Epicurette and the Smokey Mountain Boys

Earlier this week Will expressed an interest in driving around the USA. This is an interest his father has also has, except he wanted to do it in an RV. This is not quite my idea of a vacation. As I rolled it around in my head though, I did start thinking about a few parts of America that had three things I go crazy over. Good music, good booze, and good food. Savannah, Georgia sprung to mind as a place that always has a famous restaurant by a new up and coming chef. Had we not been able to afford Dublin, Will and I had talked about heading out to Sonoma, California and returning with a few cases of wine, and I've always been interested by the music scene that is Chicago. There was one part of the country that has all three of the elements I desired, and within a few hours I had filled Will's email box with articles about a drag of road called Highway 61, Music highway.

It's a connecting highway between Memphis, Tennessee and New Orleans, Louisiana. I had already built a fantasy around it that involved renting a pickup truck, pulling on my cowboy boots, and cruising down stopping for Blues, Bluegrass, Barbecue, and Bourbon. However, it is January, not the ideal time of year for doing said cruising, though I'm sure it's warmer down there then it is up here right now. Also I have a job, one that would not appreciate an email saying, "Sorry, can't come in this week, searching for the home of Muddy Waters and the perfect shot of Rye." The trip, though I am determined to take it, must be delayed until I can actually plan it, request the vacation time, and let the weather improve. Damn my lack of spontaneity.

The ideas however, would not stop plaguing me this week. I downloaded a huge album of bluegrass music, and ordered a CD of blues. (Has anyone listed to a CD from the "I heard it on NPR" series?) While writing Friday's blog, I sat there with a glass of Ezra Brooks in hand. Finally the siren call of barbecue could no longer be ignored. I needed slow cooked meat. I needed it bad. I remembered the sandwich I had to quest for at the Big Apple Barbecue last year, the sandwich I had stood in line for over an hour to get. I fantasized about the brilliance that is a great pulled pork sandwich.

This, I discovered, was easier said then done. First was my complete lack of a smoker, a place to put a smoker, or a way to deal with the smoke. Apartment living strikes again. It seemed, through, that every cookbook I owned with a section for slow cookers included a section for a pulled pork sandwich. Not exactly the authenticity of standing by a fire pit south of the Mason Dixon line for eight hours, but I was desperate. These recipes differed in everything from cut of meat to sauce, one even included root beer as a main ingredient. What would I have to do to recreate the experience of that exceptional lunch over six months ago?

I launched into research, and it turns out, Pulled Pork has two distinct schools of thought, having to do with whether you are dealing with the East side of the Carolinas or the West (and you thought North and South were all you had to worry about.) In the East, you'd get a vinegar based sauce, which is spicier, where in the West, it tends toward tomato based sauce, which is sweeter (and usually still includes vinegar, just to be confusing.) I looked up the website of the place that had sold me the elusive pulled pork, Black Jack Barbecue. It turns out they sell their sauces, and there was a barbecue... and a cider. Crap.

Sweeter was the operative word for me, I remember as what sticks out in my memory was a sweet, tangy flavor. Ingredients jumped out like Molasses and Brown Sugar. I decided tomato based was my kind of barbecue. I briefly considered ordering the sauce, and getting the exact sauce I remembered, but A of all, this seemed like a cop out, and B of all I would have had to wait for shipping, and pay $8 for it. No, if I was gong to do this, I was going to do it right. Working mostly from the America's Test Kitchen cookbook, I worked on my perfect West Carolinas barbecue sauce.

The Sauce

Ingredients:

4 Tbsp Vegetable Oil

2 Onions, Minced

2 Garlic Cloves, Minced

2 Tsp Chili Powder

1 3/4 Cup Ketchup

1/2 Cup Light or Dark Molasses

2 Tbsp Light Brown Sugar

1/4 Cup Cider Vinegar

1/4 Cup Worcestershire

1/4 Cup Dijon Mustard

2 Tsp Tabasco

Salt and Pepper

Directions:

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat until shimmering. Add the onion and cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in the garlic and chili powder and cook until fragrant, about 15 seconds.

