Meatballs
1 lb ground pork shoulder
1.5 tsp fennel seed
1 tsp kosher salt (halve if you use table salt)
1/4 tsp hot red pepper flakes
12 black peppercorns

Rest of Stew
1 lb dried flageolet beans (alternative: great northern)
1 large spanish or vidalia onion, diced
4 carrots, diced
3 celery stalks, diced
large handful of white button mushrooms, diced
1/2 to 1 cup diced tomato
3 or 4 cloves of garlic, minced
handful of parley
2 fresh rosemary sprigs
1/2 cup dry vermouth or white wine
1 tbsp tomato paste

Cook the flageolet beans until al dente: place in a large pot with 1″ of water above the top of the beans. Add 3 bay leaves, bring to a boil, then remove the lid and simmer. Soaking beforehand will speed up cooking time. While the beans cook, do the next few steps.

Pound up the fennel seed, peppercorns and pepper flakes with a mortar/pestle, then add to the ground meat along with the salt. Mix together then mold into meatballs about 1.5″ in diameter. Heat up your stew pot (I use a dutch oven) on med-high heat with a little olive oil and brown the meatballs. Then set them aside and turn off the heat.

Spoon out most of the oil left in the stew pot, leaving enough to coat the bottom. Turn the heat back on to med-low. Cook the onions until translucent, then add the garlic, celery and carrots. Cook for a few minutes, then add the diced tomato and mushroom.

Separate the parsley stems and leaves, setting the leaves aside. Create a bouquet garnis by tying the parsley stems, rosemary sprigs, and 1 bay leaf together with kitchen twine. Add the bouquet garnis to the pot, and continue to let the vegetables gently cook.

Once the beans are al dente, drain or optionally reserve the cooking liquid. Add the beans and meatballs to the stew pot, add the wine, and add either water or the bean cooking liquid until the liquid level is about three-quarters up to the top of the food. Make sure the bouquet garnis is immersed, cover and either place the pot in a 350F oven or let simmer on the stove top.

After 40 minutes, taste for salt and gently stir in the tomato paste.

Remove about 1/2 of beans and vegetables to a food processor and puree.  Return to the pot and continue to cook until the beans are soft and the flavors have melded.  This step improves the texture, thickening the stew (I hate the common use of flour or starch to thicken).

Chop up the parsley leaves waiting in the wings all this time. Serve with the parsley and a little fresh pepper scattered on top.

OK, shameless plug complete! Let’s talk about this dish, which was a tad involved but oh so good.  Hearty vegetarian fare, although suited for a cooler evening.  It is inspired by Alice Waters’ Chard Gratin.  I just turned it into a meal. It has been a few weeks, but here is my best recollection of the dish:

Chard and Cranberry Bean Gratin

Large bunch of chard, leaves and stems separated
1 onion, diced
2 or 3 carrots, diced
1 stalk of celery, diced
1/2 lb of cranberry or borlotti beans
1 tsp fresh winter savory, finely chopped
salt and pepper
4 tbsp unsalted butter
3 tsp flour
3/4 to 1 cup milk
1 cup fresh breadcrumbs

I was working with dried cranberry beans. Put them in a pot with water an inch over the top of the beans, tossed in a couple bay leaves, brought to a boil for a couple minutes, then let simmer until just tender (time will depend on whether you soaked beforehand). Save 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid and drain the rest.

Make breadcrumbs by placing stale or fresh bread in a food processor. Spread them out on a baking tray, dot with pieces from 1 tbsp of butter, and toast in a 350F oven until lightly golden.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil and cook the chard leaves for about 3 minutes, then remove with a slotted spoon and let them drain and cool.  Dice the chard stems and cook them in the boiling water for 5 minutes, then drain.

Melt 2 tbsp of butter in a large (ideally oven-capable) skillet and saute the onions on low heat until translucent.  Add the carrot and celery and continue to cook for 10 minutes.

Add the beans and the bean liquid and/or some white wine, and continue to let it simmer (turn up the heat a tad, if necessary), stirring occasionally.

