I’ve made these a couple of times and they have always come out well. Very soft — perfect of dipping into soup (reminds me of that a French Dip, in a way).

I just wish baking didn’t take so darn long. Two to three hours of work, and you devour the results in a couple of minutes. (You can see I’ve already scarfed down three of them.)

If you are around a Puerto Rican for any length of time you realize something pretty quickly: they love pork. Which is good, because I love pork.

You’ll often find Mofongo (mashed and formed and cooked plantains) served with chunks of crispy pork. Sometimes the pork is mixed with the plantains. Sometimes the pork is served on the side. The problem is, in my experience, the pork is almost always cooked badly.

What’s bad about it? Well, it’s almost never tender enough. You’ll get a wonderful brown and crispy crust on the chunks, but then you need a chainsaw to cut them. Tough, tough, tough.

My goal was to come up with a way of having a crispy pork exterior with a perfectly tender interior. Luckily I found a recipe for Mexican Pork Tostadas (Tingas) which gave me the technique I was missing.

Note that the meat I’m using should be inexpensive. Get yourself a big (18-20 pound) bone-in Boston Butt (at 99 cents a pound) and cut it up into pieces. I spend an hour or so doing this, wrap up the pieces, and freeze. I freeze 1/2 the butt for slow cooker BBQ. The other half I break into chunks and 1 1/2 pound packets (each packet for 1 meal). I get about 8 meals for two people out of $20 worth of pork. Doing all the work at once saves time during the weeknight meals. Boston Butt / Pork Shoulder is magical pork. It’s very fatty and a pain when its raw, but if slow cooked it turns magically tender and very flavorful. It’s the basis for most pork BBQ.

Crispy & Tender Pork Chunks

• 1 to 2 lb pork butt (or Boston butt) trimmed of excess fat and cut into 1 inch chunks. There should be some fat in the meat, but trim off excess with kitchen shears.
• Water (about 6 cups)
• 3 garlic cloves, peeled
• 1 tsp thyme (dried is fine, 2 sprigs of fresh better)
• 1 Tbl salt

Put the pork chunks into a large (3 quart or more) pot and cover with water. The pot should be almost filled to the top with water (at least 2″ above the chunks). Start heating to a boil.

While the pork is heating up you’ll start seeing foam / scum rising to the top. Take a large spoon and start skimming. You’ll have to keep doing this for a while. Skim. Wait for more foam to appear. Skim. It’s a bit tedious, but will remove the gross/greasy parts. After a couple minutes of skimming the water will be nearly to a boil and you’ll get no more foam.

Once skimming is complete and water at/near boiling, add the garlic cloves, thyme, and salt. Stir.

Reduce heat to low, partially cover, and keep at a rapid simmer (active motion–the chunks should be moving about).

Let simmer for about 60 to 90 minutes (less for smaller chunks, longer for big/fatty chunks).

Drain the pork. You may wish to reserve the cooking liquid — it’s very tasty and can be used as a soup base. Discard the garlic (will be mushy) and thyme (if you used fresh sprigs).

At this point you have very tender pork chunks. You have two choices. Make Tinga, where you’d shred and season the meat, or go with the fried chunks. I’m doing fried here.

In a large (12+”) non-stick skillet (frying pan) add about 2 Tbl oil or bacon drippings. I highly recommend that you use bacon drippings. You do save your drippings, don’t you? Heat over medium high heat until just about smoking.

Add pork to hot oil/pan. Stir often, until pork is well browned and crisp. This will take about 8 to 10 minutes.

Drain on paper towels / newspaper and serve. I usually serve them with simple sides, like mashed potatoes, baked beans, or whatever. They are also good with Mofongo, Tostones, or Surullitos. I usually go with potatoes or beans, as the other stuff might be too greasy for one meal. Rice and beans would be an excellent side, too.

If you like eating crispy chunks of pork, but have always hated the toughness, give this a try. I’ve made it many times with excellent results.

I’m bemused by the community of hard-core home coffee roasters. Here, for example, is a roaster using an air-type popcorn maker.

This is a pretty common technique, and the folks over at Evil Mad Scientist (great kits!) developed some sort of bean cooler. Being engineers, they went pretty hard-core. Check it out here: EMS Bean Cooler.

I started saying I was bemused, because this is the coffee roaster I used in Puerto Rico:

That’s right.: A wood fire. Cans with rocks. A pot. And a stick.

Sometimes you have to take off that over-engineering hat and just start a fire.

Evelyn and I have had a pretty busy week and weren’t in the mood for a big complicated meal today. Instead of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, I went with something simple: A Japanese Curry mix.