Stir in the remaining ingredients and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the the sauce is thickened, about 25 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Cool to room temperature before serving, about 1 hour. (Can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 1 week or frozen for up to 2 months)

I ended up with about three cups of sauce, and tossed it in the the refrigerator overnight next to the nearly four pound pork shoulder I had spent a small fortune on earlier in the day. I went to Dickson's Farmstand Meats, one of the "Rock Star" butcher shops invading Manhattan, but my thought was if I was going to make that much meat I was going to have it be the good stuff. They were exceptionally cool to me, I ordered the pork shoulder, and they didn't have it in the case so my sales person trotted over to the butchering area to have it cut for me. He asked if I wanted it tied. I had no idea what the hell he was talking about, and in nicer terminology, told him so. I explained this was my first time buying a shoulder. Saying this in a very nice butcher shop felt tantamount to walking into a record store and asking who the Beatles are. He was very nice about it though, and asked me how I was preparing it. When I told him pulled pork, he smiled and said he would take care of me. You get what you pay for. I went home with a gorgeous 3.75 pound shoulder, neatly tied, locally sourced. I was getting excited.

Slow Cooker Pulled Pork

Ingredients:

3-4 Pound Pork Shoulder

3 Cups Barbecue Sauce of Choice

Salt and Pepper

Cider Vinegar

Directions:

Heat large skillet over medium high. Place in shoulder fat side down, then brown on all sides. While browning, pour half of sauce into slow cooker. Once browned, remove pork from skillet and place into slow cooker. Pour remainder of sauce on top. Cook on low for 8 to 10 hours, or on high for 4 to 6 hours. (I went with the slower route) Once the meat is fully cooked, remove to cutting board or platter. With two forks, tear meat into shreds (or pull the pork apart, as it were.) Toss meat with sauce from the slow cooker. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and sprinkle with cider vinegar if desired. Serve shredded meat on hamburger rolls with your favorite cole slaw, either on the side or on top of the pork.

When it came time to take the meat out of the slow cooker, it was falling apart. Success! I loaded it into a foil roasting pan, and proceeded to rip it apart. I took a preliminary taste, and nearly fell over. It was juicy and tender and amazing. With a big kitchen spoon I started spooning on the sauce, three spoonfuls to start with. My eyes rolled back in my head. I kept spooning until I felt I had achieved the Nirvana like status that this meat called for. Will wouldn't stop comparing the dish to porn. Three sandwiches later he collapsed on the couch with a satisfied and deeply impressed smile. I think we have found his new favorite dish. What is it with boys and barbecue?

I did miss the smokiness that comes from sticking a huge cut of meat in a cabinet built specifically to cook pork, but for an apartment in Queens I think I came as close to authentic barbecue as one could, and it was knee buckling good. To get "the real deal" I think I'm going to have to rent that pickup truck and head towards Dixie. Epicurette in Memphis has a nice ring to it...

Slow Cooker Red Beans and Rice

On the weekends I like to cook a big meal, something I can break down into portions and take in for lunch over the course of the week, and freeze for future consumption. I’m broke, and therefore frugal. This summer I’ve been trying to make these meals in the slow cooker. This has the benefits of holding a lot of food, doesn’t throw off much heat, and once the food is in it requires no attention from me so I can piss off and do what I please all day—a great combination.

Last weekend’s somewhat ill fated attempt was to cook a whole chicken. Cooking whole poultry has always been a bit of a challenge for me; you always want that pretty presentation that an intact bird gives, but getting the damn thing to cook evenly is nearly impossible, given the thickness of the breast meat and the thinness of the limbs. Also I keep forgetting to buy kitchen string and it turns out normal string will burn through and snap pretty quickly at 375 degrees. I put in a lot of research before attempting to create a bird without the oven. The recipes did not reach a consensus amongst themselves. Several said to cut the chicken down into pieces, but I felt the point was to do it whole, so I went with the few I found that gave instructions on that front. A great source here was the blog A Year of Slow Cooking, a woman that used her crockpot everyday for a full year, she did the whole chicken thing at least twice. Then there was the big dilemma: The recipe book that came with the crockpot called for me to leave the skin on, and brush with butter. Many websites I found regaled the horror of doing so—apparently the fatty skin simmering for hours on end does not produce a pleasant smell or presentation. This being the case I found myself last Saturday, kitchen scissors in hand, going about the task of cutting all of the skin off a raw chicken at nine in the morning. Concentration called for me to get my eyes, and therefore nose, damn close to the thing while I worked. As I wish to keep this blog an appetizing place to visit, I did not take a picture. Realizing that the wings are mostly skin I attempted to hack them clear off the bird, and when that mangled project did not work (ever try to rip bone out of the socket of an uncooked bird? It’s HARD) I decided it might be okay to just leave them on. Also Will was threatening to take away my scissors, because, by his description, I was wielding them in an unsafe manor and screaming at an already dead animal.

