Cuban sliders, black beans, and tostones.

So with all that on my mind, I assembled my army of ingredients. Pork chops, lemon juice, OJ, a pineapple, some small buns, and a handful of herbs and spices. I had all the tools I needed. I just had to assemble it correctly. Fortunately, the end result was just as amazing as I could have hoped.

Cuban sliders, black beans, and tostones.

It probably also helped that I served it with tostones and some black beans. I’ll talk about those tostones next time. For now, lets focus on making these delicious sandwiches. Click through for the recipe and a few tips.

Ingredients
1 onion (red) sliced
3 cloves of garlic
4 boneless pork chops (excess fat trimmed off, each chop cut into two equal pieces and pounded down a bit)
2 cups OJ
3 limes, juiced
2 limes, juiced (need lime juice at separate times, hence listed twice)
1/4 cup white vinegar
2 tablespoons ground cumin
2 tablespoons dried oregano
fresh black pepper
kosher salt
1/4 cup white wine
pineapple slices (Fresh is best, obviously. Cut on the thinner side, if possible, they are going to be used as garnish in the slider.)
olive oil
8 dinner rolls (I used small potato rolls)

Directions
1. Prepare the marinade/brine: In a small skillet, heat a half up of water with about a quarter cup of salt until it dissolves. Remove from heat and mix with the following in a gallon zip lock bag: a half cup of ice water, one cup of OJ, the juice of 3 limes, the vinegar, 1 tbsp cumin, and 1 tbsp oregano. Add the pork to the brine and soak for about an hour.
2. In a large skillet, heat a splash of oil over medium-high heat and add the onion and garlic to it. Saute it until the onion softens. Remove the onion from the skillet and set it aside.
3. Drain the pork (discard the brine), pat dry and sprinkle both sides with cumin, oregano, and black pepper.
4. Wipe out the skillet if you need to, heat over med-high heat and add a splash of oil. When hot, add the pork chops and sear over high heat. When one side is golden brown, flip it and sear the other side. It’ll only take a minute or two per side.
5. Re-add the onions and pour in the remaining OJ, lime juice, and white wine (don’t use any of the juice from the brine). Bring to a simmer and cook for about 10 minutes more. Set the pork aside (tent with foil). Continue to simmer the juice and onion mixture until it thickens and cooks down. It should be a fairly thick sauce chock full of cooked onions at the end.

To assemble the sliders, cut the buns in half. Add a piece of pork to the base, then a helping of the onion paste mixture, then a slice of pineapple.

Fig and goat cheese stuffed tenderloin

Yup, that’s a pork tenderloin stuffed with figs and goat cheese. I somehow got it in my mind that combination would work. And you know what, I’m happy with my decision. The goat cheese helped cut down on the sweetness of the figs and the rosemary gave it an earthy touch. Still, this isn’t a delicate meal. It’s very rich, what with the pork, the figs, the cheese, and the apple glaze. But it’s not like pork doesn’t pair well with a bit of sweetness (think about some take-out style Chinese dishes–like sweet and sour pork).

Of course, if I was making an apple glaze, I had to continue the apple theme and serve it with apple baked brown rice! So click through to see more photos and to see how it’s done.

Close up! You can see the little fig seeds!

Fig and goat cheese stuffed pork
Ingredients
Stuffed Pork
1 1-lb pork tenderloin (they often come two to a package)
1 cup dried figs, roughly chopped
1 4-oz package plain goat cheese
1 tsp dried rosemary
fresh ground pepper
salt
apple butter or apple jelly

Sauce
1/2 cup white wine
1 1/2 cup apple juice

Other tools:
Cooking twine

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 375F
2. In a small bowl, combine the chopped figs, goat cheese, and dried rosemary. Mix.
3. Remove any excess silverskin from the tenderloin. Lay the loin flat and and cut it most of the way though so it can be opened like a book. Flatten the pork onto a cutting board and pound it until it reaches a uniform thickness. Spread the filling from step (2) into the center.
4. Fold the tenderloin over the filling and, using cooking twine, tie the tenderloin so it stays closed over the figs and cheese. The best way to do this is the loop the twine about an inch down from one end and tie a knot. Take the length of string and move it down about an inch and make another loop. Repeat the process every inch or two until the tenderloin is tied. Keep the seam pointing towards you and the knots at the top, facing up.
5. Season with salt and pepper and bake for 60-90 minutes, until an instant read thermometer shows 155F in the center. (Note that the FDA has lowered their pork cooking recommendation to 145F, but as this is stuffed I’d rather cook it a little longer.) After about 45 minutes into the total cooking time, glaze the pork with apple jelly and return to oven for the remainder of the cooking time.
6. Remove from the oven and allow to rest for a few minutes. Remove the string and cut into thick slices. Serve with sauce (below).
Sauce
1. Combine the wine and apple juice in a small pot. Bring to a simmer until reduced and thickened. The sauce will continue to thicken after it is removed from heat.

