rediscovered the cornucopia of American food distribution. So many shapes and colors! So many textures! Butter leaf lettuce! Gala apples! White button mushrooms! Just looking at the food arrayed under the lights was a filling meal.

After a careful appraisal of the rising costs of food (generic brand pasta at $1.25 per pound, a 25% increase in price from six months ago) we opted for russet potatoes, yellow onions, carrots, dried beans, pearl barley, green cabbage, eggs, and milk. From the shelves of the meat department I managed to scrounge remaindered beef chuck roast, beef spare ribs and pork loin -- none of which was more than $2.99 per pound. Compared to the usurious cost of bacon these days ($5/lb) one would be a fool to pass up a nicely marbled chuck roast or svelte pork loin for nearly half the price.

After a bit of inquiry, it was decided that Ms Vidal preferred a roast pork loin over beef. The next night, after returning from a day of manual labor, tired from my efforts, yet wanting to pour love into my woman's life in the form of food, I prepared the old standby -- Roast Pork Loin in Herbed Salt.

This is a variation on a dish I learned years ago from my mother. It's quick and easy and almost fool proof. In essence, you rub a pork loin in chopped herbs and salt and cook it at 400° for an hour. I believe the original recipe called for sage. I use whatever is handy. Given the enormous rosemary bush in our neighbor's yard, I crushed rosemary with garlic, a bit of lemon juice, butter and kosher salt in a mortar and pestle. As an experiment, I jammed the knife sharpener down the length of the two loins and stuffed the herbed and salted butter into the loin -- envisioning some specie of pork Kiev. That didn't work. The butter melted out and left the herb stuffing a little trop vegetal, but delicious none the less.

The basic recipe is to grind sage, kosher salt and olive oil into a rudimentary pesto and spread that over the loin. Copious amounts of olive oil are a very nice touch if you can afford it. Then fire it into a heated 400° oven for one hour.

For our dinner, I mixed potatoes with garlic, butter and rosemary and cooked them in the same dish as the pork loins. The potatoes came out a little underdone and the water they released accumulated in the casserole, submerging the lower portions of the loins. While it didn't quite have the usual color, the pork was extremely tender and enough of the potatoes were crispy to fill two plates. In the future I'll cook the pork and the potatoes separately.

Normally I serve the roast plain, but to experiment I made a quick sauce for the pork. I mixed Kelchner's hot mustard with added horseradish, James Keller and Son Dundeee Three Fruits Marmalade, and some cheap apricot jam in equal doses and spooned a little glob onto each slice of pork. Hot, sweet, fruity, delicious.