Squeeze much of the excess liquid out of the chard leaves and coarsely chop them.  Add the chard stems and chard leaves to the skillet.  Add the winter savory (Note: I think oregano or tarragon would also work).  Let simmer for a few minutes.

Sprinkle and stir in the flour, then stir in the milk.  Cook for 5 more minutes, adding more milk if the mixture gets too thick. Add salt and pepper to taste.

If you are not using an oven-friendly skillet, transfer to a baking dish.  Spread the breadcrumbs on top, dot with bits from the last tbsp of butter, and bake for 30 to 40 minutes in the 350F oven.

I’ve been on a gratin kick again the last few days.  The first one was a remake of an eggplant, zucchini, basil and cheese gratin dish I blogged a year ago.  It was one of my favorite meals of 2008, and it struck gold again. It should have been enough for 4 people, but was so good, Lisl and I pigged out and finished it off in one sitting! I’ve gone back and updated the recipe if you are interested.  Make it while everything is in season!

I also grilled a skirt steak last night and wanted to share/record the sauce after very good reviews from our guests (no photo, was too busy getting food on the table).

Mustard Sauce for Skirt Steak
1 medium shallot, finely chopped
1 1/2 cup chicken stock
1 tbsp grain mustard
2 tbsp dark rum
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
salt to taste

On medium-low heat, saute the shallots in a splash of olive oil in a medium-sized pan for a few minutes, until they soften. Pour in the chicken stock and bring to a boil. Stir in the mustard and rum and reduce to a light sauce consistency, then stir in the vinegar. Taste and add a small amount of salt if you desire.

Note: an important thing with skirt steak is to give it lots of salt and pepper before you toss it on the grill, and then thinly slice across the grain (I usually cut it into 6 inch lengths before grilling, so that it’s easier to slice).

Some days you see a recipe and weather be damned.  That’s what happened to me when I was flipping through Richard Olney’s homage to Lulu Peyraud, Lulu’s Provencal Table and saw:

“Baked Halibut with Mushrooms and Cream”

Yes, I’m a sucker for breadcrumbs.

I cooked the dish that very night to bid adieu to L’s mother, flying back to Sydney the next day.  I made a few small adaptations, and the results were absolutely delicious and comforting.  This dish will be back on the menu again in future, no question.

Ingredients
2 halibut filets (enough for 4 people)
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup white wine
1 cup coarse breadcrumbs (ideally French baguette or rustic/farm bread)
1 lemon, sliced into thin rounds, ends discarded
3 tbsp butter
3/4 lb mushrooms, half shiitake, half white mushrooms, trimmed, cleaned and finely sliced
1 cup heavy cream

Preheat the oven to 450F.

Lulu stresses having coarse and irregular breadcrumbs, which she makes by rubbing together two broken ends of dried out baguette.  In my case, I didn’t have bread quite dry enough, so I pulled apart some bread into small pieces and placed it in the oven on a baking tray to lightly brown and then broke up the pieces a bit more.

Clean and dry the filets, place in a baking dish, then rub with olive oil and salt and pepper.

Spread the breadcrumbs over the fish, then place the lemon slices on top in an overlapping pattern.  Distribute 1 tbsp of butter, cut into small pieces, around the top.  Pour the wine around the fish and place into the oven.

Your cooking time will depend on the thickness of the fish. If they are 1 inch thick, expect about 12 minutes.  If they are 2 inches, expect more like 20 minutes.  The most critical thing is not overcooking the fish!

Olney suggests basting, which I did but decided it wasn’t necessary, although if the liquid dries up you’ll want to add more. Olney writes “if the liquid threatens to dry up, add some boiling white wine to the dish”, but I say boo! to that.  I’m not boiling up a wine I can drink (I don’t cook with undrinkable wine, not counting vermouth) when I don’t know if I need it or not! I would suggest having a little boiling water at hand in case it is needed.