The was the most appetizing photo of the entire, cooked loin that I could take. That's why it's at the end of the post. Still, it does look pretty good with the browned bits and such.

Pork Sandwich

This is a great way to bring in the Spring season with some simple vegetables. I used zucchinis, you can add squash as well or any other soft spring vegetables. Serve it with the sauce and vegetables on a bed of rice. The leftovers are perfect for use in sandwiches. This simplicity of this dish belies the amazing flavor. Apart from the apready mentioned crème fraîche, vegetables and pork, thyme, a little garlic, salt, and pepper are all the remainder of the ingredients. Simple is good.

So Good

Not only are the ingredients straightforward, but the cooking process is simple too. It’s basically a two step process. The first step involves browning the tenderloin to boost the flavor. A minute or two in a hot skillet and you’re done. The second part is wrapping everything in a big sheet of parchment paper and baking it in the oven. That’s it. Not terrible difficult, and the parchment paper makes clean-up easy too.

As always, click for larger images…

Notice the little hole in the side of the paper to let excess steam escape.

Ta-da! All done.

Ingredients
2 pork tenderloins, silver skin removed, salted and peppered
4-5 zucchini, cut into medium disk slices
3 cloves garlic
fresh thyme (8-10 strands)
6 tablespoons crème fraîche

You will also need a large sheet of parchment paper.

Instructions
1. Preheat the oven to 350F with the rack set to the lower middle section.
2. Place the parchment paper in a baking dish and layer the paper with the cut zucchini. Add some salt and pepper to taste (I used about a teaspoon of salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper).
3. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat (don’t use non-stick if you can help it, cast iron is great for this). Once hot, add two tablespoons canola oil. Sear the tenderloins, one at a time, to brown the exterior. It should take about 45-60 seconds a side to sear the meat. Place the browned tenderloins over the bed of zucchini.
4. Dollop the crème fraîche onto the tenderloins and place the springs of thyme over the meat/zucchini. Cut the garlic cloves in half and scatter them around the meat.
5. Fold the parchment paper over the dish and crimp the edges to seal. If you have a probe thermometer, insert it into the thick part of the tenderloin before sealing the parchment. A probe thermometer will ensure that the meat is cooked to the correct temperature and help guard against overcooking the meat. Leave a little hole in one side to allow the steam to vent.
6. Cook for about 45 minutes. If you have a probe thermometer, USE IT! Set it for 160F in the thickest part of the meat.

Slice and Serve

Time is essential because barbecue is slow cooked to dissolve and soften the connective tissues and fats in the tougher cuts of meat traditionally used (like pork butt). Smoke from hardwood trees like hickory, mesquite, oak, apple, and maple are used to impart flavor to the meat.

Pulled Pork Barbecue

About a week ago we looked at how to smoke in a charcoal grill. This is possible for cuts of meat, like ribs, that do not require many hours of cooking time. For a cut like pork butt, it’s best to use a smoker. The smoker will allow for a longer cooking time, better heat control, and  good smoke penetration.
For this smoking session, I bought a 7 pound pork butt, borrowed a smoker, made some North Carolina style vinegar-based sauces, and had a selection of Sticky Fingers sauces available.

There are a few different strategies when it comes to smoking a pork butt. I wanted to use the simplest method possible to let my friends compare the sauces so I just put the pork in the smoker and didn’t touch it for 14 hours. What did I get as a result of using the easiest, least intensive method of cooking? Fantastic pulled pork and a group of happy, well-fed friends.

Variations on the cooking method include brining, using a dry rub, and basting. I skipped all these optional steps to keep the preparation simple and the flavors consistent. A brine would have altered the texture, a dry-rub would have altered the flavor, and opening the smoker to baste the pork would have let the smoke out. The purpose was to compare the sauces, not to experiment with different preparation and cooking styles.

