Trolololo!

One of the best laughs I've had in a long time, via Suburban Matron.  I'm pretty sure the cure to any future grumpiness on my part lies in watching this music video.

http://www.suburbanmatron.com/2011/02/wigs-from-behind-iron-curtain.html

I have a soup recipe to write up and post, but I'm taking things slow as we're all recovering from the stomach flu.  It got all four of us, but thankfully at slightly different times so there was always at least one functioning parent to clean up the barf.  We're all well again and the boys are playing outside, but no one is much interested in food.  I'm not sure what to do with myself in this condition; it weirds me out to lack interest in food.  Who am I?  Which way is up?  Who is running this crazy universe anyway? 

Just For Fun

Justice may be blind, but freedom is evidently naked.  And headless.

What a Man Wants

This post could alternately be titled, 'How to Take Most of the Convenience Out of a Crock Pot.' I'll admit it; I've long been skeptical of crock pots. I think this is because I've never really had a positive experience with the contents of one before. Usually I'd run into one at some really cool homeschooler potluck, and it would contain something with a thick sauce, maybe something cheesy with pools of grease floating on the top, and hunks of things I couldn't identify which may or may not have been meat. It could have been dog food. You never can tell with crock pots.

So I was less than thrilled when my dad gave me one for Christmas a few years ago. I thanked him and then stuck it, still in the box, in the garage where it sat for a few years. I think part of me was afraid that if I opened it, I would actually find a meal that had been made with canned condensed soup in there. I loathe canned condensed soup, and while I can see that putting some hunks of animal flesh and some highly processed ingredients into a warm environment is a good way to get consistently moist bites of animal flesh covered in condensed soup, I can also see that it's a good way to get very little flavor out of one's food. So I decided to fix that.

A few years ago, I had an amazing pork shoulder that a friend had slow-roasted in the oven at 250 degrees for about twelve hours. I'd never roasted pork shoulder before, and that one meal opened my eyes to some amazing possibilities. It occurred to me that if the goal was to maintain a low temperature for a prolonged period of time, a crock pot might be the ideal thing. Who knew?

With a thrilling realization that I didn't have to use condensed soup if I didn't want to, I pulled out the crock pot and got to work. First I bought a lovely pork shoulder from PCC, rubbed it all over with salt, and browned it in a hot, hot pan(though I have since purchased an amazing stainless steel pan that browns SO much better) and then tossed a whole chopped onion into the rendered fat. When you make this, pay very careful attention to this part. Not because it's hard, but because it's kind of miraculous. I'm firmly convinced that there are few things in this world that smell better than onions meeting hot pork fat. It's such a powerful and intoxicating combination that I'm pretty sure it's where babies come from, no matter what biology has to say on the matter.

When the onions have had some time to pick up some color, I add a lot of garlic and herbs.

Then I deglaze the pan with some vinegar and add what I guess could be called my version of canned condensed soup: apricot jam. I let it simmer a few minutes until all the ingredients have melded together to form an incredibly delicious sauce, then pour it over the seared pork shoulder which has been waiting patiently in the pre-warmed crock pot.

If, like me, you're new to the wonders of the crock pot, you might be concerned over the apparent lack of juice at this stage. Fear not. Put the lid on and walk away, preferably for several hours. The longer the better, and if you can find a way to actually leave your house and fill your lungs with air from the woods it would be ideal. Hauling branches while your husband builds a house works well too. That way, when you walk back into your house you will go weak in the knees from the warm succulence that now perfumes your entire house. Meat perfume. It's better than it sounds.

I've served this roast with a lot of different things, but I really like the taste of an orange, starchy vegetable with it such as butternut squash or sweet potatoes. In the first picture I paired it with roasted butternut squash(roasted in the oven, which is available thanks to the crock pot) and sauteed kale. It was delicious, but a bit rich. Now I try to serve it with something starchy and then balance it with something light and green, like a simple arugula salad with lemon vinaigrette.

Slow-Roasted Pork Shoulder

1 boneless pork shoulder, 4-8 pounds

1 white or yellow onion, chopped

6 cloves garlic, chopped

1 TB fresh rosemary leaves, chopped

2 TB herbes de Provence

1/3 cup red wine vinegar

1/2 cup apricot jam

salt and pepper

First, turn on your empty crock pot. We don't want the meat to cool down after we transfer it from the hot frying pan.

