Meat – The Constables Larder

Pickled Pork Loin and Onion

It’s always nice when an experiment succeeds. I like pickling ramps and onions. I like brining pork. I wondered what would happen if I combined the two. In this case, I created a pickling brine and used it on both red onions and pork loin, which were then served together. Big hit. The key is doing the upfront work several hours ahead so that the pork can take in the flavor.

For the brine itself, I referenced two old posts of mine and Zen Can Cook to create the pickling liquid. Here was tonight’s version:

Pickling Brine
1 cup rice vinegar
1 cup water
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp honey
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp coriander seed
1 tbsp dried rosemary
1/4 to 1/2 tsp chili pepper flakes
a few black peppercorns
2 or 3 bay leaves
1 cinnamon stick (or 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon)
pinch of celery seed (optional)

Combine the ingredients in a small pot, bring to a boil then simmer for 1 minute.

Halve then thinly slice a red onion and place in a dish big enough to marinate the pork loin (I cooked two in this case). Pour the hot brine over the onions and let cool for 20 to 30 minutes. You can pour the brine liquid through a strainer to remove the seeds and spices, although tonight I did not bother and the remaining seeds did not bother anyone.

With a fork, remove the now-pickled onions to a bowl. Cover and keep in the fridge until serving time.

The brine should still be in your marinade dish. Stir in 1 tsp of mustard and 1 tsp of soy sauce. The add the pork loins. Cover and marinate in the fridge for several hours (at least 3 or 4 is my recommendation).

When it comes time to cooking, remove the pork from the liquid and grill until cooked but not dry. With pork loin I think that learning the appropriate firmness of the meat is far more effective than using an instant-read thermometer (which I like using on bigger cuts).

Let the pork rest for 5 minutes then slice and serve with the pickled onions on the side.

This pairs well with a garden salad or a variation of my 3 bean salad.

Lamb Shanks, Lentils and Red Wine

1 lb black lentils (french/puy lentils can be used instead)
5 lamb shanks
1.5 vidalia/sweet onions, finely diced (or red onions)
4 cloves of garlic, minced
3 carrots, halved across the length
1 stalk of celery, halved across the length
2 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp pork lard (optional)
bottle of red wine (such as a cotes du rhone)
~2 cups of water
1.5 tbsp minced rosemary
3 bay leaves
handful of parsley, tied together with kitchen string
salt
pepper
big pinch of ground nutmeg
big pinch of ground clove
big pinch of ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 250F.

Sear the lamb shanks, 2 or 3 at a time so that you do not crowd them, on medium heat in a large dutch oven or pot. Set aside.

Turn off the heat for a few minutes to let the pot cool. Turn on the heat again to medium-low and add the olive oil, then the onions. Cook the onions for 5-10 minutes until they start to turn translucent, stirring to make sure they do not stick and burn on the bottom of the pan. Add the minced garlic and cook for a couple minutes.

Because I wanted to make sure that the lamb did not dry out, I also added some pork lard, which I render myself when braising pork shoulder, but alternatively you could just cook the dish with a few pieces of bacon (discard towards the end of cooking) which would add a nice smokiness.

Add the lentils and cook for a couple of minutes, stirring often. Then stir in the bottle of red wine (personally I like using a reasonably priced but drinkable bottle of wine from the south of France for this purpose).

Stir in a half-teaspoon of salt and add the carrots, celery, bay leaf, parsley and rosemary. Add the shanks back in and immerse them as best you can.

Cover and cook in the oven for 1.5 hours at 250F, or if you are not using a pot that can go in the oven, on the stove-top on very low heat.

Taste for salt and add more as needed, along with a few pinches of ground black pepper and the cinnamon, clove and nutmeg. Stir in 2 or 3 cups of water. Cover again and cook for another hour or so.

All of the above can be done the night before, reducing the amount of time needed before the meal. Just let the pot cool and then put the entire thing in the fridge overnight.

At this point, I remove the meat from the lamb shank bones, trimming them of excess fat and cartilage but keeping the meat in large pieces. However, add the bones back to the pot, discarding right before serving. I discard the carrot and celery at this point, and add more salt and pepper (and possibly some rosemary, either minced or in stalks) to taste.

If you do split the cooking process overnight, just warm the pot up again over a low flame and then return to a 250F oven, uncovered, for a final hour of cooking.

To serve, make sure that the carrot, celery, bay leaf, parsley, and rosemary stalks (if any) are all discarded. Either plate directly or ladle into a serving bowl.