The most popular sauces were the eastern North Carolina ketchup and vinegar sauce, the Sticky Fingers Carolina Sweet and the Sticky Fingers Habanero Hot. If you haven’t tried the vinegar-based sauces before, it’s worth making a batch. I have included two NC styles of barbecue sauce after the pork recipe.

Basic Barbecue Pulled Pork
Makes about 10 servings
Special equipment needed for this recipe: a smoker.
Almost any hard wood can be used. Wood from fruit trees, like apple or cherry, is popular as it lends sweetness to the meat. Hard woods, like hickory or mesquite, will result in a strong wood flavor. I used all hickory.

Ingredients
1 6-8 pound pork butt (either bone-in or boneless is fine, mine was bone in)
This is also commonly called a Boston butt, shoulder blade roast, or pork shoulder.

Directions

1. Rinse the pork and pat it dry. Remove most of the fat cap from the top –don’t worry, there will still be plenty of fat within the meat to keep it moist as it cooks. You don’t have to be very thorough removing the fat, much of it will render out of the meat.
2. Load the smoker with wood chips, wood chunks, or natural lump charcoal as directed by the manufacture’s instructions. If your smoker has a water tray, fill this with water, beer, or soda to impart extra flavor to the meat. I used about 1/3 beer and 2/3 water.
   

   Barbecue Pork Butt

3. Put the meat in the smoker with the fat cap facing up. Adjust the heat so that the smoker stays in the 225-250F range (internal meat temperature should peak at 190F). Cook the meat at least 8 hours. I let mine cook for 14 hours. I’ve seen some people smoke their pork for almost 24 hours. The key here is to cook the meat until it is tender, not just until it is cooked through. The extended cooking time ensures that the connective tissue softens and dissolves.   
   

   Get some friends to do the work pulling the pork.

4. Once you are satisfied with your cooking time, remove the meat from the smoker and let it rest on a plate tented with foil for 15-30 minutes. If it looks dark brown and crusty around the outside, you’ve done all well. That “outside brown”, as it’s called, is arguably the best part of the barbecue and should be well mixed in to allow everybody to get some.
5. To pull the pork, use forks or tongs to separate the meat. For chopped pork, pull it loosely and chop with a large knife.
6. Apply barbecue sauce and serve. Or leave the meat ‘dry’ and provide a selection of sauces to try.

Trays of Pulled Pork. They dissappeared quickly.

Eastern North Carolina Barbecue Sauce
This thin, liquid sauce made with vinegar and ketchup is representative of eastern North Carolina. This one was preferred of the two NC sauces.

Ingredients
2 cups white vinegar
2 cups apple cider vinegar
2 cups water
1/3 cup ketchup
1/8 cup hot sauce
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon red pepper flakes
2 tablespoons salt

Directions

1. Combine everything in a medium saucepan.
2. Bring to a simmer over low heat and cook for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Western North Carolina Barbecue Sauce
This thin, liquid sauce made with primarily vinegar is representative of western North Carolina.

Ingredients
1 cup cider vinegar
1 tablespoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon brown sugar

Directions

1. Combine everything in a small bowl.
2. Mix well and allow ingredients to blend for about 4 to 8 hours.

Bowl of chili.

If you think about it, chili likely evolved over time as a stew on the road, made by ranch-hands throwing in anything that was both available and edible. Over time, different regions popularized different variations of it. If you like beans in your chili, go for it. Like many one-pot soups or stews, you can alter this endlessly and still call it whatever you want (at least, I do). I let others argue about what is a real chili, I just want to eat.

So really, the spirit of chili is not whether it has beans in it or not, but whether it is good, filling, and (probably) cheap. Regardless of what “authentic” chili is, this gets the one important part right: It tastes good.

As a bonus, this chili let me use up some surpluses I had in my kitchen. How? Click through for the recipe and more info.

An unfinished enormous bag of tortilla chips purchased for a party were beginning to go a bit stale. I always feel guilty throwing out food, so I wanted to find a good way to use them. Then I remembered that Alton Brown made a chili that used tortilla chips as a thickening agent! Great, problem solved!

I changed his recipe a bit because I didn’t have a pressure cooker. If you want his method, go here.