About 5 to 10 minutes before removing the fish from the oven, add 2 tbsp of unsalted butter to a large heavy frying pan and melt over high heat with a splash of olive oil.  Add the mushrooms and season with salt and pepper.  Toss and stir the mushrooms around until they are fully cooked and any liquid released has evaporated, then remove from heat.

When you remove the fish from the oven, if there is much liquid in the baking dish, add that liquid to the mushrooms.  Return the mushrooms to high heat, reducing the liquid, and then add in the cream. Bring the cream to a boil, constantly stirring, and reduce. Olney suggests a “light-bodied sauce” consistency, but I made the mushrooms a little thicker — follow your own preference.

Remove the lemon slices and serve the fish, spooning the mushrooms and sauce to the side.

As you can see from the picture, we paired this with a very simple side of green beans, boiled and tossed with a touch of butter, salt, pepper. We would also suggest asparagus.

From a wine perspective, it really needs a strong white that can hold it’s own against the cream. We paired this dish with a full bodied Chardonnay made in French oak.

Theoretically, I should experiment more with dry rubs but, well, it’s just… for me, this stuff is like the grill equivalent of crack.  Crack and pork. Pork and crack. I play around with ratios and leading actors, but I always come back to the same basic cast of characters.  When these players hit the stage of Fleisher’s berkshire pork, spectacular things happen.

If you are looking to shut down all table conversation, and revert your guests to a neanderthal state of grunting and gnawing, try the following:

Buy two racks of (berkshire if possible) pork spare ribs for every 3 people.

With a mortar and pestle, grind up:
1 tsp coriander seed
1 tsp cumin seed
1 tsp yellow mustard seed
1/2 tsp black pepper

Then stir in:
2 tsp smoked paprika
1 tbsp kosher salt
heaping tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp dried oregano

I sometimes use pre-ground cumin, but I really like using the seeds for the coriander, mustard seed, and black pepper for that extra texture.  I also will note that I don’t bother removing the membrane on the bottom side of the ribs.

Rub the spice mixture all over the ribs, then place them in a suitable holder (I use a baking dish), cover with plastic wrap, and return to the fridge for 6 hours or more (overnight is ideal).

You can cook these with indirect heat on the grill, or with low heat in the oven.  In this case, it was raining, so I baked these on broiler trays (so any melted fat didn’t pool) for 3 to 3.5 hours at 250F degrees.

That’s it. Easy peasy. Dig in caveman!

Urgh gllrgh mmmmmmmm

The ribs before cooking

Additional notes: I usually don’t use oregano with this dry rub, but really enjoyed it here.  Another good spin is to add some heat with cayenne or red pepper flakes.

I’ve been reading Julia Child’s My Life in France and the difficulties she faced trying to publish Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  In 1959, when Houghton Mifflin finally passed on the book, and before Knopf picked it up, Julia read a note from her champion at Houghton who explained the rejection, “They feel [the average housewife] wants ’shortcuts to something equivalent’ instead of the perfect process to the absolute.”

America’s culture has changed a lot since then, but anyone who reads Simone de Beauvoir’s 1947 America Day by Day will be struck by how much has remained consistent.  The business instincts of the Houghton execs remains somewhat true today if Rachel Ray’s empire is any evidence.  Thankfully, there is room for more ambitious efforts, as Julia Child and Simone Beck proved and as new author/chefs continue to show; a recent example is Paul Bertolli’s almost literary Cooking by Hand.

Ratatouille strikes me as a perfect dish to highlight the merits of the two mindsets (and there are indeed merits to both).  Sometimes I will throw together a ratatouille very quickly, let all the components stew together for a while unaided, and enjoy a perfectly good rendition.  However, with a little more effort and time, you can take the dish to a different level entirely.

On Friday evening, after picking up some lovely fresh vegetables from the local farm, I rolled up my sleeves and put together an adaptation of Lulu Peyraud’s ratatouille from Richard Olney’s cookbook Lulu’s Provencal Table. It is considerably more involved than my usual, but the result, which we ate the next evening, was the sweetest, most delicious ratatouille I have had in a long while.