Next, heat a pan to medium-high and drizzle a good amount of oil(olive, vegetable, or canola) into the pan. While the oil heats, give the pork shoulder a good rub-down with salt on all sides, then sear each side in the hot oil until golden brown. Transfer to the warm crock pot(low if you have 6-8 hours before eating, high if you have 4 hours).

To the hot frying pan, add the chopped onion. Try not to swoon too much over the smell, unless you have a secure counter to hang onto. Swooning over hot animal fat can be dangerous. Don't stir the onions too much; let them sit in the pan, undisturbed, for at least four minutes. Stir them up so the other side gets a little attention, then leave them alone again.

When the onions have some color, add the rosemary and herbes de Provence. After about a minute, add the garlic and reduce the heat to medium(don't ever, ever burn garlic).

After a mere 30 seconds, add the red wine vinegar making sure to scrape up all the lovely browned bits from the bottom of the pan.

Add the apricot jam and stir until the jam has melted into the onion mixture.

Pour the entire contents of the pan over the pork shoulder, add salt and pepper, and put the lid on. Now go about your day as you please, and every once in a while remind yourself that while you're felling trees, raising the wall of a house or maybe just reading a book, that dinner is cooking without any help from you. Allow yourself a satisfied chuckle. The whole process takes less than half an hour of work upfront, and while it's slightly more complicated than tossing high-sodium food products into the crock-pot I hope you'll agree that the results are worth it. The texture of the meat is softly seductive, the flavors of the sauce rich and developed because of the bit with the frying pan. The final result doesn't really taste anything like red wine vinegar or apricots, but like something that has combined in such a way that it becomes more than just the sum of its parts. Much the same way that a baby doesn't resemble separate gametes, but a new thing entirely.

Just before eating, carefully spoon off(and discard) most of the fat from the surface of the now-abundant juices, the ones that seem to have appeared magically from nowhere. If the juice seems thin, ladel it into a sauce pan and simmer over low heat until reduced to your satisfaction. This step isn't necessary, but if the whole process has seemed a little too easy and you feel the need to complicate things a bit, do it. You won't be sorry. Serve to a hungry man you love, and when your five year-old asks you where babies come from answer with confidence, "From the crock pot."

Things We've Done Lately

This is the tackiest cake I've ever made, but I think it also brought the recipient more joy than any floral masterpiece I've executed.

Rachel's boyfriend Dave loves PBR, so when I decided to make him a cake for his birthday I knew I had to somehow incorporate the famous red white and blue can into the theme.

I even etched the top of a can into some tinfoil for the top. Because I like to keep things official. When I walked into the party carrying that cake, Dave's face was like a kid on Christmas morning. "For me?!?!?!"

Yes Dave. For you.

Aaron's work on the guest house for my parents continues. Aaron and Matteas are heading to the river after a long work day.

This is just a tiny piece of my parents' property. The boys were "helping" my mom clear the back field of branches to prepare it for mowing, which is pretty much my mom's favorite thing to do.