Ingredients
3 pounds stew meat (beef, pork, and/or lamb) (cut to 1-inch pieces)
4 rashers of bacon (cut into small pieces)
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 (12-ounce) bottles of beer, a medium ale, bock or anything with some body
1 (16-ounce) container medium heat salsa
30 tortilla chips
5 chipotle peppers canned in adobo sauce, chopped
2 tablespoons adobo sauce (from the chipotle peppers in adobo)
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 1/2 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin

Directions

1. Place a large dutch oven (aka a big pot) over low to med-low heat. Add the bacon and cover; cook for 10-15 minutes. You want to render the fat from this but not crisp them yet. When a lot of the fat looks rendered, you can boost the heat to medium-high until you hear the bacon begin to crisp (take the cover off, please). Once cooked, place the bacon bits into a large mixing bowl and pour the bacon fat out into a small bowl and let let to cool for 5 minutes.
2. In another large mixing bowl, toss stew meat with the bacon fat and the salt. Turn on your oven to 300F.
3. Place the dutch oven over high heat and, once hot, add the meat in 3 or 4 batches. Sear the meat until brown on all sides. Each batch should take 2-3 minutes. When each batch is browned, place in the large bowl that already has the bacon pieces in it. Repeat with each batch of meat.
4. After the last batch, add about half a beer to the pot and scrape the bottom of the pan to loosen the fond that formed when searing the meat. The word of the day is “deglazing”.
5. Add the rest of the beer, the meat, the bacon bits, salsa, chipotle peppers, adobo sauce, tomato paste, chili powder and cumin. Stir the whole pot a few times. Cover and put in a 300F oven for 4 hours.
6. Take out of the oven and serve. I didn’t garnish this chili with anything (but I did use some of the almost stale tortilla chips to eat the chili off of.)

Rendering the bacon fat.

Browning the meat.

Bowl of chili.

A few notes:

• You can use any meat you want for this. I recommend beef, pork and/or lamb. Whatever is cheap. If it’s a bit fatty and has some connective tissue, that’s fine. It’ll be cooked long and slow so it’ll be tender whatever you do to it.
• I used bacon fat to sear the meat in, you can use any oil you have (though canola, vegetable or something with a high smoke point would be best.) I happen to have a lot of bacon in my house, so I use it a lot. It will save you some time if you just use oil.
• If the fond looks like it’s going to burn before you get to your next batch of meat to brown, go ahead and deglaze the pan with some beer and just pour the beer into a cup. Add the liquid from the cup to the pot when you add all the meat and beer together.
• If you don’t drink beer, use chicken or beef broth. I used AmberBock left over from a party, so I used that.
• I also like a lot of heat in my chili. I believe AB only used 2 chipotle peppers, I used 5. Next time I’ll probably use more.
• Adjust the salt and pepper after letting it cook through. The use of the tortilla chips in this recipe can add an unexpected amount of salt.

BBQ

This is a classic crock-pot recipe that takes maybe 10 minutes of real work. You just let everything sit in the crock pot for 6 hours, pull the pork apart with some forks and cover with the sauce of your choice.
The sauce of choice around here isn’t even a homemade concoction. Sticky Fingers Carolina Sweet gets you where you need to go: BBQ goodness.

BBQ

You’ll notice I am very vague in the proportions of food in the recipe. This is because the recipe is extremely flexible and can be scaled up to nearly as large a crock pot as you have or as many people as you want to feed. And the timing does not need to be precise. As with most crock pot recipes, it’s very forgiving on time.

Click through for the recipe and more pics.

BBQ

Ingredients

Chicken broth
boneless pork ribs
BBQ sauce (Sticky Fingers Carolina Sweet is our choice)

Recipe

1. Put the pork into the crock pot and cover it with about two inches of chicken broth (yes, you can even use bouillon cubes to make your broth).
2. Set the crock-pot to the low heat setting. After about 5 or 6 hours, turn the heat to the higher setting for one more hour.
3. Remove the pork and pull it apart using forks and put into a casserole dish.
4. Put the dish into a 350 F oven for 5 to 10 minutes to heat it through and dry it a bit.
5. Mix in your BBQ sauce and serve. (Or serve it dry with a choice of sauces.)

P.S. Jillian is a friend who showed me this method of making BBQ.