Tomatillo-Braised Pork

ARKANSAS VS. JACKSONVILLE STATE



One of the best helmets in football




This is the meal of love

 At long last, the Arkansas Razorbacks are just about to lay a beat-down on the the Jacksonville State Gamecocks, coached by former Hog coach Jack Crowe. I couldn't wait til the game was over, so here you go with the first meal posted to Razorgumbo! 

Before we get to the food, a word or two about the game today, Jack Crowe, and a very weird weekend 20 years ago. The day after Jack Crowe was fired at Arkansas in September, 1992, for famously allowing his Razorbacks team to lose to The Citadel, the young journalist version of me was dispatched by Arkansas Business to cover the mess that the UA football program had turned into. I had some help and insight for the story from one of my editors, Jim Harris, who had just left the sports beat for a long turn in business reporting, and had a Jack Crowe-signed football in his office. (Read about how he got that  football here.) I'll never forget that assignment because I got to interview Frank Broyles and get chased away from a football practice by an arm-waiving assistant coach for taking pictures. Frankly, it was a time when I sort of stopped being a fan for a couple of years. Incidentally, Harris is back in sports now as one of the editors for Arkansassports360.com. For my money it's the best sports coverage in the state.

Some weeks on this blog I might wait til after the game to post, and some I will do it before. If you read down to my first post you will see some predictions for this season. But here are a few fresh ones:

The Hogs will win 41-10; the first score will be Knile Davis on a run; the BEST score will be a touchdown pass to Brandon Mitchell; John L. Smith will kiss Knile on the cheek at one point and then kick him in the rear; Jack Crowe will actually get a great round of applause; the defense will look great after a rough start; and someone out there will make this fruit salad you are about to read about and it will change their life.

More Hog talk in the next article. Let's get to the grub!

Quarterback Tyler Wilson in 2011 garb



On to the Food!

This week we are enjoying the game with a meal of tomatillo-braised pork loin with red potatoes, citrus-spice black beans, fruit salad "Ancho" Villa  and the famous Brazilian mixed drink caipirinha. There was no particular reason for the dish; the line-up of menus we are designing for this season is simply about having great food with a great football game -- at home, since we can't always go to the games. I've wanted to try this pork dish since the end of last football season when my good friend, Ben, suggested it was one of the best recipes for dutch ovens. The recipie comes from Rick Bayless' book "Mexico One Plate at a Time," and you will see variations of it all over the interwebs, but you will never see it with Pork-O-Vision, below! Ben has made the recipe on several campouts and won some dutch-oven cooking contests with it.

For the cooking vessel I am deplying my beloved Lodge enamel-coated cast-iron Dutch oven. You can spend like $200 on one of these if you buy the French-named one at a department store. I got mine at Kroger last fall for about $69 and they still have them on sale there today. I have made many pots of gumbo in it (just wait for the LSU game) and even made the cinnamon rolls ala Pioneer Woman in the pot. Nothing sticks to it, and it provides the most even cooking of anything I have experienced.

Note to true fans: Can someone please tell me how I can get a heat-resistant Razorback permanently emblazoned on the side of this pot?

First and Ten: Tomatillo-Braised Pork



The dish before plating



• 1 1/2 tablespoons rich-tasting pork lard, or olive or vegetable oil (I used olive oil)
• A two-pound boneless pork loin roast, untied if in two pieces (3.5 is probabaly the smallest you will find)
• 1 pound (10-12 medium) tomatillos, husked and rinsed
• Fresh hot green chiles to taste (roughly three serranos or 1 jalapeno), stemmed
• 1 medium white onion, sliced
• 3 large garlic cloves, peeled and finely choped
• 1 or 2 large sprigs fresh epazote, plus extra for garnish, OR 1/3 cup chopped fresh cilanro, plus a few sprigs for garnish. (All they had at the grocery store was cilantro)
• Salt
• 10 small (about 1-1/4 pounds total) red-skin boiling potatoes, scrubbed and quartered

Directions

Browning the pork

In a medium-size (4-5 quart) Dutch oven or other heavy pan with tight-fitting lid, heat the lard or oil over medium. When quite hot, lay in the pork loin (if there is more than one piece, don't crowd them or they'll stew rather than brown). Brown well on one side, about 5 minute, turn it over and brown the other side. Remove the pot  from the heat and transfer the pork to a plate. Set aside the Dutch oven or pan to use for the sauce-making.

