Pork coddled in olive oil

Once in a great while you come across a new technique that opens up undreamed-of flavors. Marcella Hazan's pork loin braised in milk was that kind of revelation and it is a dish we cook at least once a year.

This dish, again from Paula Wolfert's Slow Mediterranean Kitchen, is a similar revelation and promises to become a standby. Our first encounter with a coddled dish came only a couple of weeks ago with the salmon coddled in olive oil at Marcel's. I had already dog-eared this recipe in the Wolfert book and was eager to try it after sampling the salmon dish.

This called for boneless pork shoulder cut into 2-in. cubes. I used the pork shoulder I had bought frozen from Blue Rooster Farm (though I think the pork actually comes from a neighboring farm). It looked so red in the package I wondered at one point if they had accidentally given me beef. But it looked like a pork shoulder cut and real heritage pork, of course, belies that ill-advised campaign about "the other white meat."

One of the things I enjoy about cooking is playing butcher, and I enjoyed cutting this off the bone and into cubes. A recent issue of RealEats described a butcher course for hobby cooks in California and I would happily take one if it was offered here.

The cubes then are tossed in a mix of coarse salt, crushed black peppercorns, 2 bay leaves crushed to a powder, bruised fennel seeds and 2 sprigs of thyme. The pungent smells of the spices as you worked them in the mortar was terrific. You seal the meat and spices and put in the fridge overnight. The next day, you squeeze the cubes in one layer in a dutch oven and cover with 2 c. of EVOO. I had recently decided it was worth spending the extra money on a premium imported oil like Colavita rather than Whole Foods 365 brand because something I read suggested that the WF brand was something less than highest quality. Very little of the oil actually goes into the meat and Wolfert suggests using the oil again after draining it off afterwards, but that didn't seem very appetizing to me.

You bring the oil slowly to a boil on top of the stove and then put in a 250-degree oven for 2-1/2 hours, inserting a half-head of garlic. Wolfert says to keep the oil from boiling too much and browning the meat. I'm not sure how you avoid browning the meat, though. She talks about it remaining pink, and I will set the temperature lower next time, but this pork definitely got brown on the outside -- while remaining pink on the inside.

The meat is done when you can tap a chunk and it falls into pieces. It's hard to describe how good that first bite tasted when I pulled out a chunk, tapped it into pieces and tasted it. The savory pork, the pungent spices, the silky oil, the garlic all conspired to create a very special balance of flavors. I set it on the screen porch to cool and warmed it slowly again for serving.

It is served with Tuscan beans. I used cannellini soaked overnight, and then cooked a couple of hours with 2 bay leaves, a dried hot pepper, and 2 peeled cloves of garlic. Wolfert says to serve the warmed-up pork on room temperature beans but we decided that next time we would warm up the beans again, too.

For the final assembly, you drain the pork and let the meat drippings settle in the drained off oil, pour off the oil and make a vinaigrette with the drippings, whisking in 3 Tbl of fresh oil and 1-1/2 Tbl of red wine vinegar, and dress the beans with that. You mound the beans on a platter, sprinkle paper-thin slices of red onion soaked in wine vinegar over the beans, add the pork chunks and garnish with arugula. We accompanied very nicely with a Cotes du Rhone.

Meat

I've always loved meat and I don't buy the theory that humans are like apes and are naturally suited for a diet of berries and plants. Man has eaten meat since time immemorial. I accept that I need to eat less meat than I had when I was growing up, and one way to do that is to make sure I eat only high-quality meat. In these days, that means grass-fed, free-range, etc. -- everything described by Pollan, who in Omnivore's Dilemma, at least, never told us the end of his experiment with vegetarianism.

The River Cottage Meat Book by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is very English, but England, as I've said here before, is way ahead of the U.S. in food consciousness. Visiting a butcher in London or the Borough Market is a totally different experience than shopping for meat here. I picked up this book some time ago and finally used a simple recipe from it during the snow week here.

"Pan-to-Oven Pork Chops With Garlic" is really more a technique than a recipe. You heat up an ovenproof dish as you preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Meanwhile, you take all the cloves from a head of garlic, unpeeled, and sautee them in some olive oil. Then you brown the pork chops in the skillet (I did a half-recipe, just two pork chops); salt and pepper them as they brown. You put the chops in the ovenproof dish, use a slotted spoon to remove the garlic gloves and put them on top of the chops, deglaze the skillet with white wine, reducing by half. You pour the wine over the chops and pop them in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes. The result is delicious.

I used forest-fed pig pork chops for this recipe from a farm in Virginia that lets its pigs, a cross between a Duroc boar and a Tammworth sow, roam in 75 acres of woodlands. This meat, called Babes in the Woods, is available for pickup in a couple of spots around Washington, including every other Saturday in Silver Spring.

A friend put me on to this site a year ago or so, but my first order failed because they didn't have any of the things I wanted, so I gave up on it. But I tried again in January, ordering a pork loin roast and the two chops. I also wanted a pig's foot for another recipe but that wasn't available because the farmer does not butcher the pigs himself and the butcher keeps the skin and feet.

I picked up my order from the back of a pickup truck, frozen of course, and was astonished to pay $51 for a 2-1/2-lb. roast and the two chops. The meat was about $14 a pound! So here's the thing -- we want our artisanal, locally grown food, but we rebel against it costing more than the supermarket. Can't have it both ways. I won't buy this forest-fed pig every time I want pork -- the Niman Ranch pork at Whole Foods at half the price is an acceptable alternative -- but I will get it again. The meat is lean, though with delicious marbling, very flavorful and tender.

