Making of a Tasting Menu………

A few months back I thought it would be fun to make February a tribute to pork. And here we are on Valentine’s Day and halfway thru Pork Month; I’m loving it. This week it was my turn to come up with the prix fixe for the week. And for me, it’s a fun process to think how will each course be different, yet go together and have pork as the focus.

I started to think about the main course, running through my head cuts of pork and how I wanted to cook them; double chops, loins, tenderloin, shoulder… maybe I’d bring in a suckling pig, or perhaps stuffed trotters (pied de cochon anyone? Um yum!). I decided on pork shoulder. It’s such an under-utilized cut (except for BBQ), and I absolutely love it. I still didn’t know what I was going to make for the appetizer and dessert, but the shoulder is my jump-off point.

On Tuesday I made a cure of Kosher salt, fresh thyme, black pepper and juniper berries. I cut the shoulder in 10-ounce pieces, trimmed some of the fat off and lightly sprinkled my cure over each piece. Layered on sheet pans between parchment paper and stacked sheet pan on top of sheet pan and placed them in the walk-in and weighed them down, pressing them slightly. This sat for two days, then I confited them. After I was done processing the shoulders, I had a fair amount of shoulder ‘scraps’ left. I stared at them for a few minutes thinking what to do with them; momos jumped to my mind, but I want to try use it for the tasting menu.

I knew that I was making a lacquered (whole grain mustard, white wine reduction, apple cider reduction) pork confit. I was feeling a southern vibe and honey custard spoon bread, black eyed pea gravy, and glazed baby carrots felt right for the entrée. Entrée complete, and since I was thinking now a southern dish, boudin would be perfect with the pork scraps. We had chicken livers, so I simmer them with the pork scraps, green peppers, onions and scallion, ground it up, mixed with rice, creole seasonings and wrapped in caul fat. I made some pickled shallot and remoulade and now I had the appetizer.

The dessert is slight difficult with pork month. My friend Mindy Segal of Hot Chocolate in Chicago makes awesome bacon chocolate chip cookies and I could ask her for the recipe but it wasn’t going along with my southern vibe. Pork goes real well with apples and then of course I thought bourbon would go well with both of those. It like a jigsaw puzzle, moving each piece in my mind until they fit. My mind wandered, almost dreaming, about this dessert and then all of a sudden I had it: bourbon-caramel-apple tart with candied bacon.

Candied Bacon rocks! All you have to do is dice some slab bacon and cook in a heavy bottom pan over medium high heat until brown and crispy (stirring occasionally), strain the fat out and dust liberally with sugar in the raw and continue to cook over medium high heat, stirring frequently, until the sugar has melted. Place immediately on a Silpat or parchment on a sheet pan and cool… this is yummy on its own or in an apple bourbon tart…

And that is how I came about with this week’s Pork Prix Fixe. Next week I’m thinking Malaysian, or maybe Greek…

I feel like all I do is bitch about what is wrong with food these days. Honestly, I’d rather talk about heirloom pork, organic tomatoes, or the CD I am jamming to now (which happens to be Cold War Kids’ Robbers & Cowards). Unfortunately, this morning I stumbled across that which must be written about.

I am not feeling well. Last night in the middle of service I realized that I was very sick. I thought maybe it was from not eating, which I forget to do all of the time, or maybe not enough water since it is very hot. Nope, I am sick, bummer. I slept a ton, made some yummy Maine blueberry pancakes that were sweet and tart – I love pancakes, I am going to focus a whole blog one day on pancakes. But I digress.

Being sick, I am drinking tons of Emergenc-C, raspberry flavor, which of course is not actually raspberry flavor (but again another blog) and OJ. I poured myself a glass of XXXXX Organic Orange Juice, it states it has calcium added and it is pasteurized, not from concentrate.

Just pouring it into a glass is where the problems started. It looks like thinned out Ralph Lauren linen white paint with a burnt cyan crayon melted in it, unusually viscous but not overly thick, smooth looking but very strange. How anybody said “YES! this is just the product we want to sell” and “oh we’ll tell them it’s organic and they’ll just buy it up” is beyond me.

It is disgusting. It’s almost creamy, and not good orange creamy like a creamsicle. This is strangely smooth and sweet. Yes it does have an orange taste but now, with the after-taste, I can get notes of pith, chemical, and sour kumquats.

They really want you to know it’s not from concentrate, which is fascinating since this reminds me of the frozen concentrate we bought when I was a child and I would try to eat, since it was overly sweet and rich.

I would give anything for a glass of fresh-squeezed OJ. From the farm to fork! Or at least to the glass, in this case. I can’t believe I’m going to paraphrase Joni Mitchell (how do I even know this) but “we need to get ourselves back to the garden.”