After plunking the bird in the crockpot and, per A Year of Slow Cooking’s advice, covering it in lemon slices and rosemary, I flicked it on low and left it alone for 6-8 hours. A handyman was coming to do some work in the apartment that day so for several hours, I couldn’t leave. The point of slow cooking is that you can leave for awhile, and therefore are not hanging around for the many hours that the scent of food fills your home. Herbs and chicken are fragrant, and I was snacking far more then usual. As soon as the workman was out the door I was packed up and headed for the coffee shop, the chicken and I needed some time apart.

In the end, I made another mostly dry chicken. The juices fell to the bottom of the pot and kept the leg meat very tender, but the breast meat dried out more then I would have liked. Still edible, but not juicy. I was surprised when I went to lift the chicken out of the pot, the entire thing fell apart on me. Oh sure, now the bones come apart.

Determined to get the hang of this appliance, this past weekend I made a childhood favorite, Red Beans and Rice, using my mother’s very German-American, Not-Very-Spicy-Except-For-A-Green-Pepper recipe. She has always cooked it using a pork shoulder, and simmered for hours in a Dutch Oven which sounded like slow cooking to me. My mother has a tendency to give me her recipes assuming I know the ingredients and portions as well as she does, which usually involves several follow up phone calls on my part to straighten out everything. I’ve gotten recipes from her that simply include the instruction “add butter.” How much butter? Your guess is as good as mine. I swear to god, one of these days she’s going to give me a recipe for sugar cookies that simply says, “make sugar cookies.”

This particular recipe had the ingredient “pork butt.” It took several phone calls to find out that she meant a skinless, boneless pork shoulder of about 1-1 1/2 pounds. Gah. Using a little more then four cups of water, a chopped green pepper, a chopped onion, a bay leaf, and about three cloves of diced garlic, I turned my attention to the pork butt. Again, as I was working on a slow cooker adaption, I tried to do some research. As it turns out, the dish I had been eating my entire life is not a completely loyal interpretation of what most people think of as Red Beans and Rice. That’s right, my mother lied to me. Historically it was made with leftover ham bones from Sunday dinner as part of the New Orleans Creole tradition. Many recipes today still call for a ham hock, or in some cases smoked sausage. For many today it’s a completely vegetarian dish. I found exactly zero recipes that called for pork shoulder in red beans and rice. This lead me to research pork shoulder as cooked in a slow cooker, which pulled up many a pulled pork bbq recipe, usually involving about five pounds of meat. This was getting frustrating. The best advice I could find was that to cook the meat in a slow cooker, cutting it up into pieces was probably the best bet (though not all recipes agree here either.) I cut the shoulder down into two inch chunks, trimmed as much fat off as I could, threw it in the pot and banged on the lid. See you in eight hours, bastardized red beans and rice. I’m getting a latte.

Red Beans and Rice in the Slow Cooker

Adapted from my Mom

Ingredients

- 1 bag of red pinto beans, washed

- 1 Green Pepper- Diced

- 1 Large Yellow Onion- Diced

- 3 Garlic Cloves -Diced

- 1 Bay Leaf

- 1 and 1/2 pound boneless pork shoulder

- 2 celery stalks, diced

- 4 cups of water

Directions:

Place all ingredients in a slow cooker. Cook on low for 6 hours, until meat falls apart.

When the lid came off, I felt a little mixed about my results. The taste was about right, but because evaporation doesn’t happen much in a crockpot, it was much more watery then it should have been, so the flavor was a bit diluted. I’m actually still considering throwing the leftovers in the dutch oven and letting it simmer uncovered for about half an hour to try to thicken things up.

As I try to find harmony with my crockpot, I should probably look into working with recipes that have been designed for the device, instead of trying to adapt recipes to an appliance I’m not entirely comfortable with yet. Even the maddest of mad scientists take baby steps before they go off the deep end. Then again, my mother’s spaghetti sauce recipe is also supposed to simmer for hours….