Smoked Beef Braise

Yesterday for a dinner party I decided to add a new flavor to a beef braise: smoke. The results were quite a hit when combined with the braising sauce.

The cut was a 4 pound boneless chuck. I gave it a dry rub of:

3/4 tsp black peppercorns
1 tbsp coriander seed
1 tbsp ground paprika
1/5 tbsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp dried oregano

The peppercorns and coriander seed were ground in a mortar and then mixed with the other components before applying the dry rub all over the beef.

To smoke the meat, I used a Weber kettle grill and smoked the meat for about an hour. It’s important to smoke *before* you braise, not after. I used about a half-chimney of royal oak wood charcoal (I prefer that to briquettes), and about 4 chunks of cherry wood, which had been soaked in water for over an hour ahead of time. Once the coals were quite hot, I spread them on one half of the grill bottom, and put a pan filled with some water on the other side. Make sure you place the meat above the pan, and not directly above the coals (i.e. you want indirect heat). In this case, I ended up closing both the bottom and top vents, letting some air in only periodically. I made sure the temperature didn’t rise above 250F/300F because my goal was to get some smoke flavor, not dry out the meat.

The Braise
2 onions (spanish or vidalia), chopped
2 carrots, chopped
4 garlic cloves, peeled
bouquet garni of parsley and bay leaf (tied with white kitchen string)
2 cups of a dry white wine
beef broth or water

After an hour of smoking, I brought the meat back inside. I seared both sides on high heat in the dutch oven for about a minute a side, removed the beef to the side, and deglazed the bottom with a little bit of water. One of the onions, chopped, went on the bottom of the pan, and the beef was placed on top. Then I spread the remaining onion, carrot and garlic around and wedged the bouquet garni in the side. Two cups of white wine were added, and enough beef broth to bring the liquid to just over a third of the way up the meat. I had made a beef broth earlier in the day with beef shank, but you can just use water or all wine if you want.

The oven had been pre-heated to 295F and the dutch oven, covered, went in for 5 hours. I let everything rest while guests arrived and we started the meal, and as we got closer to this course, took the meat out of the pot and popped it into the 295F oven in a baking dish to stay warm. The liquid fat at the top of the braising liquid was skimmed off, the bouquet garni removed, and then I used an immersion blender to puree all the vegetables into a sauce.

The last step was probably the most important. Even with just an hour of smoke, the meat had absorbed a lot of the smoke flavor, and on its own was a bit more “BBQ” than I was going for (albeit delicious). But paired with the sauce of the braising liquid, the combination balanced out perfectly into a delicious mix. Suffice it to say that there were no leftovers. Unfortunately, I was moving a bit too fast in the later part of this process to take pictures, but wanted to record this one as a success.

We paired this with some broccoli rabe that had been parboiled and then sauteed with a bit of garlic, lemon juice and hot pepper flakes. Oh, and a 2004 Barolo that we’ve been saving in our basement for years.

Lime and Jalapeno Brined Pork Chops

I’ll have to add some photographs later, but I wanted to record this experiment for future use.

Brine (for two pork chops)
2 limes
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 red (or green) jalapeno pepper, very thinly sliced
handful of cilantro, chopped
1.5 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
red vinegar
olive oil

Quarter the limes and squeeze the juice into whatever container you plan to use for brining. Add in the garlic, jalapeno, cilantro, salt, sugar, vinegar (guessing 1/4 cup) and olive oil (guessing 2 tbsp worth). Mix everything together and then add the pork chops, thoroughly coating them in the mixture. Add in the squeezed lime quarters and put in the fridge for several hours.

To cook:
Pre-heat oven to 400F.

Remove the pork chops from the brine and scrape off as much garlic, cilantro leaves, etc as you can from the meat (scrape back into the container).

Heat a cast iron frying pan until it just starts to smoke, and sear the pork chops for 2 minutes on each side. Pour the brine over and around the chops and put the pan in the oven. The cooking time will depend on the thickness of the chops (and timing of when you removed from the fridge). For an inch-thick chop, expect it to take 9-12 minutes in the oven.

