Pulled Pork Shoulder in Black BBQ Sauce

I bought Ed Lee's cookbook back in December and was instantly enamored.  There were so many dishes that I wanted to make.  And then I read the recipes themselves.  The recipes all look delicious but the ingredient lists tend towards and long and complicated.  And that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it requires a lot more time and effort, not to mention preparation.  This recipe was one that I had looked at a few times but Alex decided one night when we were having friends over for dinner that we should go ahead and make it.  If we had left it up to me I would have sat on the recipe a little longer because the black BBQ sauce alone had like 25+ ingredients.  But we went with it.  We also made a simple coleslaw recipe with just a touch of mayonnaise that I really enjoyed (and can't manage to find).  I'll keep looking on the theory that I will find it eventually and because I really liked it.  It seemed to me like the perfect coleslaw to pair with BBQ - fresh and crunchy, with just enough mayonnaise to make it a little bit creamy and bind it together.

There was one problem with this recipe.  The flavor was good.  The black BBQ sauce was different.  But the pork was kind of tough.  We cooked it for over 30 minutes beyond what the recipe required, but the meat was nowhere near as tender as we had hoped.  Part of that is our fault since Alex got impatient (and hungry) and took the pork out of the oven when it was fairly tender on one side and not at all tender on the other.  By the time I realized it, it was too late to throw the pork back in the oven.  Generally speaking, we have had more luck with the low and slow cooking approach for pork shoulder, but we wanted to try this recipe as written, which involved blasting the pork shoulder at a higher temperature for a shorter period of time.  In the future, I would revert to the low and slow method.  We actually have a pork shoulder in the oven right now that we cooked at 250 degrees F for 7+ hours thus far.  I will keep you posted on how this one turns out because it's another recipe that we haven't tried before.  But you learn something new everyday.  This time I learned a really nice new rub for pork shoulder.  And if I could find the cole slaw recipe we tried, I would have learned more than one new thing.

Recipe after the jump!

Ted's Fiery BBQ Pork Tenderloin with Simple (Cheese) Grits

Before we ventured off to Maine last week for a long weekend I decided I wanted a good Southern meal (plus I was trying to clear meat out of the freezer and the pork tenderloin was just begging to be used).  And what could be more Southern than BBQ and cheese grits?  Granted, this isn't a particularly traditional BBQ recipe.  Plus, as the Lee Bros. cookbook admits, calling it BBQ wouldn't fly with a lot of BBQ purists because this pork tenderloin is not smoked or grilled - it is pan-seared and then roasted.  But that's ok because authentic BBQ or not, it's still Southern to me.  And when you add in cheese grits, you have a Southern feast.  

What I liked about this meal was that it was really different.  The pork was spicy and sweet, plus it was nice and juicy.  The pork itself was really good - I would make it again.  As for the sauce, I didn't love the flavor of the BBQ sauce, but I thought it was really interesting.  And I think the pork needed some sauce (or maybe a glaze of some sort).  It had nice flavor, it was just a little muddy tasting for me.  Muddy isn't exactly the right adjective, but I'm not really sure what is.  None of the flavors really shined for me - they weren't distinct, but they didn't exactly combine in a way that highlighted the ingredients.  As for the cheese grits, I actually liked Ina Garten's Creamy Cheddar Grits better than these cheese grits.  I thought those grits were both creamier and cheesier, and I missed the freshness of the scallions.  Part of the problem this time was that the grits were much more coarsely ground than I am used to so it almost felt gritty - perhaps if we had cooked them slightly longer it would have been better texturally.  But I think I still would have preferred the taste of the Creamy Cheddar Grits more...

Recipe after the jump!