The sauce

Roast the tomatillos and chiles on a baking sheet 4 inches below a very hot broiler until darkly roasted, even blistered and blackened in spots, about 5 minutes. Flip them over and roast the other side -- 4 or 5 minutes more will give you splotchy tomatillos and chiles that are soft and cooked through. Cool and transfer everything to a food processor of blender, being cfareful to scrape up all the delicious juice that has run out onto the baking sheet.

A husked tomatillo has is like a little green apple with a waxy coating

Process until smoothly pureed. Set the pork-browning pan over medium heat. When hot, add the onion and cook, stirring regularly, until golden, about 7 minutes. Stir in the garlic and cook a minute longer. Raise the heat to medium-high, and when really sizzling, add the tomatillo puree all at once. Stir until noticealy darker and very thick, 3 to 4 minutes. Add 1-1/2 cups of water and the epazote or cilantro. Taste and season with salt, usually 1 teaspoon. Stir everything thoroughly.

The roasted tomatillos and serrano chilis processed together

Braising the pork

Heat the oven to 325. Nestle the browned pork into the warm sauce, cover the pot and set in the oven. Cook 30 minutes. (Make sure you "nestle," now, ok?)  While the meat is cooking, simmer the potatoes in heavily salted water to cover until tender, about 10 minutes. Drain and set aside. When the pork has cooked about 30 minutes, nestle the cooked potatoes into the sauce around the meat, re-cover and cook about 10 minutes longer, until the pork registers about 145 on a meat or instant-read thermometer. The meat will feel rather firm (not hard) to the touch, and cutting into the center will reveal only the slighest hint of pink

Right after pulling the roast pork out of the oven

Slightly pink is just right

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Serving the Dish

With a pair of tongs and a spatula, transfer the pork to a cutting board. Let it rest there for 3 or 4 minutes while you finish the sauce. Spoon off any fat on top of the sauce, taste the sauce and season it with additonal salt if you thin necessary. Spoon the sauce and potatoes onto a warm, deep serving platter

 

Sideline Route: Citrus-Spice Black Beans

SimplyRecipes Photo

This recipe, under a slightly different name, comes from the SimplyRecipes website and was tracked down by my wife to complement the Bayless braised pork

• 4 cups dried black beans
• 10 cups water
• 2-3 fresh sprigs oregano or 1 Tbsp dried
• 2 bay leaves
• 6 small or 3 large sage leaves (or  1/2 Tbsp dried)

• 2 teaspoons salt
• 4 Tbsp olive oil
• 2 yellow onions, chopped
• 2 chopped peppers -- bell pepper, anaheim or jalapeno (your choice based on heat), seeds, stems and ribs discarded
• 6 cloves crushed garlic
• 2 Tbsp Ancho red chili sauce, or chili power, or Tabasco to taste
• 1-2 teaspons of pureed chipotle in adobo, chipote Tabasco, or chpotle powder (to taste)
• 1 Tbsp cumin (crushed whole toasted cumin seed is vbest, is possible)
• 3 Tbsp frozen organge juice concentrate or 1/2 cup fresh orange juice
• Juce of 1 lime
• 2 Tbsp rice wine vinegar
• Chopped fresh cilantro for garnish

Directions

(Warning -- once the beans are soaked, give yourself at least an hour head start with this dish before you start the pork. Maybe two hours. The beans can sit but the pork can not. If you don't have that kind of time, just do this with canned beans and be done with it.)

Ok, prepare the beans. Rinse and sort, discarding any stones or shriveled beans. You can soak the beans overnight in cold water (cover with several inches of water), or pour enough boiling water over them to cover by a few inches and soak them for an hour, (this is what I did) or skip the pre-soaking step. Soaking will speed up the cooking process. If you soak, discard the soaking liquid after soaking.

Add beans to a large pot with 10 cups of water. Add oregano, bay leaves and sage -- to save money I used dried spices for all of this and it was fine. Bring the beans to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer. Cook until the beans are soft, but not quite done. The time will vary depending on how large, dry or old your beans are, and if you have pre-soaked them, anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour and a half.

