Pork

Three Pigs is one of my favorite party dishes because it feeds a lot a people without breaking the budget. I make the stuffing one day in advance, refrigerate it, and all that’s left is to slather it onto the pork in a thick layer, roll it up, top it with a bacon roof, and put it into the oven. The carrots are a snap as long as you have a mandoline, or a carrot guy or gal (someone whose sole job is to cut the carrots into even slices on the diagonal; I’m just fantasizing here). We had a bread guy when I was the executive pastry chef at Tony’s in Houston, and all he did was make bread, all day, every day. Sadly for me, I don’t have a carrot boy or girl. When I’m entertaining at home, the work mostly falls to me, so I hook up my iPod, turn up the volume, and slice my own carrots. And unless I’m at work, it’s up to me to butterfly the pork loin so that it lies flat for stuffing. If I were you, I’d ask your butcher to do it, specifying that the loin be butterflied twice for stuffing. Day-old scones make a fabulously rich stuffing, I’ve discovered. Bake my smoked tomato scones (page 35) for another meal and stow three in the freezer for use whenever you fancy making this dish.

True Bolognese sauce takes hours to simmer and deepen. Since the Yucatan-Style Slow-Roasted Pork (page 66) is already deeply flavored from all those hours in the oven, all you need to do is take it on a brief trip to Italy. This makes a very hearty all-inclusive serving for one; you could easily stretch it to serve two by boiling up a little extra pasta and including a salad and some bread on the table.

If you haven’t eaten tacos in Mexico City, then as far as I’m concerned, you haven’t really eaten tacos. Countless joints there specialize in tacos al pastor, carved off a spit like the shawarma from which it is derived, but with the delectable addition of pineapple (and with tortillas, naturally, instead of pita). They usually make a bit of a show of it, too: At El Califa, my sister and I watched the taco guy hold a plate with two tortillas on it in one hand, then use a long knife in the other to swipe off a chunk of pork, which fell right onto one of the tortillas. He quickly reached higher and sliced off a bit of the pineapple ring that was sitting on top of the spit, catching the fruit, too, on the tortilla. One of El Califa’s other specialties is a steak cutlet taco: The single piece of meat is longer than the tortilla, but it’s so tender it folds up inside and you can bite through it with your teeth. I like to combine the two ideas into one: using a thin cutlet of pork that I quickly marinate in pineapple juice and combining the traditional garnishes of onion, cilantro, pineapple, and lime into a quick salsa.

Apples, pork, and cabbage would seem best for fall, but I confess to making this dish anytime I get a hankering for a pork chop and see Brussels sprouts in the market. The tart apple and spicy ginger give it an appealing lightness. I like to use Brussels sprouts for single-serving dishes for an obvious reason: There’s less possible waste than with a big head of cabbage.

Of all the recipes in the cookbook I cowrote with Boston chef Andy Husbands, The Fearless Chef, the one for slow-roasted pork is the one I’m asked for the most. A new round of requests came after my friend Josh and I made it for my own birthday party a few years ago in Washington. We served it simply, with salsa, sour cream, and tortillas on the side, but trust me, this meat can go into all sorts of recipes, such as in Cochinita Pibil Tacos (page 95), Faux-lognese with Pappardelle (page 140), and Pulled Pork Sandwich with Green Mango Slaw (page 121). I’ve simplified this recipe a little from Andy’s original version, cutting out a 24-hour marinating step, replacing the traditional banana leaves with good old aluminum foil, and using one of my favorite smoke stand-ins, Spanish pimenton (smoked Spanish paprika), instead of oregano. The pork is spicy and deeply flavored and colored, thanks in no small part to the large quantity of annatto seeds (also called achiote) that goes into the paste. These little brick-colored pebbles are worth seeking out at good Latin markets or online through such sources as Penzeys.com.

When I visited Tokyo and Kyoto with my friend Devra a couple years back, I didn’t want to leave. I would say it was the beautiful aesthetic, the attention to design and style, the amazingly efficient trains, but really, of course, it was the food. I was especially excited when I learned how much the Japanese revere the sweet potato, one of my all-time favorite foods. In season (fall and winter), street vendors hawk stone-roasted ones—paler-fleshed and sweeter than ours. Famous cookbook author Harumi Kurihara showed me how she loves to mash miso into roasted sweet potatoes, so when I returned home, I knew that even the orange-fleshed varieties here would take beautifully to Japanese flavors. For a kick of bitterness that nicely offsets the earthy miso, use broccoli rabe instead of the broccolini.

Barbecued ribs are a delicacy born of the ingenuity of the poorest—the slaves and servants who were tossed bones by their masters and transformed gristly, fatty “spare ribs” into a complex delicious, finger-sucking feast—the New World equivalent of the French potage. The trick to cooking ribs is keeping them moist: brining is a must. Even the most delicious housemade bacon would envy the subtle woodsy notes infused from the smoked salt used in this brine. Bacony ribs glazed with a rich and spicy sauce: it’s like Christmas in July.

You can find ground bean sauce, a gloopy paste of fermented soybeans, salt, sugar, and sesame oil, in Asian grocery stores or order a jar online.

For the porchetta at the RoliRoti truck, Thomas uses a deboned pork middle, cutting out about half of the belly fat and leaving about 1/2 inch of fat on the loin. If you’re unable to find pork middle (a special request item, for sure), he suggests using a skin-on pork belly and wrapping the loin inside of it. Thomas also uses his signature rotisserie. Using a home version would be ideal, but this recipe has been adjusted so that it can be made in a standard oven.

The secret to this recipe is rubbing your seasonings into the meat thoroughly.

When we serve fried ribs at the restaurant, the reaction is always the same: “Fried ribs, we’ve never heard of those!” Well, they really are very good. We all love fried pork chops, so why wouldn’t we love fried ribs?