Hoe Cakes (and our visit to Cincinnati)

I would jump right into describing how much I enjoyed these hoe cakes, but there is a bit of a backstory that needs to be discussed first.  A few weekends ago Alex and I went to Kentucky/Cincinnati to visit his family.  We did a lot of things when we were there - we visited with family, saw some fireworks, made about a billion gallons of chili (vegetarian and beef in case you were curious), ate some really delicious upscale Mexican food at Nada in downtown Cincinnati, took lots of pictures of the pig statues that are all over downtown Cincinnati (see below - I was a little obsessed), sampled Graeter's ice cream and also visited a town in Kentucky called (I kid you not) Rabbit Hash.  We happened to visit Rabbit Hash during their Old Timers Festival.  There was live music and food, plus there was this guy with a hundred year old corn/grain mill selling freshly ground cornmeal and grits.  I couldn't resist - I bought two big bags (one of yellow cornmeal and one of grits).  Along with his cornmeal he offered two recipes, one for cornbread and one for hoe cakes.  Now I wasn't born and raised a good Southern girl like Paula Deen so I had never tried a hoe cake before, but I decided to give it a shot.  And they were awesome.  Speaking of Paula Deen, she has a whole post about hoe cakes (including several recipes) on her website.  Anyway, I  liked that the hoe cakes were texturally a cross between a pancake and cornbread.  I also liked that they were just slightly sweet and somehow manage to avoid the heaviness and sleepiness that pancakes always evoke.

While in Cincinnati I also shocked Alex's family members with my ability to eat spicy food by accidentally dumping a heaping amount of dried chili on a pizza and then eating it all.  Incidentally, my tolerance for spicy food can be blamed on my mother, although it really took living in China for me to embrace truly spicy food.  I grew up with hot sauce on the Thanksgiving table to be served with the turkey and a planter of Thai chilis in the backyard (which was discarded after my parents learned that having kids near Thai chilis when they can touch the chilis and then rub their eyes is a terrible idea - many tears ensued).  Alex's uncle John grows his own hot peppers and makes his own wonderful dried chili powders (we are currently in possession of tiny apothecary-esque bottles of dried Hungarian wax, hot and medium banana peppers, habanero, cayenne, jalapeno and a spicy blend of several different chili varieties.  We haven't figured out exactly what we are going to use them for (although we have a couple of ideas), so stay tuned for some spicy recipes in the near-ish future!  Thanks John!

Recipe and more pictures after the jump!

Southern BBQ Rotisserie Chicken Salad

This salad came about as an easy and lazy way to make a midweek dinner.  I have friends who pick up a rotisserie chicken and a big bag of mixed greens every week and use them to make salads for lunch every day.  Now I don't have the motivation to make lunch every day, although I really should because it is the financially responsible thing to do.  But I can't eat the same thing for lunch every day - I just get bored with it and then end up going out to pick something up anyway.  But I decided that a salad with rotisserie chicken and a selection of farmers' market produce would be a brilliant idea for a quick and easy dinner.  Then I got it in my head that we should make this a Southern salad once we saw that Zabars had BBQ rotisserie chickens.  So Alex whipped up a batch of this Crispy Corn Bread, which I had set aside for future corn bread crouton use.  I love corn bread croutons.  And then we stuck with the Southern theme and the Lee Bros and made their Buttermilk-Lime Dressing too.

The best thing about this salad was that it was easy to throw together and involved a number of wonderful ingredients.  Oh and the corn bread croutons.  I loved the corn bread croutons.  They were the star of the show for me.  I thought the combination of the sweetness of the roasted corn, the creaminess of the avocado, and the acidity of the tomatoes were really wonderful together.  I really liked the dressing, but I am not certain that it was the ideal dressing for this salad.  I wish the dressing had a little more punch and substance to it.  The dressing is tart, fresh and acidic, but it needed a little more body.  So I might try the salad again, but try a new dressing....  This dressing is marvelous with fried green tomatoes where its freshness and acidity cuts through the richness of the fried green tomatoes.  But this salad really needed something a little richer.

Recipe after the jump!

