Ingredients:
- 10 pound pork shoulder, or other pork roast cut
- 1.5 cups of Diamond Crystal kosher salt
- 0.5 cup granulated sugar
Recipe:
At large American grocery stores you can usually find a 10 pound pork shoulder in plastic packaging. Sometimes it’s labeled “pork butt”, “picnic”, “shoulder”, “blade roast”. These are all subtly different parts of the pig and cut differently. Rather than get into American animal husbandry practices, let’s continue with the cooking, yah?
The day you bring the pork home, and at least 12 hours before cooking, salt the roast aggressively with ~1-1.15 cups of salt. Depending on how I’m feeling, I may also use half a cup of sugar. Let hang out in the fridge. You can either cover it in plastic wrap or just leave it open in a bowl. If you choose to wrap it,make sure to put it in a bowl as well, as it will leak liquids.
Let this hang out in the fridge.
On the day of cooking, remove all liquids and pat the roast dry. Place on a wire rack on a roasting pan (it’ll leak fat as it cooks!), and roast for 6-8 hours at ~300 degrees fahrenheit. It’s done when you can push a fork into it and twist easily.
OK, now what do you do with it?
You can serve the roast, as is, bo ssam style. Great for a dinner party. Read more here.
If you’re cooking during quarantine, you may think, what can I do with a 10 pound roast and no friends? Here are some things I like to do:
- Chop up a smaller portion–fat and solid meat, and fry (no need to add more fat) in a pan. After it’s crispy, add some apple cider vinegar and some hot sauce and maybe some water. Let the liquids boil off, stirring the meat. Taste and add more salt, etc. Eat by itself, or on top of lettuce leaves or in tortillas.
- Another way to use a smaller portion. Let it fry and warm up in its own fat. Place at the bottom of a very large bowl. Chop up some lettuce/kale/chard/any form of greens. Boil some chinese noodles / ramen packet. Place noodles and hot water in bowl. Season with soy sauce, chili oil, chili crisp, etc. to taste. Soup noodles, yum.
- Use as the base for making congee.
- Chop up and stir into stir fried vegetables.
- You get the picture. It’s endlessly versatile.
-Maggie
We made and bottled hot sauce to give as gifts to Maggie, Trina, Hilary, and
Sharlene at the 2018 GetUp! graduation. The hot sauce itself is
‘lactofermented’, meaning that it uses natural fermentation from lactobacilli to
break sugars down into lactic acid. This lactic acid provides same delicious,
sour flavor you get from kosher dill pickles and kimchi; it also extends the
shelf-live of the produce.
Thankfully, if you’ve grown vegetables in your garden or purchased them at a
farmer’s market, it’s easy to ferment at home: there’s plenty of natural
bacteria from the soil! The key technique is this: submerge vegetables in a 5%
salt brine, weigh them down to prevent exposure to air, and then wait for
bubbles to form. Bubbles=fermentation!
This recipe takes a weeks from start-to-finish, but could take longer based on
your microclimate and house temperature.
Equipment:
- glass or ceramic weights
- These weigh down the produce and prevents exposure to oxygen
- If you don’t have any, you can substitute a ziplock bag with salt brine
inside. Shove it in the mouth of your jar!
- a non-reactive container for fermentation, like a ceramic crock or glass jar
of any size. Your pickling peppers and other ingredients will live here while
they’re fermenting.
- kitchen scale
- gloves
- To protect your fingers, etc. from residual oils in peppers, which can burn
your eyes and other soft issues.
- metal or glass non-reactive bowl
- food processor to puree ingredients
- optional: 5oz glass bottles for storage/serving, food mill for making smooth
Ingredients:
- salt
- Needs to be a non-iodized salt, like Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt. Anything
iodized or with additional chemicals (like anti-caking agents) will inhibit
natural fermentation.
- carrots
- garlic
- peppers
- We used habaneros, but you could easy use other hot peppers. Whichever
pepper you use, you want something deeply colored and aromatic
Steps:
- Make a 5% salt brine, by weighing a few cups of water and adding 5% of that
weight in salt.
- De-stem peppers. Weigh the product, and add 5% salt by weight in your
nonreactive bowl. Let sit on the counter to sweat water out of the produce, up
to overnight. When you’re ready, move the produce+accumulated water to your
jar, and your weights (if using) or your ziplock bag (if using that), and
cover completely with your 5% salt brine. No peppers should be exposed to
oxygen when you’re done.
- Repeat with carrots and garlic. We recommend fermenting the carrots and garlic
together, but the peppers separately since they may take longer to finish.
- Weight-wise, we recommend a 6:2:1 ratio of carrots, garlic and peppers, but
you find yourself adjusting
- You can keep this fermenting for a very long time! People do so for years. We
usually in our San Francisco kitchen let vegetables ferment for 6 weeks to get
to a good sourness, but in a warmer climate, as short as 4 weeks is sometimes
enough.
- When ready, food process / puree the ingredients together. Add more salt (or
pepper brine) if needed to taste, or anything else you think might go well. If
you have one, a food mill is great for making a smoother, less chunky product,
but isn’t necessary.
- REFRIGERATE!
