Pork

It doesn’t get much easier than this—or tastier. That wonderful Zatarain’s Creole Mustard (see Resources, page 175) is hard at work for you, makin’ an easy sweet and savory sauce that brings out the best in pork.

Here’s an interesting technique. We cut (counter to logic) the pork tenderloins into long steaks along the grain of the meat, forming steaks approximately 10 inches long by 2 inches wide. Whip up the jerk paste the night before or that morning, and get the tenderloins marinating early. That way you can grill and eat in minutes after getting jerked around at work all day.

This is one of the best ways we know to use up day-old corn bread. We mix it with spicy Italian sausage and stuff it into some bodacious pork chops to turn out one good-lookin’ dish for our Custom-Que menu.

Because our weather in Central New York is less than tropical, we have to figure out ways of keepin’ those warm weather flavors coming even when poundin’ rain or three-foot drifts make it hard to get to your backyard grill. So here’s a way to make ribs in your oven and bring on all the flavors of places with better weather. Our method for makin’ ribs in the oven can also be applied to the recipe for Dinosaur-Style Ribs (page 93). All you’ll be missin’ is the taste of the smoke and the smell of the outdoors, but the ribs will still be fallin’-off-the-bone tender.

This is our reason for being. If you’re a rib joint, you’d better have great ribs. What we strive for every day is a perfect balance of spice, smoke, sauce, and pull-off-the-bone tender pork. Here’s the blueprint and some tips to achieve some beautiful barbecue. All you need are a few hours and a dedicated pit boss spirit. A couple of beers won’t hurt either.

Because we’re a barbecue joint, we’ve always got pulled pork on hand, so it was just natural for us to turn it into a delicious appetizer. Don’t let our habits limit you. Make these quesadillas with some cooked turkey or chicken thigh meat or any chopped or shredded leftover meat you have lurkin’ in the fridge.

Even those who say “No!” to sauerkraut will love this specialty dish from family friend Betty Maxwell.

Since moving to Oklahoma, I have noticed that a lot of the barbecue there is made with beef. I started making these Georgia pork ribs a couple of years ago for the Fourth of July, and they quickly became tradition around here. Cut the racks into two-rib portions and serve them with Easy Baked Beans (page 133) and Fourth of July Coleslaw (page 54) for an awesome holiday feast!

Sometimes it’s nice to make a meal that takes only a couple of steps to get into the oven, and then you can forget about it for an hour while it cooks. The beef broth gives the rice a great flavor. I serve this with Cooked-to-Death Green Beans (page 130).

This dish takes a bit of attention, but the results are well worth the effort for a special meal. The steam that rises from the water in the bottom of the pan keeps the pork chops tender and moist. Mom used canning jar rings instead of a rack to elevate the chops above the water.

My daddy was a great cook, and many of the recipes in this cookbook are his. If there was a fund-raiser in Monticello, people would always ask, “Is Jack making the Brunswick Stew?” or “Is Jack cooking the chickens?” before they bought their tickets. The food was usually prepared outside in very large quantities with the help of members of the sponsoring organization. Brunswick Stew is one of those classic southern dishes that varies from region to region, but I’ve never had Brunswick Stew that tasted like my dad’s. In his version, everything is ground through a food grinder, so it’s more like a wonderfully rich soup than a stew. His version also fed 160 people, so we’ve reduced our recipe to serve a cozy 16!

Cayuga White is an easy-to-like, food-friendly wine, unique to the Finger Lakes region. Joyce Hunt was inspired by the Riesling-like characters in her family’s Cayuga, and she developed a German-inspired dish to match the local wine.

This is more of an appetizer than a cocktail. What’s the reason behind the size? Hunger, gluttony, and insecurity are but a few. Serve in a large glass or a Mason jar.

We remember falling in love with a photograph of petits farcis in an old issue of Cuisine et Vins de France. We’re sure that most chefs our age who had dreamed of cooking professionally since childhood feel the same when they open a vintage copy of Cuisine et Vins de France, or of Georges Blanc’s De la Vigne à l’Assiette. There is no greater food era than when Michel Guérard, Bernard Loiseau, Paul Bocuse, Alain Chapel, Georges Blanc, and Roger Vergé were at the top. Petits farcis are vegetables stuffed with sausage mix, then baked and eaten lukewarm. We make them in the summer when the growers show up with pattypan squashes. What else are you supposed to do with those little squashes other than admire them? The stuffed vegetables are awesome with a mâche salad and partner perfectly with a nice rosé or pastis. Get the smallest vegetables you can find, about the size of a golf ball.