Ratatouille, adapted from Richard Olney and Lulu Peyraud’s recipe

1 lb vidalia onion, halved then thinly sliced
6 garlic cloves, lightly crushed, peeled and minced
1 lb zucchini, preferably small to medium sized, quartered and cut into 3/4 inch pieces
1 lb young eggplant, preferably Asian/Japanese (unless you are French), halved if large, and cut into 3/4 inch rounds
1 lb plum tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and cut into eighths
3 large sweet peppers (a mix of colors is nice; I used 2 red, 1 green), treatment below
Bouquet garni of 2 small sprigs each of oregano and winter savory, and 2 bay leaves, tied with kitchen string
salt
olive oil

In a large pot, warm up 3 tbsp of olive oil on very low heat and slowly cook the onions for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add 1 tsp of salt (I like cooking with kosher salt), the minced garlic, and the sliced zucchini. Continue to cook on the low heat, stirring occasionally.

While your onions cook, peel and de-seed the tomatoes. To peel the tomatoes, score an X in the skin on the bottom of the tomato, and place in boiling water for 30 seconds.  Let cool, and the skin should slip off quite easily.  Slice in half (if the tomato was the earth, and the stem is the north pole, cut at the equator) and use a finger to remove most of the seeds.  Chop each tomato into 8 chunks and reserve.

Char your sweet peppers under the boiler, on the grill, or directly on a gas flame (Lulu’s method is to char over wood embers, but not everyone has that luxury).  Place the peppers in a paper bag and let cool for several minutes.  Peel of the charred skins, and de-seed, being careful to preserve the juices from the inside of the peppers.  Reserve those juices (sans seeds), and slice the peppers lengthwise into narrow strips; reserve.

In a large, heavy-bottomed skillet, heat up 2 tbsp of olive oil on medium heat. Saute the eggplant rounds (or pieces) on one side for a couple of minutes, sprinkling half a teaspoon of salt on top, then add another 1 or 2 tbsp of olive oil and flip the eggplant and cook the other side for several minutes until they are softened.  I add the oil in two steps so that one side of the eggplant doesn’t absorb it all. Add the eggplant to the stew pot with the onions, leaving remaining oil in the skillet.

If the skillet is fairly dry, add another tbsp of olive oil, get the pan fairly hot with high heat, and then add the tomatoes and half a teaspoon of salt. Saute, shaking the pan and stirring the tomatoes until much of the liquid has evaporated, but before the tomatoes disintegrate.  Empty the skillet into the stew pot.

Add the peppers and the reserved juices, and immerse the bouquet garnis.

Cook at a low simmer, uncovered, for 2 hours stirring occasionally and lowering the heat as the liquid reduces. Cook until all the excess liquid has evaporated and the vegetables are covered in a syrupy sauce.

Remove from the heat, taste for salt and stir in a little pepper. Let cool, and then refridgerate overnight.  Let the ratatouille come to room temperature the next day before serving.

Additional Lulu ideas: stir in some pitted black olives, some diced celery, and/or some more olive oil right before serving.

Homemade ravioli, stuffed with shiitake mushrooms, chard stems, shallots, pine nuts, parsley and parmesan, made from fresh beet-leaf pasta, served with a dashi-mushroom broth with watercress, scallion greens, and shimeji mushrooms.

That’s a mouthful to say, but was an absolute delight to eat.  It was also my first attempt to make up an Asian-European fusion dish, and emerged out of my need to give the old creative cooking juices a swift kick in the pants.  For the last few months, I poured my energy into a startup project, but unfortunately it became clear that the necessary funding resources were not going to emerge. Creative cooking took a back seat, but last night’s meal was its way of pounding a fist on the table and crying “my turn, dammit!” I was quite proud of the results, if I can say so myself.

I’ve been a fan of fusion since it burst on the New York City restaurant scene in the mid-nineties (flashback to an incredible dinner with Aun, my then-roommate and now the author of the marvelous blog Chubby Hubby, with a Japanese-Italian pasta-and-squid-ink dish served in a bowl made from a huge cheese rind. I love me some cheese!).

