For New Year's Day, I made corned beef and cabbage -- but not the way I'd planned. We'll get there in a moment, though, because the story starts with Friday dinner.
That was the holiday for me. The weather was unseasonably warm and, for a wonder, not rainy. The grocer had Boston butt roasts, a cut of pork, for $3.99 a pound, which is pretty amazing as meat prices go these days. I couldn't pass it up.
The way I have been making pork, marinated in vinegar and soy sauce, with ginger and garlic and then cooking with apples and vegetables, had been reminding me of something that couldn't quite pin down. Some search-engine wandering had finally found it: add tomatoes and little more heat, and you've on the way to vindaloo!
Pork vindaloo exists. The dish come from Goa in India. The name comes from Portugese, and it means "garlic wine." It can be very fiery; imagine an Indian take on hot Cajun barbecue and you've got the general idea. I made up a marinade with mostly balsamic vinegar and bit of plain white vinegar, soy sauce, a touch of sugar, garlic, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, red pepper, dried green peppers, Kashmir chili powder (just a bit!), bitter black mustard seed and chaat masala, and let the (un-netted) Boston butt soak in it all day.
This is a natural for a slow grill, especially with the weather. I set up the grill for indirect heat with coals burning along two sides and a gap in middle, and put the pork roast and marinade in a covered pan over the gap for a half hour, then turned it and prepped the first group of vegetables: a Granny Smith apple, a parsnip, a small fennel bulb, an onion, and five cloves of garlic. That all went over the meat and cooked down for a half-hour or so before I added a 28-ounce box of finely-chopped tomatoes and let it simmer for an hour. I added a container of sliced fresh mushrooms then and give it a half-hour more.
That was the holiday for me. The weather was unseasonably warm and, for a wonder, not rainy. The grocer had Boston butt roasts, a cut of pork, for $3.99 a pound, which is pretty amazing as meat prices go these days. I couldn't pass it up.
The way I have been making pork, marinated in vinegar and soy sauce, with ginger and garlic and then cooking with apples and vegetables, had been reminding me of something that couldn't quite pin down. Some search-engine wandering had finally found it: add tomatoes and little more heat, and you've on the way to vindaloo!
Pork vindaloo exists. The dish come from Goa in India. The name comes from Portugese, and it means "garlic wine." It can be very fiery; imagine an Indian take on hot Cajun barbecue and you've got the general idea. I made up a marinade with mostly balsamic vinegar and bit of plain white vinegar, soy sauce, a touch of sugar, garlic, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, red pepper, dried green peppers, Kashmir chili powder (just a bit!), bitter black mustard seed and chaat masala, and let the (un-netted) Boston butt soak in it all day.
This is a natural for a slow grill, especially with the weather. I set up the grill for indirect heat with coals burning along two sides and a gap in middle, and put the pork roast and marinade in a covered pan over the gap for a half hour, then turned it and prepped the first group of vegetables: a Granny Smith apple, a parsnip, a small fennel bulb, an onion, and five cloves of garlic. That all went over the meat and cooked down for a half-hour or so before I added a 28-ounce box of finely-chopped tomatoes and let it simmer for an hour. I added a container of sliced fresh mushrooms then and give it a half-hour more.
The meat thermometer said it was done and the pork was fall-apart tender.
It was very tasty!
---
New Year's Day was a different story. I had hoped to use the grill again, but it rained off and on all day. I tried putting my Always pan in a larger frying pan with water in it for indirect-type heat over the stove, and succeeded only in putting out the burner when the pan overflowed.
Fine. I rinsed the corned beef well and put it in the Always pan with a very little water, covered, over medium heat until it started to simmer and then turned it down to low. I set a timer for two and half hours, and another for one hour. I put the contents of the spice packet, some freshly-ground black pepper and a couple of teaspoons of capers on the corned beef.
At the hour and a half mark, I added parsnips, carrots and a fennel bulb. At the one hour mark, coarsely-diced potatoes and onions went in. With a half-hour left, I added wedges of purple cabbage.
Hoping all the while that it wouldn't be too awful.
Fine. I rinsed the corned beef well and put it in the Always pan with a very little water, covered, over medium heat until it started to simmer and then turned it down to low. I set a timer for two and half hours, and another for one hour. I put the contents of the spice packet, some freshly-ground black pepper and a couple of teaspoons of capers on the corned beef.
At the hour and a half mark, I added parsnips, carrots and a fennel bulb. At the one hour mark, coarsely-diced potatoes and onions went in. With a half-hour left, I added wedges of purple cabbage.
Hoping all the while that it wouldn't be too awful.
I cut the meat...
Dished out vegetables...
And plated it up:
Delicious! The vegetables absorbed a lot of the excess salt. The broth was very salty but the corned beef was just right.
All photos by Tamara Keel.
All photos by Tamara Keel.
I read your and ERJ's and Joel's blog posts (among others) to my bride after dinner. When I mentioned Two Wheels and two meals, she, having seen Tam's Facebook post, started clapping like a seal and making sounds that reminded me of a certain scene from "When Harry Met Sally"... (We are not like everybody else.) Linda greatly admires your intuitive cooking abilities. I have to measure everything; she does a lot better...
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