This red sauce is a steroid ingredient that we use to pump up wimpy dishes like gnocchi or in chicken gravy for a quick sauce chasseur. Most of our sauces are done this way, baked in a good French enameled cast-iron pot. We’re not too fussy about the type of tomatoes we use, just canned and whole; San Marzano will do. If you cannot obtain pig skin from your butcher, then a pig’s trotter, halved lengthwise, works, too. You could also add Smoked Baby Back Ribs (page 153) to the sauce before serving it with the gnocchi.

Porchetta is something you want to eat lukewarm: work on it in the morning, cook it in the afternoon, take it out, and eat it an hour or so later. We’re aware that a traditional porchetta is a whole stuffed pig; this is our version and has little affiliation with the Italian classic. Because you wrap the pork belly around the shoulder, you need a pretty skinny piece of Boston butt. We buy a 5-pound (2.3-kg) shoulder, slice it lengthwise, and use half (freeze the other half for another time). This recipe may look labor-intensive, but it won’t be, especially if you get your butcher to do all of the trimming for you.

When Fred travels, the first place he always goes is to a grocery store. Forget the idyllic markets and the virile butchers; he has this immense fascination with supermarkets. Nothing compares to landing in Paris at 9:00 A.M. and heading to the loaded yogurt aisle of a Monoprix. He feels the same when he’s visiting western Canada, checking out the sausage sections. Far from artisanal anything, we’re sure, but the array is crazy: midget baloney, cotton-sack summer sausage, skinless Mennonite, headcheese, jerky of all kinds, and on and on. It’s a fun challenge to take an old commercial sausage and just make it honest again: good meats and real smoke. This one we made with Emma, who was chef de cuisine at Liverpool House at the time. We suggest the use of muslin bags for this sausage in particular. You might find them online, or, as a proper Joe Beefer, you can sew them yourself (see Note). The penetration of smoke is much better and you don’t need a stuffer. You just do it by hand.

Our use of ribs extends beyond a plate of ribs. We use them in gnocchi and in potato soup, and we will cut them into three, remove the bones, and make a McKiernan ribs sandwich. As lard was a staple at the turn of the century, so are ribs at Joe Beef. We provide two ways of cooking: roasting and smoking. Serve with Good Fries (page 154).

Even though places like St. Hubert Rotisserie have been serving the “hot chicken sandwich” since the 1930s, no factual proof exists that it originated in Quebec. Our only proof is that we haven’t seen it outside the province, whereas inside, it’s a weekly staple. It’s basically hot, shredded chicken, served with galvaude (peas and gravy, usually a poutine variation) and two pieces of white bread. In this recipe, you have four meat options: pork, duck, rabbit, or chicken. They’re all hot and they’re all delicious. For pork, use the pulled pork recipe in Scallops with Pulled Pork (page 30). For the other meats, there are three steps: (1) cure it, (2) smoke it, and (3) confit it. If you don’t have a smoker can, you will need to dig up an empty 1-quart (1-liter) tin can for step 2. If you live in the States, D’Artagnan (www.dartagnan.com) will deliver the duck fat you need in step 4 to your door. If not, use bacon fat. The gravy is the perfect clone of the local poulet barbecue sauce. It’s not a hot sauce, but it’s also not that thickish gravy that tastes like spinach and baking soda. It’s zingier, a cross between BBQ sauce and gravy. It is classic on these sandwiches, but it’s also good, minus the bread, on duck, pork, poutine, or yes, chicken.

Even though peameal has nothing to do with the bacon we know and love, many still refer to it as “Canadian bacon.” They call it that in Canada, the place on both sides of Quebec—joking, joking. . . . Part of the history of Montreal is an overdramatized opposition to Toronto. Maybe it’s hockey, maybe it’s the separatist thing, or maybe it’s just a friendly rivalry. Regardless, we love Toronto. It’s where our favorite butcher, Stephen Alexander, has his shops (Cumbrae’s), and it’s the national capital of oyster bars (Rodney’s, Oyster Boy, Starfish). It’s also home to Kids in the Hall, John Candy, the Black Hoof, and, of course, the Saint Lawrence Market, where you can get a peameal bacon bun with maple mustard. Peameal is not made with peas anymore. Like most aspects of life, ranging from food to plastic, peameal is being taken over by corn. We make our peameal with dried yellow peas crushed in the processor. The purpose of peas or cornmeal is to wick and dry, thus preventing spoilage. You will let the meat brine for a minimum of four full days, ninety-six hours, in the fridge. It is necessary to have a brine injector; they sell them nowadays for under ten bucks in big stores.