While the beans are cooking, saute onions and peppers in olive oil until soft. Add chili sauce, chili powder and/or chili puree, cumin and garlic. Saute until spices are fragrant. (Ok, what I did for the heat was to use Knorr chipotle boullion cubes (1 early, and one late, and I gave it about four shots from the Tabasco bottle).

Fish out and discard the bay leaves, stems of oregano and sage leaves fro the pot of beans. Remove, but reserve, extra cooking liquid until there is about 1/2-inch of liquid above beans.

Add the onion mixture and salt to the pot of beans. Cook another hour or so until thickened. Add reserved liquid if needed. (I didn't need it. In fact, I thought I could have gotten away with a little less water in the beans)

Add half of the orange juice concentrate and simmer. Adjust chili heat at this point -- you may or may not want to add more of your chili paste. (This is where I threw in another cube of chipotle boullion) Just before serving, add remaning orange juice, lime juice and vinegar. Salt to taste. Garnish with chopped fresh cilantro and peeled orange zest.

Cooler Break: Caipirinha!

The caipirinha is the drink of Brazil, and a lot of people have tried them at a local Brazilian steakhouse. The key to the drink is cachaca, the Brazilian sugar-cane rum. To make the drink, you will probably want a "silver" version of cachaca, as the "gold" varieties have some extra amber color to them that might mess up the clear/green aesthetics of the caipirinha.

If you live in Little Rock, you can find cachaca at Colonial Wine and Spirits. Perhaps you can find it elsewhere, too, but Colonial is such an amazing store I prefer to shop there for the variety and the knowledge their people have. If you have not tried cachaca before, get ready for something a little different than the rum you are used to. Cachaca reminds me more of a milder version of a smooth upper-end tequilla. It has flavor notes that I can only describe as "green," which remind  me of the better tequillas. Only the flavor is not that strong. It's like rum and good tequilla had a love child.

• Limes
• Cachaca (Brazilian sugar-cane rum)
• Sugar, preferably turbinado or "Sugar in the Raw"

Cut a lime into eighths and put 2 of the wedges into the bottom of a glass. Now spoon 1-1/2 teaspoons of the sugar on to the lime and "muddle" it with a wooden implement in the glass. Pour about 3 ounces of cachaca into the glass and mix before you put the ice in. This helps dissolve the sugar somewhat. However, the feel of those turbinado sugar crystals on the tongue is part of the joy. Put plenty of ice in the glass. I like to take some lime garnish and put in on the ice for just a tad more flavor and a nice look in the glass, then spin. You might enjoy putting a little more Turbinado in with the ice so you can experience the crystals. You might even want to rim the glass in Turbinado if you want to get all American with it.

The result is a frosty, refreshing  beverage that offers an elegant counterpoint to the usual. I will simply say that I was at one of the happiest moments of my life when I finished this drink for the first time.

Two-Minute Drill: Fruit Salad "Ancho" Villa

This recipe comes from food.com, under a different name (Mexican Fruit Salad) and serves as a refreshing complement to the braised pork and black beans.

• `4 cups strawberries, hulled and halved (about 1 1/4 pounds)
• 2 cups mangoes, chunks
• 2 cups melon, chunks (Honeydew provies best color contrast)
• 1 cup pineapple chunks (I cut it fresh)
• 1/2 cup fresh orange juice (Oh please, use concentrated)
• 1/4 cup fresh lime juice
• 1/4 cup tequila (optional) (me, I'm used the cachaca instead)
• 1/4 cup sugar (yep, I used the Turbinado)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 -1 1/2 teaspoon dried dried ancho chile powder (available at Kroger)

In large bowl, combine strawberries, mango, melon and pineapple. Add orange juice, lime juice, Tequila (if using) sugar, salt and chili powder to taste; mix well. Chill at least 1 hour before serving. (Yeah, I didn't succeed in waiting that long.)

I would love to know if you try any of these dishes, and I would welcome any comments about the site or its contents. Take care, and here is something to look forward to...

Next Week:  The Louisiana-Monroe Game: Garlic-friend chicken, buttermilk biscuits with hot-pepper jelly, corn relish, coconut cream pie and OrangeDreamBoozies! Come back and join us!