-Buro + zmagg
I made this salad for a Thanksgiving potluck at Mapbox, wanting to make
something vegan with the bounty of butternut squash from our CSA. Panzanella is
definitely a ‘pattern salad’: a base of toasted (or stale) bread moistened and
combined with other stuff. You can (and should!) replace the primary vegetable,
toppings, and dressing with whatever is currently in-season. This recipe itself
is based on the panzanella in Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian
Cooking (which is tomato and anchovy-based), and suggestions from
friends at the Garden for the Environment at an event the night before
the potluck.
The salad components can be prepped the day before, except for the vegetable
toppings (radishes, etc.). Prep those at the time of serving.
Salad dressing
- 1 cup olive oil
- 2 tbsp sherry vinegar
- 2 tbsp red wine vinegar
- 4 tbsp salt-packed capers
- 2-3 cloves of garlic, mortared with the capers
- 1 tsp whole-grain mustard
Squash
- 4 whole butternut squash, cut in-half and sliced into 1/2-inch half-moons
- Toss with salt, olive oil, white pepper
- Roast on parchment at 400F until caramelized at the edges
Bread
- 1 loaf sourdough, cut into 1-inch cubes, tossed lightly in olive oil, and
broiled to golden brown. I used a whole Tartine country loaf, but
any substantial, high-gluten broad loaf works.
Toppings
- shallots, sliced and macerated in apple cider vinegar
- radishes, sliced
- chives, diced
- arugula, washed
- roasted Whole Hazelnuts, chopped
After making the dressing, squash, bread, and toppings, assemble the salad
30-minutes prior to serving:
- In a large mixing bowl, toss and roughly combine the bread and the
squash. Add salad dressing and let sit for 10-15 minutes.
- Add arugula and mix, followed by shallots, chives, and half of the hazelnuts.
- Adjust seasoning with salt and white pepper.
- Cover with remaining hazelnuts and radishes.
-Buro
This is a Bengali variant of a fruit aachar/preserve that can be made
with unripe, local stone fruit. Mangoes and olives variants work well too,
although I haven’t tried them yet. The recipe itself a based on some commentary
from an aunt, whose aachar is quite popular within my extended family.
- Add unripe stone fruit (e.g., peaches), washed and cut coarsely, and some
water (~ 1/2 cup) to a small, heavy-bottomed pot. Bring to a simmer.
- Add sugars, about half weight of stone fruit, to pot:
- Brown sugar
- 3-4 tbsp, honey
- 1 tbsp, pomegranate molasses
- OR Nolen gur
- For sourness: tamarind paste (whole)
- Simmer fruit and sugar and let reduce. Cool some on the back of a spoon to
test final consistency and aim for something jam-like.
- Fold in spices:
I eyeballed this the first time I made it, and the volume measurements are
calibrated for about 400g of fruit (with cores removed).
-Buro
This recipe is sized for a potluck!
I call it a “salad”, the Chinese name for it might be “liang ban tofu gan”. Liang ban is a technique used to dress cold vegetables of all kinds. Once you’re comfortable with the sauce and technique, you can use it to dress carrots and blanched bean sprouts! Or poached chicken!
Ingredients & Sourcing
- 4 blocks Tofu Gan – This is the center piece of the dish. You can find it labeled as “Braised Tofu” or “Tofu Gan” or “Pressed Tofu Blocks” in the store. They’re very firm, they’re brown on the outside, and do not come in water (they come in plastic though). Hodo Soy calls theirs “Braised tofu”, and that’s widely available where I live.
- 1 bunch celery – Just normal standard celery here, Chinese celery would be an OK substitute, please don’t use only the hearts.
- tablespoon kosher salt
- neutral oil (grapeseed / canola)
The Sauce
- 1/4 cup Chili oil
- a few tablespoons Szechuan peppercorn, toasted, then ground in a spice grinder – I have a lot more I could say about these, but if you’re having difficulty sourcing, I actually buy mine online here. To toast, follow something similar to the chilis in the chili oil. Don’t burn ‘em. The black bits in the peppercorns should be removed, they’re gritty af. Your bag has a lot of black bits? Find a different source. Can’t find any near you, or find this process laborious? You can skip it, or use commercial szechuan peppercorn oil.
- a few tablespoons soy sauce – I use light soy sauce, Pearl River Bridge brand.
- a few tablespoons Chinkiang “Chinese black” vinegar – If you don’t have this vinegar on hand, strong sherry vinegar and a tablespoon of sugar can substitute.
Short note on ingredients
The above is the majority of my pantry list for all my Chinese cooking. That’s it! Once you have those ingredients, you can make lots of other tasty things.
Recipe
- Chop celery on the bias (diagonal), as shown here
- Lightly salt celery with a tablespoon of kosher salt. Let rest.
- Chop tofu gan vertically / horizontally so that it’s around the same thickness as your celery.
- Poach celery pieces for 1-2 minutes until they change color.
- Stir fry tofu gan pieces, you might have to go in batches as well. After it’s fully coated in oil and hot, add the soy sauce and vinegar. Keep stir frying until fully absorbed. Remove from heat.
- Combine celery and tofu gan, top with chili oil and Szechuan peppercorn, gently toss to combine. Add additional soy sauce and vinegar to taste (although err on the side of dressing more assertively–cold dampens flavors).
Chill. Serve within a few days. Tastes better after chilling and marinating in the fridge over night. Shake before serving.