Fried Green Tomatoes with Spicy Buttermilk Sauce

What do you do when all of your dinner plans are shot to hell in the space of a few minutes?  If you're Alex and I, you tend to make very random vegetable dishes.  I am a crazy farmers' market shopper all summer long so we always end up with random produce around the house to use.  I had purchased these green tomatoes with the idea that I would make some sort of chutney with them.  I also found a recipe for a frittata with green tomatoes and a green tomato pie - both of which I thought sounded really interesting.  But when it came down to it, we couldn't resist another batch of fried green tomatoes.  I was planning on just making the same Fried Green Tomatoes with Buttermilk-Lime Dressing, only I wanted to make some sort of spicy buttermilk dressing instead of the buttermilk-lime dressing.  But Alex found a recipe for Fried Green Tomatoes with Spicy Buttermilk Sauce on a blog called Authentic Suburban Gourmet so we decided to try that instead.  While I enjoyed this version, in the future, I will probably go back to our original recipe.  I liked the coating/breading better in the original version.  I preferred the texture of the cornmeal and flour crust to the polenta and panko crust here.  I really thought that the other crust adhered to the tomatoes better, but this crust was a little sandy/crunchy for me.  And the polenta tasted a little raw to me.  I also liked the Buttermilk-Lime Dressing from the original recipe better than this Spicy Buttermilk Sauce.  Part of the problem for me with this sauce was that I am not a particularly big fan of mayonnaise.  This dressing was a little too distinctly mayonnaisey for me, although I didn't find the taste objectionable when combined with the richness and tartness of the tomatoes.  When I tasted the dressing on its own prior to frying the tomatoes I think I made what Alex calls "stink face."  I just don't like mayonnaise.  I can't help it.  Beyond the mayonnaise, I really loved the flavors of the basil and the lime in the other dressing.  It was just so bright and refreshing.  As far as he can remember, Alex liked both recipes equally.  That's not surprising since he actually likes the taste of mayonnaise.  This was still a really good recipe (and I am glad we tried it), but I just liked the other recipe a touch better. 

Recipe after the jump!

Fried Green Tomatoes with Buttermilk-Lime Dressing

Strangely enough both Alex and I went to school in the South (although I maintain and Alex agrees that Chapel Hill was more Southern than Atlanta) and neither of us had ever tried fried green tomatoes.  Whenever I hear someone talk about fried green tomatoes my first thought is about the movie Fried Green Tomatoes from the early 90's and the Whistle Stop Cafe.  But from now on I might just think of the food first.  Because these bad boys were seriously good.  Alex described them as "surprisingly flavorful and filling."  I wasn't surprised by how flavorful they were.  I was actually dancing around the kitchen in excitement while we were prepping the tomatoes.  I was expecting (or at least hoping) that they would be totally delicious.  And they were.  I will however agree with Alex that the tomatoes were surprisingly filling.  I thought that we would finish the tomatoes and the Radish Butter and still be starving.  But I was pretty full and totally satisfied.  I originally wanted to make a remoulade to serve with the tomatoes, but I'm glad we went with the Buttermilk-Lime Dressing.  The tartness and freshness of the dressing really complimented the tomatoes.  And even though the tomatoes were fried, they didn't seem heavy at all.  I think a lot of that was due to the lightness of the dressing.  The remoulade would have made the dish seem a lot heavier.

Don't my Fried Green Tomatoes look purdy?  As pretty as they look, I promise they tasted better.  I would be a happy girl if only green tomatoes were available in NYC year round.

Recipes after the jump!

Easy North Carolina-Style Half Picnic Shoulder and Spinach with Collards Seasoning

I will give you two guesses as to who picked this recipe.  I handed Alex the cookbook last week and told him to pick a recipe for us to try.  Both of the recipes he picked were for pork shoulder - Oven BBQed Picnic Shoulder and Easy North Carolina-Style Half Picnic Shoulder.  I picked the less complicated one of the two.  So I guess that means we both picked the recipe, but as with most pork recipes, Alex was the driving force behind it.  So this is our second attempt at North Carolina-style pulled pork and our third attempt at cooking a pork shoulder this year.  First we made Slow Cooker Pulled Pork (although it took us a little while to post about it).  Then we made Jalapeno-Roast Pork.  After we make this pork shoulder I might need to take a slight break from making any more pork shoulder for at least a little while.  Then again, summer is perfect pulled pork/BBQ weather, so we might have one more pork shoulder in us (perhaps the Oven BBQed Picnic Shoulder) before we call it quits.  I was going to serve this pork with some coleslaw, because I love pulled pork and coleslaw, but I decided that since we had Asian Winter Slaw for lunch yesterday, that was coleslaw overkill.  So instead I elected to make faux-collards from another Lee Bros recipe.  That sounds like a good Southern meal, right?  