These are boxes of sauce mix that you can buy at Asian markets. To them you add meat and vegetables, simmer for a bit, then serve over some rice. Here is what you start with:

It’s really pretty simple: take two large onions, two medium potatoes, and about 4 medium-small carrots. (I weigh everything, according to the box, since sizes vary.) You clean the veggies and chop into bite sized pieces. Do the same for the meat, ending up with about a pound of bite-sized chicken breast.

Take a large skillet and saute everything in some oil/butter until browned a bit. Then you pour in about three cups of water, cover, and let simmer for 15 minutes (until carrots and potatoes are soft–the onions will have softened during the browning process).

Once the veggies are softened, the magic begins. There are two packets of curry mix in the box, individually portioned. I use 1/2 a box (one packet) for the above amount of veggies and meat. You break the curry into pieces (it’s already scored) and stir it in. After about 10 minutes on low heat the sauce will be thickened and you’ll have a delicious curry smell in the house.

The box indicates using the above quantities of veggies and meat with one whole box of curry mix and 5 cups of water. I modified this so that I use the full box quantity of veggies and meat, but about half the water and 1/2 box of the curry mix. This gives a good curry to veggie/meat ratio and a meal for four people (or two meals for 2).

The end result is a big skillet full of warm delicious stew-like smooth curry:

Again, remember that I do a full batch of veggies. This means that you need to do this is a large 12-14″ skillet. It almost overflows my pan (and I have a large commercial 12″ which is a true 12″ across the bottom). If in doubt, cook everything in a Dutch oven, where the chances of overflowing will disappear.

Everything comes together very quickly. If you put your rice in the cooker when you start you’ll have the rice and curry done at the same time (about an hour, including cutting). The curry reheats well. We end up having at least two meals out of the 1/2 box of mix.

A note about the heat level: We have tried the “Medium Hot” and the “Hot”. Unless our taste buds are burned out, we found that neither is hot at all. I couldn’t tell any difference at all between the two heat levels and would consider it mild.

I’d recommend this dish to someone who wants a little variety in their dinner meal, but doesn’t want to go too far off the deep end. Picky traditional people will like it’s stew-like presentation (served over rice). People looking for a new flavor will enjoy the mild curry flavor. Well worth trying out.

[I think that I'm going to start a new ongoing series of blog posts: Things I Don't Understand. Nothing too exciting, just stuff rattling around my brain, which I can't find sufficient answers for on the Internet.]

The Hamburger Bun

I would like to know why most store bought Hamburger Buns are thicker on the top than the bottom. Whether I’m loading the bun with a big burger, sloppy joe mix, or an egg, I always have the same problem. The bottom bun just isn’t thick/strong enough to hold the contents. Much of the time I end up flipping the whole thing upside down to eat, as the top is much more robust.

Any idea why they do this? I think that either a more robust bottom is needed (more fully browned, to make it firmer), or the bottoms should be thicker.

Most recipes using canned tomatoes call for you to fully drain all the juices. I used to just drain these into the sink, until I learned better. Now I save the juices.

I pour the can into a mesh sieve placed over a bowl, give the tomatoes a couple of minutes to drain, use them, and store the leftover juices in the refrigerator.

After you have a good quantity, all you have to do is boil it down. I put a little olive oil in a saucepan over low heat, add a clove or two of minced/pressed garlic, and cook slightly (less than a minute). Then I pour in the juice, stir, and bring to a boil.

Once it is boiling, reduce the heat so you maintain a good boil without overflowing the pan. Keep boiling. Boil boil boil. You’ll keep boiling until it reaches the consistency you want — something like tomato soup.

If you continue boiling, it becomes syrup-like, so you can use it for dipping breadsticks in. Or, as I found out yesterday, it can turn into the worlds easiest tomato soup. Just garlic, oil, and leftover juices — boiled down to the essence of the tomato. You end up with a surprisingly bright strong tomato flavor. I have never been a tomato soup eater, but I would certainly eat this simple mixture.

To those of you who think that “Green Eggs and Ham” is just a story, I present you with green eggs:

The two eggs, fourth from the left, are most definitely green. (More green  ”in person” than in the photo.) These eggs were given to us by our Chicken Coop Beta Tester. The brood is growing quite nicely, enjoying their coop and the run.

When Deb was visiting we went out west toward Hill Country. Tried to stop at a BBQ place in the tiny town of Bertram, but couldn’t find it (or it was closed). I knew of another place in Llano, further west, so we headed there. The place is called Cooper’s and shows up on the Texas Top 50 BBQ places and was recommended by our native Texan neighbors.

Here’s the outside pit area:

You start by going up to the pit have choosing what meat you would like:

It’s a good mix of Texas BBQ (beef) and some really good pork, too.

Going from the lower left, clockwise, you see: Pork sausages, beef ribs, chicken halves, more sausage, brisket, roast beef (and more brisket), pork loin, turkey, huge pork chops, and finally the pork ribs.

Mmm meat:

Above is a closeup of the chicken and beef. Below is the pork. Look at the size of those pork chops (the three toward the front).