Sometimes I think I should have been a farmer's wife. I love working outside, I love dirt, and in the words of my sister Moira, I love moving heavy objects. There's something vital and satisfying about changing the landscape of a field, and I think I understand how my mom feels about their acreage. Maybe it's the Irish/Scottish blood in me, but I feel like I can hear a piece of land speaking to me, and it's saying "Subdue me." And once you've done that, you can plant things on your subdued piece of land and wrestle food from the loins of the earth, make edible things grow where there used to be bramble and weeds. I also really like the working side-by-side aspect; the house Aaron is building is a literal stone's throw(or hearty shout) from the field I was working in(read: subduing with my labor), and even though we were doing separate work it felt like we spent the day together. He was building a guest house, I was clearing branches. And when I say branches, I mean whole branches, not some lady-like game of pick-up sticks. We've had some crazy wind storms this winter, and whole limbs were ripped from some of my parents' many trees. Whole limbs are not good for John Deere mowers, so my mom and I worked to clear the field so she could mow to her heart's content. It takes a lot of mowing to content my mother's heart. The spot on her heart designated to Mowing Satisfaction takes up a large part of her cardiac landscape, and I was not about to come between her and Ultimate Mowing Satisfaction. We worked together to clear a large enough section to get her started, then she began mowing while I scrambled to clear another section before she was finished mowing the already-cleared part. Jack and Matteas took turns riding along with her while I ran and hauled like a beaver preparing for winter, and at the end of the day we were all tired, filthy, and thoroughly pleased with our efforts. I meant to take pictures of the enormous branch piles we'd made, but it was dark and cold and I was hungry from all the subduing, so we headed inside for a feast of slow-roasted pork shoulder. I will share the recipe shortly, although I should tell you in advance that it is a meal best eaten after some serious Manual labor. It's Hungry Man Food, not like those sad TV dinners meant to replace the cooking of a sturdy farm wife, but the kind of food that can satisfy the appetite of a man who is hungry in the way only a hard-working, hand-saw-wielding, there-is-a-structure-here-where-there-was-only-grass -because-of-the-work-of-my-Man-Hands type of man can be hungry. It's not the sort of meal I'd recommend after a day of light housework. Unless your idea of 'light housework' involves building an actual house or moving heavy objects.

Matteas Reads "The Mitten"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFfb0T1BrT0 The youtube video is much better quality so I included the link; the nuances in his eyebrows kill me.

New Year's Eve Wedding Cake

On Monday, I got a phone call from a friend of a friend asking if I'd be willing to make a last-minute wedding cake for a New Year's Eve wedding. Since it was for a small cake, I said yes. My instructions were: top tier- pistachio cake with Nutella filling bottom tier- white cake with buttercream filling frosting- white with white dots flowers- white and peridot pom poms

I've never done tiny all-over dots before, but I'm kind of in love with them. I think they'd make a really sweet baby shower cake.

Experimenting with the flowers. I couldn't find actual pom poms, so I picked up some flowers that were in the same "tight clusters of poufy petals" family in the right colors.

I really liked the all-white simplicity of this cake and now I really want to make a super-elegant all-white cake, with white roses and freesias. Summer wedding, anyone?

The final result. This was definitely the most relaxed I've ever felt about a cake, and I finished it a full three hours before I had to deliver it. I would have finished it even earlier, but I didn't have a small enough frosting tip for the dots. My husband ventured into the craft store for me and bought me two frosting tips, which I thought was pretty heroic since I'm pretty sure the craft store is the last place he wants to be, ever. I just wish I could have seen my burly husband in the cake decorating aisle, carefully picking out frosting tips while wearing his work clothes. Totally awesome.

I think I may have succeeded in getting the Swiss Buttercream as smooth as humanly possible on this cake. I had to step up my game a bit because the couple didn't want any ribbon on the cake, which I think looks lovely but also has the added benefit of concealing the seams between the tiers. It's hard to get that seam sealed nice and smooth, and I'd never actually done it before. I think there's a tool I need for that which isn't currently in my arsenal, but I managed it anyway and was really pleased with the improvement in my sculpture skills. I thought this cake would be easier than past cakes on account of how simple it was, but on a technical level it was more challenging; with no ribbon and simple flowers, I couldn't rely on distraction and floral impact to hide any of my mistakes. This was also the very first time I've delivered a cake already assembled. I'm not sure I'd attempt the same thing with a three-tiered cake, but it was awfully nice to arrive at the reception site, plop(or, you know, professionally deposit) the cake on the cake table and walk out. There was no swearing, no shaking hands piping last-minute pearls, no stashing my bowl of frosting under a table cloth, no leaving behind of valuable cake tools. A clean drop. Highly satisfying.

Let it Snow(please)

We had an absolutely wonderful Christmas, which I'll share later. We got a (very)light dusting of snow this morning which has me lusting after other people's weather. Since I have children to feed, a dinner party to prepare for and a wedding cake to make, for now I'll leave you with these incredibly lovely images from Meg and Maya.

If you prefer something sweeter to look at, last night when I was too jazzed over my wedding cake sketches to sleep I got up and put together this album. The first cake(picture above) in the album is my most recent, from Iain and Jiyoon's wedding in October.