This dish is crazy rich.  And I mean CRAZY rich.  I think if we had made sandwiches and served the pork with a coleslaw and a vinegar-based bbq sauce, that would have done a lot to cut the richness.  The sauce that you serve the pork with is sweet rather than sour, which doesn't do a lot to cut through the fatty pork.  I will probably serve the pork again, but I will come up with another sauce (most likely a traditional eastern North Carolina-style barbecue sauce).  So that is how we're going to eat the leftovers (more on the leftovers later).  This cooking method kept the pork very moist, which I appreciated.  Alex loved the nuggets if crispy skin that were sprinkled throughout the pork.  I thought that they tasted fine, but they got stuck in my teeth.  And that was just a tad too much fat for me.  I thought there would be more vinegar flavor to cut through the richness of the pork, considering the pork was marinated in 2 cups of white vinegar and then basted with the vinegar-based marinade for 3 hours.  And let me tell you, every time you opened up the oven to baste the pork, you got hit with a blast of vinegar.  But I really didn't taste the vinegar at all until the pork had sat on the counter for an hour or so and dried out.  Actually, the pork that we pulled and set aside for leftovers was arguably far more flavorful - both in terms of spice and vinegar level, than the pork that we initially served ourselves for dinner.  Granted, that pork was a lot drier than the pork we ate for dinner, but I thought that given the difference in flavor I would take the drier, more flavorful meat.  So I guess the lesson I learned from that is to let the meat rest longer after you pull it out of the oven (we let it sit for 10 minutes, but maybe we should have let it sit a little longer) and then pull it and let it rest a few more minutes before serving.  As for the spinach, it was very Southern and it really did remind me of collards.  Alex said that he liked the pork better than the spinach and I agree with that.  But if we are really being honest here, since when can spinach compete with pulled pork? 

Recipes after the jump!

Creamy Cheddar Grits

When I am feeling sick, there are a few basic dishes that I generally want - Vietnamese chicken noodle soup and pho usually top the list.  But I'm dealing with a sore throat right now and all I could think of was how great grits would be.  I guess grits are kind of like congee and cream of wheat, both of which I consider to be serious sick day food, so maybe my craving makes more sense than I first thought.  Anyway, I had been saving this Creamy Cheddar Grits recipe for the day when I finally have people over for brunch (which I have been talking about for years and we have never gotten around to doing) or when I finally make shrimp and grits at home (another thing I have been talking about forever but haven't gotten around to).  But grits sounded too good to pass up today, so I went ahead and made them.  And they were delicious.  Even Alex, who isn't generally a huge fan of grits, really enjoyed these.  Between the two of us we plowed our way through a heaping bowl of grits.  They are creamy and cheesy, with the bright oniony flavor of the scallions making the dish a little lighter than it would be otherwise.  Alex said that the scallions were the thing that really made the dish.  It has never occurred to me to add scallions to grits before, but it was really delicious.  The dish is still a bit of a gutbuster, but in the best way possible.  It's wonderfully homey and comforting.  And it was exactly what I wanted to help me get over feeling under the weather.

Recipe after the jump!

Crispy Corn Bread

There are a few lasting results of my time at UNC - I love good North Carolina BBQ, I wish I could find good shrimp and grits in NYC, I periodically suffer from serious cravings for real buttermilk breakfast biscuits, and I can't resist good hush puppies and cornbread.  Since I can't find a lot of these things in NYC as easily I would like, I have taken to making them at home whenever the craving hits.  I started thinking about cornbread earlier this week and finally got around to making it today.  I actually based tonight's dinner around my craving for cornbread.  I had originally intended to make baked eggs or a frittata, but somehow cornbread didn't sound like it went with the eggs.  But our Spicy "Fried" Chicken Cutlets with Honey-Tabasco Sauce and cornbread sounded like a perfect pairing.  So that's what we made.