With the arrival of my pasta machine (recommended by Zenchef, and after using it last night, I love it!), I decided that I wanted to serve ravioli with a Japanese broth. This led to cracking open Kimiko Barber’s The Japanese Kitchen, which has been waiting to be read for the last 6 months, and a hop down to the Japanese grocery store in Harrison, NY.  This is a fairly involved meal, so with no further ado:

Shiitake, Chard Ravioli in Dashi Broth with Watercress and Shimeji Mushrooms
serves 4 people

- Niban Dashi Broth – (from Kimiko Barber’s The Japanese Kitchen)
4 cups water
1 piece of dried konbu (kelp), roughly 4×6 inches
handful of bonito flakes (katsuo-bushi)

- Mushroom Broth -
4 cups water
2 celery stalks
2 carrots, peeled
1 medium yellow onion, peeled
1 tbsp dried porcini mushrooms
handful of fresh white mushrooms
several stalks of parsley

- Ravioli Filling -
2 shallots, finely chopped
2 or 3 large shiitake mushrooms, finely chopped
5 thin chard stems (or 2 thick stems, sliced lengthwise), finely chopped
1 tbsp pine nuts, finely chopped
2 tbsp parmesan cheese, finely grated
2 chard leaves, finely chopped
handful of fresh parsley, finely chopped
salt
mushroom broth

- Beet Leaf Pasta for Ravioli -
1 bunch of beet leaves (or chard leaves)
2 large eggs
1.5 cups of unbleached all purpose flour

- Final Broth -
All of the dashi broth from above
1 cup of the mushroom broth
2.5 tbsp dark soy sauce
2 tbsp mirin sauce
pinch of salt to taste
1 bunch of buna shimeji mushrooms, trimmed
handful of fresh watercress leaves
greens from 2 scallions (spring onions), sliced at an angle

Making the Dashi broth
Place the water, konbu, and bonito flakes in a saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. Once the water is boiling, reduce the heat to low and cook for another 5 minutes. Pour the broth through a strainer lined with a paper towel and set aside.

Making the Mushroom broth
Combine the ingredients in a stockpot, cover, and bring to a boil. Loosen the cover and let simmer for an hour or two. Discard the vegetables, pour the broth through a strainer lined with a paper towel and set aside.

Making the Filling
Heat up a few dashes of olive oil in a large saute pan on medium-low heat, and saute the shallots for several minutes, then add the shiitake mushrooms and chard stems and cook for several more minutes. Stir in the finely chopped chard leaves and parsley. As the vegetables start to dry in the pan (you will feel them start to stick to the bottom of the pan), stir in a ladle of the mushroom broth. When the broth has cooked down, add another ladle-ful. Add in the finely chopped pine nuts, turn the heat all the way down, and cook, covered, for a couple more minutes. Turn off the heat, stir in the cheese, taste for salt, and let cool.

Making the Ravioli
Boil the beet (or chard) leaves for 4 minutes, drain, let cool, and then squeeze out as much of the liquid as you can. Very finely chop.

Either on a work surface or in a bowl, combine the flour, egg, and chopped beet leaves, and work together with your hands until it is fully integrated. Add small amounts of flour until the mass no longer feels moist or sticky. Marcella Hazan has a simple test to see if you need more flour: “wash your hands, dry them… press your thumb deep into center of the mass; if it comes out clean, without any sticky matter it, no more flour is needed.”

Knead the dough for 8 minutes on a dry work surface: steady the dough with one hand, and push down and forward with the heel of the palm of your other hand. Fold the now-stretched dough back in half, give it a half turn (always in the same direction), and repeat.

Cut off one sixth of the dough (Marcella says that “the pieces of dough you end up with for thinning should be three times as many as the eggs you used“), and keep the rest of the dough wrapped in plastic wrap. Thin the dough, and start working it through the pasta machine from the widest setting until you are happy with the thickness (I went to setting 8). The strip of pasta should be about 3 to 4 inches wide.