I cooked the other piece in a recipe from Paula Wolfert's Mediterranean Clay Pot Cooking, "Roast Loin of Pork with Golden Raisins." You pound a paste of 4 garlic cloves, 1 Tbl. salt, 1 Tbl. herbes de provence, 6 sage leaves, 1 tsp. fennel seeds and 1-1/2 tsp. peppercorns in a mortar and smear that over the pork roast an hour before cooking. You preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. Rub the bottom and sides of a cazuela with a cut garlic clove, smear some olive oil over the surface, add 3 medium onions sliced, 1/2 tsp. red wine vinegar, 2 Tbl. water, pinches of salt and pepper and put this in the oven for an hour. Raise the temperature to 400 degrees, stir the onions and flatten into a bed and put the roast on top. Return to the oven and roast for about an hour (internal temperature of 140 degrees). Transfer pork to cutting board and rest for 10 minutes, remove onions with slotted spoon, drain off most of the fat from the cazuela, add 1/4 c. vin de noix or 3 Tbl. red wine and 1 Tbl. cognac or port and light (this didn't work for me). Add 3/4 c. golden raisins that have soaked for 1 or 2 hours in 1 c. hot water and 1 Tbl. vin de noix (didn't use), along with the soaking liquid. Add cooked onions and bring to a boil, stirring. Slice the pork and arrange the slices over the onion mixture to serve in the cazuela. This also was fabulous as the garlic-herb paste made a nice flavorful crust for the roast.

I've learned a couple of things from this experience. One is that frozen meat is not bad at all, and since that's the only way it can be sold by vendors at farmers' markets I won't hesitate to buy it for that reason. Second, artisanal farm meat costs a lot more than even Whole Foods meat, but it's probably worth it. I can't afford it every day, but I will try more of the meats -- heritage pork, for instance -- available at the farmers' markets.

Clay pot cooking

I've been fascinated by clay pot cooking since I got my first Roemertopf in Germany many years ago. I still have a Roemertopf (my second), though I haven't used it much in recent years. A year ago or so, La Tienda lured me into buying a 12-inch Spanish cazuela, a round, relatively shallow earthenware casserole. A few months ago, I got a Pirmal beanpot at La Cuisine in Alexandria.

So I was happy to see Paula Wolfert's new book, "Mediterranean Clay Pot Cooking." I think she is a great cookbook writer; several of her books are already on my shelf. Happily, she said most recipes in the new book could be done in four types of clay pots -- a Roemertopf (!), a cazuela (!), a beanpot (!), and a tagine -- the only one I don't have (yet).

She also has some recipes that call for being baked in a clay environment and suggests lining your stove with fire bricks to achieve this. It occurs to me, though, that my Big Green Egg provides a ceramic environment, so I will experiment with using it for those recipes.

The trick of cooking with clay pots is to avoid sudden shifts in temperature. They must warm up gradually and should not be set while hot onto a cold surface, even just granite at room temperature. Recipes with baking always call for a start in a cold oven, so the pot heats up as the oven does. A Roemertopf must be soaked in water before each use. The cazuela and beanpot both required "curing" before use by soaking in water.

I used Wolfert's new cookbook for the first time over the weekend, cooking a "tiella" of pork, wild mushrooms and potatoes. A tiella is an Italian version of a cazuela, which Wolfert says is quite serviceable for this recipe, which comes from Calabria in southern Italy.

I increased the amount of pork in the recipe because 1 lb. seemed too skimpy for four people, but I left other quantities as written. You start by sauteeing 3 crushed garlic cloves and 3 oz. of thinly sliced, shredded pancetta in 2 Tbl. of olive oil for a few minutes. Then you add the boneless pork shoulder cut into 1-1/2 inch cubes (I used just shy of 2 lbs.) and brown them on all sides. Then you add 1 lb. of red potatoes, peeled and thickly sliced; 1 lb. of brown mushrooms, quartered; 3/4 oz. of dried porcini, soaked and coarsely chopped; the strained soaking liquid from the porcini; 1 tsp. salt; 1/2 tsp. pepper; 1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper, and a sprig of rosemary. You cover (my cazuela doesn't have a cover, so I borrowed the cover from a 12-in. braising pan) and simmer 45 min. It can be done ahead of time to this point.

Before putting into the oven to finish, you scrape off any congealed fat from the top, and pick out the potato slices and put them to one side. You mush the meat and mushrooms into a single layer and then arrange a layer of potatoes on top. You "press gently" to compact the casserole, then top the potatoes with 4 oz. of shredded cheese. First choice is a Calabrian cheese called caciocavallo, which Vace didn't have, so I used the second choice, aged provolone. You drizzle 1 Tbl. of olive oil over this, set in a cold oven, and turn it on, set at 400 F. After half an hour, you turn off the oven and let the casserole continue to cook in the receding heat for 45 minutes. Sprinkle 1 Tbl. chopped parsley on top and serve. I served it with a simple green salad and ciabatta.

I was very happy with the result. It was, obviously, very rich. It's hard to say just what the earthenware pot contributes, but Wolfert says these recipes are better cooked in earthenware than in conventional pots, and I'm willing to take her word for it.