The cornbread had a very interesting texture to it, probably due to the coarse grind of the stone-ground cornmeal we used combined with the nice crust on the bottom from being baked in the cast iron skillet.  It was moist, but not particularly fluffy.  Actually, it was a little crumbly and dense.  It had just the right amount of sweetness for me when served with some honey butter.  I took 1 tbsp of softened room temperature butter, stirred it together with some honey and freshly ground black pepper and then served the cornbread smeared with the butter.  It was delicious.  I think that this corn bread recipe would make excellent corn bread croutons.  There is a recipe in The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook for the Best Family Farm Corn-Bread Salad using this cornbread recipe.  The salad sounds delicious.  Once summer arrives and brings with it some truly ripe tomatoes, I will definitely be making another batch of this cornbread in order to make the salad.  I think it would also make a great accompaniment to a big bowl of spicy chili, but I might have to wait until next winter to make some chili and try that combination out.

Recipe after the jump!

Slow Cooker Pulled Pork

One of the saddest things about living in NYC after years of living in North Carolina is the lack of good BBQ.  Don't get me wrong, there is a variety of different kinds of BBQ available all over the city, some of which is much better than any BBQ available in North Carolina or Maryland.  There are ribs here in the city that are far better than anything I had in North Carolina.  The same goes with brisket and Texas styles sausages.  Yum.  But anyway, back to my first BBQ love - pulled pork.  I love pulled pork.  It is by far one of the world's best pork products.  Alex and I have even semi-seriously discussed a road trip through eastern North Carolina planned around various BBQ destinations with the end destination of the OBX.  We like Carolina-style BBQ that much.

So we decided to try and make some pulled pork at home.  There are various pulled pork recipes for home cooks, including recipes that call for slow cookers, roasting pans, home smokers and BBQs.  This time we decided to try out a slow cooker recipe.  I used a spice rub from Cook's Illustrated that several other blogs mentioned, including DC Foodies, which I used to read when I lived in Maryland.  The spice rub called for far more ingredients than I had been planning on using when mentally formulating my own pulled pork recipe, but it seemed like it was worth a try since so many other people had successfully used the spice rub when making pulled pork.  So this spice rub?  Not North Carolina-style pulled pork.  It is spicy and flavorful, which is awesome, but the spice rub masked some of the intensely porky, slightly smoky, flavor of real North Carolina BBQ.  And it had a kick to it, which is not at all typical of pulled pork.  Alex made an eastern North Carolina-style BBQ sauce to go with the pork and the recipe he used for the BBQ sauce also had a certain amount of kick to it.  We both strongly prefer the vinegar-based eastern NC sauces to the tomato and mustard based sauces of western NC and South Carolina.  So as a whole the pork was much spicier than you would expect.  True Carolina-style BBQ cannot be eaten without coleslaw so we whipped up a batch of that too.  Strangely enough, pulled pork is the only context in which I can be convinced to eat coleslaw.  Any other time I would hand my coleslaw off to Alex, but not here.  I love coleslaw on pulled pork sandwiches!  Unfortunately, our coleslaw didn't turn out that great so it definitely wasn't worth sharing. 

Recipe after the jump!

Buttermilk Biscuits with Green Onions, Black Pepper, and Sea Salt

I love biscuits.  It's a seriously Southern thing that I picked up at Chapel Hill while I was there and one I plan to never give up.  Unfortunately, good biscuits are much harder to find here in NYC than they were in North Carolina.  Actually, some might say that it's nearly impossible.  So I have taken to making my own whenever I have a serious biscuit craving.  The only problem that biscuit-making makes a mess.  And when you're me, it makes a HUGE mess. I should take pictures of the kitchen after I engage in a bout of biscuit-making.  Today for example, I ended up with floury hand prints on our olive oil cruet and bits of biscuit dough decorating the floor.  I'm nearly certain that I have ended up with flour in my hair at least once, which begs the question of what exactly I am doing while making my biscuits.  I wish I could tell you, but I can't.