Cut the strip in half, and place small mounds of the filling about 2.5 inches apart. With a pastry brush and a bowl of water, gently moisten the pasta around the filling, and then place the second half of the pasta strip on top and press around the filling. The water helps create the seal. Then with a knife or pasta cutter, trim the pieces of ravioli and place on a dry, clean kitchen towel.

Repeat these steps until you have made all the raviolis.

Finishing the Dish
Bring a large pot of salted water to boil, for cooking the ravioli. Place the reserved dashi broth in a saucepan and add a cup of the mushroom broth, the soy sauce, the mirin, and a small pinch of salt. Bring it to a simmer.

Place the ravioli in the boiling water and cook for 5 minutes. At the same time, place the chopped scallions and the shimeji mushrooms in the simmering broth, and cook for 4 minutes. Lay out your bowls for plating and place a bunch of watercress leaves at the bottom of each bowl. During that last minute before the ravioli is ready, ladle out a little broth and half of the scallions and shimeji mushrooms at the bottom of each bowl. With a slotted spoon, distribute the ravioli among your waiting bowls, and then top off each bowl with the broth and remainder of the scallions and mushrooms.

Serve and enjoy! I paired this with Sapporo beer.

Dessert
For dessert, we made a blackberry and raspberry version of Food Blogga’s sour cream version of the raspberry cake from Gourmet many people have tried this summer (including us). I think I liked Susan’s sour cream version better than the buttermilk. Topped with some lightly sugared whipped cream, it was absolutely delicious.

There’s an old saying, “if you can’t beat em, join em.”  It applies quite aptly to summertime heat and a good, fresh salsa don’t you think?

My current favorite method of salsa making is about as simple as it gets, and just relies on fresh ingredients.

Fresh Salsa
6 medium tomatillos, diced
2 large ripe tomatoes, diced
1 red onion, diced
5 or 6 spring onions, finely chopped (use all the green)
1 green pepper, diced
1 red pepper, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 to 3 fresh jalapenos, minced (add heat to personal taste; can also use cayenne or serrano)
juice of 1 to 2 limes, to taste
large bunch of cilantro, chopped
1 tbsp rice vinegar (or to taste)
salt and pepper to taste

Just chop everything up and combine in a bowl.  Serve with some tortilla chips, or toast some bread with a little olive oil for a simple bruschetta, or serve as a garnish alongside a well-seasoned and grilled flank steak.

Don’t forget the beer.

Today Lisl had some friends from her choir over for lunch, and this went over quite well (we also had a hit with a black-eyed pea salad that was sort of a combination of this and this).

Below the fold, I’m attaching a few more photos from our recent trip up to the Catskills.

Summertime has finally come, although here in the Catskills the spring rains have decided they like hanging around. They enjoy our company in the afternoons. That, or they’re out to kill everyone’s tomato plants, and doing a good job of it too. We are just finishing a week vacation here in “slightly-upstate” New York, and while work and mozzies invaded quite a bit, it has been quiet and beautiful. (if you don’t speak Oz, mozzies = mosquitoes)

The farms have been fighting with the weather – what a tough profession farming is, subject to the whims of weather.  I was really looking forward to the return of fresh roma beans at our local farm, but the wet weather has left them tough and unenjoyable, resistant to even a long stew in tomato sauce.  The cucumbers have suffered even worse, including the little kerbys.

Still, the chard, wax beans, and golden zucchini are all beautiful, and I have high hopes for the corn season. I was glad to see Gill’s farm stand open for business.  Here is my first payload:

Given the onslaught of work (trying to get a new venture off the ground in this environment is not a simple task), I have only had time to cook oldies but goodies, rather than creating new dishes.  With summertime eating, I also tend to go simple — fresh salads and well-seasoned meat cooked on the grill.

