Pork Kebabs and Fennel Orange Salad

Pork Kebabs and Fennel Orange Salad
April 27th

Although I cook all kinds of things, my cooking is still most heavily influenced by Mediterranean food (particularly Spain, southern France, and Italy). It’s something that I’ve strayed away from more in the last couple of years, but it still is a huge influence and draw for me. The current issue of Saveur magazine has a great article on the cooking of Cyprus, which includes a great pork kebab recipe. Kebabs are found throughout the Mediterranean, but you don’t see them made from pork as often as from other meat, like lamb. But many countries, like Spain and Cyprus, that were under Ottoman or Muslim rule (where pork isn’t eaten), do have recipes for pork kebabs were the marinade shows Ottoman and Muslim influences. The Saveur recipe uses herbs like oregano and thyme, but also uses sweeter spices like cinnamon and cumin. Like most recipes I look at, I didn’t exactly follow it and did make a few modifications.

Many kebabs call for leaner cuts of meat, but there’s a lot to be said for fattier, tougher cuts like shoulder, provided you marinate them long enough and then cook them long enough and over low enough heat. Leaner cuts can get overcooked and dry out pretty easily, even if they’re marinated (how many dry kebabs have you had in your time?). I used pork shoulder for mine and then grilled them outside over moderate heat. I kept them pretty far from the heat after an initial sear and let them cook for a total of about 45 minutes or so. The meat was still juicy and wasn’t tough.

On the side I made a salad of shaved fennel, oranges, black olives, lemon juice and olive oil and some roasted some potatoes with lemon zest, oregano and olive oil. (Oranges and black olives are amongst my favorite flavor combinations. The sweetness and slight acidity of the oranges marries perfectly with the salty, brininess of the olives). I served yogurt on the side for the meat (and the potatoes too actually). I had picked up a Butte Creek Organic IPA and had that as well. I’ve liked all of the beers I’ve had from Butte Creek, particularly their pilsner (at last year’s Oregon Brewer’s Festival) and their porter. The IPA is good but has a pretty distinctive Victory malt note to it that I’m not that fond. (A lot of people clearly are if sales of New Belgium’s Fat Tire are any indication.) Despite the slightly heavy handed Victory malt note, it’s still a nice beer. It’s got good hop bitterness and flavor but isn’t over the top. It leans a little more to malt than many IPA’s do (not a bad thing in my opinion). The beer was great with the food, but frankly, the kebabs were so amazing that most any beer would have been seemed great with it.

January 19th - Fennel braised pork and polenta

January 19th – Fennel braised pork with polenta

It was a cold day and it was actually pretty chilly when we were brewing in the garage. By the time we were through, I was looking forward to something hardy for dinner. I wanted to braise something and opted to use some pork country ribs which are actually from the shoulder and are great for braising. I love fennel and pork and decided to braise the pork in a combination of onion, carrots, celery, garlic, white wine and fennel seed. The flavors would be fairly simple and straight forward but would also be hardy enough to satisfy my craving for comfort food. I was out of potatoes (how does one run out of potatoes?) so I decided to make some polenta instead.

I used to cook polenta with a lot of butter, cream, and parmesan, or even mascarpone cheese. (I once had a meal with two friends who cook professionally, where they tried to see how much fat they could add to polenta before the emulsion broke. They never hit the breaking point, but the polenta was so rich that it was almost inedible. You could only have tiny spoons of it.) I’ve since gone away from it and prefer the purer flavor you get form cooking it plain, with only water and salt. In a lot of braises, I’ll puree the sauce for a thicker richer sauce, but wanted to keep the chunks of vegetables in this one, both for the texture and their visual appeal.

Since this was an Italian influenced meal, I decided on an Italian wine (why do I almost always drink wine after brewing beer?). I don’t buy a lot of Italian wines but did have a few in my cellar. 1989 was a fantastic year for Barbaresco and I had the good fortune to have bought several single vineyard Barbaresco’s from Produttori del Barbaresco at incorrect prices. There was an old chain of natural supermarkets in Portland that has since gone out of business. I used to buy some wine there and noticed that they kept putting the single vineyard Barbarescos in the slot for the regular Barbaresco. I told the wine stewards several times that they were incorrect, and they always told me I was wrong and that the $19.99 was correct for the single vineyard bottlings. But the same wine was selling for about $30 in other locations. But after I told them it was wrong and they insisted it was OK, I decided to buy a few bottles. They would have a different vineyard each time in the slot, and each time I would try to tell them, and every time they told me it was correct. So each time I bought a bottle or two and stashed them away. I cracked the last bottle of Monte Fico for this meal. Monte Fico was the hardest and most backward of all of Produttori’s offerings that year, but this one was beautifully mature. It took about an hour to open up, and then revealed a rich nose of cherry fruit, some leather and tobacco, and an earthier, tarry note. It wasn’t as full bodied as some Barbarescos I’ve had, but it had impeccable balance and was just plain delicious. It didn’t overwhelm the food and was a nice match, but it was so good it would have gone with pretty much anything. It was a truly memorable bottle.