Chipotle Pork Shoulder Braise

Chipotle Pork Shoulder Braise

1 3-4 lb pork shoulder, bone-in
1 tbsp mexican oregano
2 chipotle peppers, in adobo sauce
2 ancho chiles, seeds removed
1 tin of fire roasted tomatoes
1 beer
1 large onion, chopped
5 cloves of garlic, minced
1.5 tbsp kosher salt
1 tbsp coriander seed
1/2 tsp cumin seed
10 whole black peppercorns
Lime slices

Tonight’s dinner was an off-the-cuff mental mashup of braises I have historically done and some flavors I’ve been trying via Rick Bayless recipes. The results were delicious. The spicey sauce was rich and delicious — very much like a mole sauce but without chocolate. For tonight’s meal, I worked with a 3lb pork shoulder but I’ll often do these kinds of dishes with a bigger piece.

Preheat your oven to 290F or 300F. (it will be fine at either, but lower and slower is better if you have the time)

Heat up your dutch over on a high flame. Once the pot is hot, add a little oil and sear the sides of your pork shoulder. By the way, if your butcher leaves the fat on the pork shoulder, score it with a knife first one way, then perpendicular to the first cuts, but don’t take it off!

Once seared, remove the pork shoulder, turn the heat down to low and toss in the onions. It is actually a good thing for this dish for you to let the onions brown a bit with the very hot surface, so don’t over-stir them, but make sure they do not burn.

With a mortar and pestle, loosely grind the coriander seed, cumin and peppercorns, and mix those in along with the mexican oregano (a different herb from Italian oregano). Then add the garlic (you want to wait to this point to add the garlic so that the pot has cooled a bit and doesn’t instantly burn the garlic turning it bitter). Add in the ancho chiles and chipotle peppers (with a little of the adobo sauce if you got them from a tin).

Turn off the stove top heat and place the pork shoulder on top of the onions, fat side down.

Sprinkle the salt around, and add the tomatoes around the pork. You can fire roast your own tomatoes simply by charring them underneath your broiler, but I was pressed for time so simply used a tin of Muir Glen fire roasted tomatoes, which supermarkets around here have started to carry.

Pour in a beer — in this case I used a mexican-style lager. You want the liquid to be about a third of the way up the side of the pork. Add more beer or water if needed.

Cover your dutch oven, place in the oven and cook. About half-way through, turn the pork so that the fat side is up.

If you have a 2-3 lb pork shoulder, about 4 1/2 hours is enough. For a 5-6 lb shoulder, expect about 6 hours. You want the meat falling off the bone and easy to pull apart with a fork.

Move the pork to a cutting board and use two forks to pull it apart. Sprinkle with salt (and taste for salt).

Skim excess fat off the top of the liquid and vegetables in the pot, and then puree it with an immersion blender to create your sauce.

Serve with white rice and some lime pieces. The lime sweetens the dish and brings out the flavors even more.

Prosciutto-Wrapped Roasted Pork Loin

I’m always a fan of the combination of taste and simplicity, especially these days when my schedule does not allow for extended adventures in the kitchen. This dish was a snap to make, and tons of flavor. The oregano and prosciutto combine beautifully and seep into the roast.

a boneless pork loin
enough imported prosciutto to wrap the loin
oregano (fresh or dried)
ground pepper

Pre-heat the oven at 350F. Sprinkle the loin liberally with freshly ground pepper and fresh or dried oregano. Because the prosciutto has so much salt, I would argue not adding any salt at this point.

Wrap the loin in prosciutto, overlapping each layer. Do not use cheap domestic (US) prosciutto — it has weak flavor and your results will be boring.

Roast the loin in the oven — it can take 30 minutes to an hour depending on the size of the loin. Remove the loin when an instant-read thermometer shows 135 degrees. Loosely cover in foil and let rest for 5 minutes, then slice and serve. Taste and only add salt at this point if you think it is needed.

We served this with a nice green salad, roasted brussel sprouts, and a hearty Italian wine.

Easy Baked Pork Tenderloin: Two Ways

I love to grill pork tenderloin, but with a freezing spring here, I have been baking in the oven instead for a tasty but extremely low-maintenance mid-week dinner. Here are two simple approaches, one European-inspired, the other Asian-inspired. If you can marinate the meat for 30-60 min before putting in the oven, so much the better.

The European-style Version
2 pork tenderloins
1.5 tbsp Grey Poupon mustard
A drizzle of Olive oil
White wine vinegar
Dried fennel seed, thyme, oregano
Salt and pepper

Place the pork in an oval baking dish. Smear the mustard all over the pork, and then drizzle a teaspoon or so of olive oil and about a third of a cup of white wine vinegar. Liberally salt and pepper, and then sprinkle a couple pinches of each of the dried herbs (crush up the fennel seed a bit first).