A dry rub of smoked paprika, ground coriander, salt, and brown sugar was a smashing hit with our niece visiting from Sydney.  We have also been playing around with chimichurri-like green sauces to go with flank and skirt steak, some with parsely and some with cilantro.  My favorite so far was the following:

Cilantro Green Sauce (chimichurri inspired)
large bunch of cilantro (fresh coriander)
2 cloves of garlic
1/3 of a hot jalapeno
pinch of salt
1 tbsp of olive oil
red wine vinegar and rice wine vinegar to taste

You can finely mince everything and combine with the liquids, or just use a food processor (which is what I did last night).  The bite of the vinegar and the heat of the jalapeno are a fabulous complement to a flank or skirt steak, well seasoned with salt and pepper, cooked to medium-rare on the grill, and sliced thin across the grain.

I also love making twists on lemonade.  Last summer I had fun freezing watermelon cubes and using them instead of ice.  This year I did a similar thing, but with more of a mohito-making approach.

Lemon-limeade with Watermelon and Spearmint

Juice 4 or 5 lemons and 2 limes, and place in a large jug.  Add mint leaves from several sprigs of spearmint or regular mint.  Add in 1 lime, washed and quartered.  Cut a half-inch slice from a watermelon half, and slice into 1/2 inch cubes.  Add in 3 tbsp of sugar.  Mash everything up.  Pour in cold water and ice, then taste for the amount of citrus juice and sugar, adjusting to taste.

I keep on playing around with pork shoulder braises, and what’s not to love? They make a great meal, and the leftovers can be used in a myriad of ways such as pulled pork sandwiches, stews, chilis, meat pies, etc.  The picture above was the only one I had time to grab for this recipe, but I was so happy with it, I wanted to record it up here.  I made it the night before, so putting on dinner the next day was a snap, and boy was it good!

Pork Shoulder Braised with White Wine and Napa Cabbage

5 or 6 lb pork shoulder butt, on the bone (preferably Berkshire pork)
1/2 lb slab bacon, 1 to 1.5 inches thick
1/2 napa cabbage, sliced 1/4″ thick
3 medium vidalia or yellow onions, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
2 celery stalks, diced
4 or 5 cloves of garlic, minced
1 1/2 tsp fennel seed
1 tsp coriander seed
bouquet garnis of parsley, winter savory, and 2 bay leaves, wrapped in string
salt and pepper
dry white wine
water
grapeseed oil

Preheat oven to 300F.  In a mortar and pestle, coarsely grind the fennel and coriander seed.

Remove the skin from pork shoulder and score the fat. Rub 1 tsp of salt and the ground spices around the pork, let it come to room temperature for 20 minutes or so. Heat a splash of grapeseed oil in a dutch oven until very hot. Sear all sides of the pork and then remove to the side.

Slice the slab bacon 1/2 inch thick and brown it in the dutch oven, then turn the heat down to medium and remove the bacon to the side as well.

Saute the onions until they start to turn translucent, then add in the carrot, celery, garlic, and spices.  Place the pork shoulder on top and pour in half a bottle of white wine.  Bring the liquid about 1/4 up the side of the pork, adding water if needed.  Scatter  the slab bacon around, place the bouquet garnis in the pot, and scatter around the napa cabbage.  Cover and cook for two hours, then flip the shoulder and cook for another 2 hours.

Remove the pork shoulder to a cutting board and let cool for 15 minutes, then using two forks gently pull the shoulder apart to separate the bones and fat from the meat.  Also remove the slab bacon.  If you refridgerate the pork and bacon overnight, as I did, then slice any large chunks of pork into half-inch-thick pieces, and sear the meat on both sides in a hot non-stick skillet.  Do the same with the bacon, and plate, grinding some coarse salt and pepper onto the pork.

If you are serving the braise immediately, skim the liquid fat off the top of the braised vegetables in the pot. If you put in the fridge overnight, the fat will solidify on the top making it much easier to remove.   Re-heat in a pot, not a microwave!  Ladle several large spoonfuls into a food processor and blend into your gravy.

With a slotted spoon to drain excess liquid, plate some of braised vegetables next to the meat and serve with a side of your choice — in our case, Lisl made a salad of fresh peas (parboiled and then immediately cooled in ice water), jicama, red onion, and cherry tomatoes, with a lemon juice, olive oil and thyme dressing.