Anyway, I love these biscuits.  Love, love, love them.  I have been saving the recipe for some time now, but I always forget to pick up self-rising flour.  Luckily, Alex picked some up to make his crazy Dutch cookies so this morning when I woke up this recipe was the first thing I thought about.  Actually, first I thought about pizza.  At about 10:00 am I told Alex that I wanted some pizza and he told me that I'm an idiot.  Isn't he sweet?  But the second thing I thought about was this biscuit recipe.  So I toddled into the kitchen in my pjs and I made my biscuits.  OMG.  They are delicious.  They have a perfect flaky, yet very tender texture typical of really good homemade buttermilk biscuits.  Nothing against Grands biscuits out of the can, but they're never quite as crisp on the outside, and yet flaky and tender on the inside.  Instead they're basically buttery and tender all the way through, which is nice and all, but they're certainly not buttermilk biscuits.  So the texture is amazing.  Actually, I think that's the first thing I told Alex after my first mouthful of biscuit.  That the texture was perfect.  And they have loads of flavor from the black pepper and the scallions.  That was the first thing Alex said.  They are absolutely gorgeous.  I think Alex has already eaten four whole biscuits, which is a huge testament to how delicious these biscuits are because he usually has one biscuit and calls it a day.  I think these biscuits could very well be the best biscuits that I have ever made.  And I don't say that lightly.


Recipe after the jump!

Buttermilk Biscuits

I have been on the search for the ultimate biscuit recipe for years.  There are a few that I have discovered that I really enjoy, but none of them are plain buttermilk biscuits.  Instead they usually involve the addition of cheese and other herbs or seasonings.  And as much as I love these fancied up biscuits, I am always trying to find the PERFECT biscuit recipe that I can make for any occasion and serve slathered with white sausage gravy, just as easily as in a bread basket with dinner.  Today I stumbled across this recipe and in my neverending hunt for the perfect biscuit I gave it a try.  

So this biscuit recipe falls somewhere between a scone and a sweet biscuit that you would use for making shortcakes.  It's definitely not the savory biscuit that I was planning on when I first started baking.  It's probably my fault for not thinking the recipe through more clearly.  All I saw was a biscuit recipe that was very simple and only included ingredients I already had in the kitchen.  I didn't stop to think about it further.  But had I stepped back and thought about it, I would have realized that any biscuit recipe that contains 1 1/2 tbsp of sugar and 1 tbsp of heavy cream brushed over the top of the biscuits would end up being more scone-like than biscuit-like.  So I might end up having the rest of these biscuits for breakfast slathered with jam and served alongside a cup of tea.  I think they will be delicious that way.  I also think that with a little extra sugar sprinkled on top that they would make a fantastic cobbler topping.  The hunt for the perfect biscuit continues...

Recipe after the jump!

Cheddar Buttermilk Biscuits

I know that I have referenced this recipe before in my post on Cheddar Biscuits, but I made a fresh batch last night and just had to share the pictures (and the recipe) with you all again.  I had a thing of buttermilk in the fridge fast approaching its expiration date and when I realized that I had all of the ingredients for these biscuits I knew I had to make a batch.  I briefly considered making this recipe for Buttermilk Biscuits with Green Onions, Black Pepper and Sea Salt from Bon Appetit, but I didn't have any self-rising flour.  Maybe next time.  As I mentioned in my previous biscuit post, these biscuits do not have an overly traditional texture to them due to the addition of the cornmeal.  The cornmeal makes the crumb a little coarser and "grittier," although not in a bad way.  They just aren't quite as tender as a traditional buttermilk biscuit should be.  Instead they are wonderfully cheesy and savory, which is a trade-off that I am willing to make.  Alex and I think they are absolutely wonderful, but that's just us.  Let me know what you think!

Recipe after the jump!