Pre-heat the oven to 425F and make sure the meat is well-coated in the sauce before putting into the oven. After the pork cooks for 10 minutes, turn the oven down to 350F. Flip the tenderloins after 25-30 minutes.

The critical factor is pulling the meat out at the right time. Start checking the temperature about 45 to 50 minutes in. Insert an instant read thermometer and remove each tenderloin when it reads 135. Let rest under foil for five minutes, then slice and serve, spooning some of the delicious sauce on top.

The Asian-style Version
1 tbsp minced fresh ginger
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
A drizzle of olive oil (or sesame oil)
A healthy dose of soy sauce (est 1/3 cup)
2 tsp mirin sauce

Cook in the same way as above.

Pork Loin Roast w Orange Juice and Lime

I rarely mix fruit and meat. A pork-and-apples dish was the cause of a veritable showdown at the OK Corral of my mother’s kitchen when I was 7 years old. But a few years ago when I was just starting out with this blog, I remember doing a pork roast with orange juice and loving it. I never recorded the recipe, but my brain did store away a mental bookmark to Bitchin’ Camero’s recipe from back in May 2009. Last weekend, I finally took another shot at my own version. The result was stunning.

Pork Loin Roast w Orange Juice and Lime
2 to 2.5lb pork loin roast
5 or 6 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1/2 vidalia onion, sliced
1 very juicy lime, or a couple of normal ones
2/3 cup orange juice
1 tsp ground cumin
salt and pepper

I recommend marinating the meat for half a day or more beforehand. To make the marinade: zest the lime, finely chop the garlic, and mix it all together with the cumin, salt (for table salt, maybe 1/2 tsp), and a couple pinches of black pepper. Rub this all around the meat, surround with the onions, pour the orange juice on top, and squeeze the juice from the lime over it all. Cover with plastic wrap, and if you can, turn the meat once or twice as it marinates.

To cook, pre-heat the over to 350F. You can see above that I transferred it all to a larger baking dish. Cook the pork for about an hour, flipping it halfway, and remove from the oven when an instant-read thermometer registers 140F to 145F.

Cover with foil and let it rest for 5 minutes before slicing. Serve with the onions, which become deliciously candied, and drizzle the sauce from the roasting dish on top (if you left a good portion of fat on your roast, you might skim the sauce first).

Repeat: do not forget to plate the onions! Heaven.

This dish isn’t going to turn me into a fruit-and-meat man, but I will definitely be making it again.

(p.s. I can’t write a blog post without pimping my current startup Aprizi, the reason why my food blogging is so sporadic — please go try it out!)

Flageolet and Meatball Peasant Stew

I love Autumn. I love the temperature, the colors, the clothes, and of course the fact that my favorite cooking style fits the weather more naturally. This recipe falls squarely into that bucket, and was a huge hit with Lisl and a friend who came over this evening. It combines a homemade Italian meatball with a French-style peasant stew.

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.

Lamb meatballs with lemon zest, thyme and parsley

One of my favorite ways to have lamb is to grill lamb meatballs. I play around with a lot of variations, such as this one. Another approach is mixing cumin, spring/red onions and a few supporting players together. Tonight, I tried a new combination and Lisl was really happy with the results, so I’m recording it here (no picture, sorry!). The combination of the lemon zest and fresh thyme really give it a bright flavor.

The following measurements are a rough approximation:

1 lb ground lamb
thyme leaves from 5 or 6 fresh sprigs
1 tsp kosher salt (halve this if you use table salt)
large bunch of parsley, finely chopped
zest from 1 lemon
several grindings of fresh pepper

Combine the ingredients in a bowl with your hands, and form into meatballs about 1.5 to 2 inches in diameter. I made 9 meatballs from 1 lb of ground lamb. Grill them, turning periodically so that multiple sides of the meatball get seared and it starts to firm up. I did not find that these needed a sauce, but a bit of fresh lemon juice, or a sauce of lemon juice mixed into greek yogurt might be nice.

Make sure you wash your lemon well before zesting, since they are often sprayed. I’ll also note that lamb can be really hit or miss in the U.S. A lot of lamb sold here is too old, which I didn’t even realize until marrying an Australian and realizing how good lamb is down under. We do not eat lamb that often, but when we do, we get it from a very good butcher who works with carefully chosen local farms.