What you do is point out what you’d like, and how much. The pit master takes a tray and starts piling meat on it.

You then take your tray inside and give it to the folks behind the counter. They then weigh it (it’s a per pound cost, between $8 and $10 a pound) and wrap it up for you. You can also pick out sides (corn, desserts, etc).

As you move down the line the checkout person gives you a big piece of kraft/waxed paper (that’s your plate) to eat off of. You then pay for your stuff, and head toward the pots of beans and onions and sauce. Once you’ve got all that, you find a place to sit on the long picnic benches. No personal tables here, just long benches with paper towels and loafs of cheap white bread. It’s time to meet your neighbors. We managed to find a spot at the end of one of the tables, sitting in a room of locals just enjoying their lunch.

We got the pork ribs, beef ribs, brisket, pork loin, and sausage. Brisket was very good, beef ribs were very beefy (which I like), and the pork was excellent. Some of the reviews had mentioned that the meat was dry, but we had no problems with ours. It was very juicy.

So there you are, sitting at an inside picnic table, with a room full of Texans, eating off a piece of paper, with a big pile of meat in front of you, a bowl of cowboy beans, and a Shiner Bock ready at hand. No cloth napkins. No waiter. No pretention. Just good honest food.

While making a new recipe today (Carne Adovada — a New Mexican Pork Chili), I was again reminded of how much I love Immersion Blenders.

Now, those of you who know me know that I hate having one-hit-wonders in the kitchen. Only a very very few electric appliances get into my kitchen, and the Immersion (or “stick”) Blender is one of them. I’m also very very demanding of my tools, meaning I don’t tolerate cheap shit, and the stuff I buy is in it for the long haul.

Back to the Carne Adovada: This is chunks of browned pork shoulder put into a chili-based sauce. You make the sauce with onions, spices, broth, chipotle, garlic, etc. Here’s the part of the recipe that pissed me off:

Working in 2 batches, transfer mixture to blender or food processor and puree until smooth. Return sauce to pot.

So, here you are: You have a cast iron dutch oven with 3 cups of boiling liquid and veggies and spices. They want you to pour half of that into a fucking blender, and then retun it to the pot. But you have to do two batches (too much liquid for the blender), so you have to get another bowl, too.

I get pissed by that because tasks like pouring boiling liquids into a tippy blender is exactly the thing that will stop a home cook from making something. Heck, it stops me, and I’ve followed that technique many times in the past. But no more.

Enter the Immersion Blender. Fuck the regular blender (can you tell I don’t like blenders?). Fuck scalding yourself and dirtying even more equipment. Pull out your Immersion Blender, stick it in the hot pot on the stove, and blend until smooth. Simplicity itself, and so much safer. It took me all of two minutes to do what would have been a dangerous 10 minute ordeal. I do the same thing for my Coquito (Puerto Rican Egg Nog) recipe — it’s SO much easier and less messy.

I’ve had a couple of these gadgets in the past. I think a Braun and maybe a Cuisinart (love their food processors, not quite so sure about their other stuff). One never worked properly and the other died after one fall on the kitchen floor. Unacceptable. So, I went back to a brand that does a pretty darn good job of making things: KitchenAid.

My current (red in color, on clearance) KitchenAid Immersion Blender is, by far, the best one I’ve owned. It’s rock solid, has 9 speeds, detachable tip, and so on. It’s just built right, and has never, ever, bogged down. (There are battery powered devices out there, but I prefer dealing with the cord and having the power.) Like my 20 year old Pro Line Mixer, this one will be around for a while (and yes, it’s been dropped).

It makes purees easy. Stick the damn thing in the pot, turn it on, move it around, unclip the blade end, rinse to clean, and you are done. Except for making margaritas, which I don’t drink, this kind of device can handle just about everything that a regular blender would. If you cook seriously, you need one right next to your stand mixer and your food processor.

Say hello to my stove, which I have called Diablo, along with a batch of low-cal Oatmeal Cookies.

Why Diablo? Because I learned very quickly that this crazy Tappan has burners linked to HELL ITSELF.

They look like normal burners. Not sealed. Not big. Not fancy. But hot as Hell itself. Boiling water is a joy. Stir frys? Simplicity. Cooking? Not for amateurs. You have three settings: Hell, Hot, and Simmer. I love it.

In addition, it has a griddle in the middle, which is great for pancakes, keeping things warm, etc. The oven, which we used today, seems pretty solid, too. (Thank you Evelyn for giving it a well deserved cleaning.)

It also has my Favorite Timer. It has the “one minute warning” like many, but when it does go off it doesn’t pester you. Beep, beep beep. Wait 15 seconds, Beep. And repeat. Exactly how timers should behave.

God knows what my gas bill is going to be, but I love this stove.