Amuse Bouche

Stuffed Pork Tenderloin III

2011-09-25T18:41:48-04:00

As you can see we like stuffed pork tenderloin around here (Pork I and Pork II). It's not the most flavor packed cut, but it is quick and versatile and makes weeknight dinners get on the table PDQ.

Based on this recipe this time it was stuffed with some sauteed fennel. We love the fennel in this house. Sam I'm talking to you.

A few extra steps made this recipe shine. Dice the fennel and put it in the saute pan over medium high heat with some oil and butter and saute until it begins to soften. Add a pinch of kosher salt. Toss in half the garlic, turn the heat down a bit and continue stirring and watching until the garlic is just about to start browning and then add 1/3 cup of stock and half of the fennel seeds. Cover and let it braise for 5 - 10 minutes. Remove the lid and continue to cook stirring occasionally until the mixture starts to dry out a bit, but not all the way dry, this is your stuffing and you still want it to add moisture as well as flavor. Taste and adjust seasonings. Let this cool for 10 - 15 minutes on another unused burner but still in the pan. You will use this pan in the oven to finish cooking the pork in a bit. HA! Not only quick and delicious but 1 pan. What's not to love?

Preheat your oven to 425F

Meanwhile take your pork tenderloin and with a nice sharp knife slice 3/4 of the way into the thick end and and run your knife carefully down towards the thin end. You just want to open it like a book leaving one side connected. If you are really ambitious pound it out a bit and tweak things with your knife occasionally to make a nice flat surface. Season this well with salt and pepper.

Peel a few cloves of garlic and with a food processor, mortar and pestle or enthusiastically with the side of a knife pulverize it with some kosher salt into a paste add the remaining fennel seeds. Add a few grinds of black pepper and mix in. Add a glug or two of olive oil and stir to make it a nice sticky paste.

Now take the cooled sauteed fennel and garlic mixture and spread it down the inside of the tenderloin. You can pile it up a bit, don't worry. Slide a piece of cooking twine under and then carefully tie it up like a corset to keep in the stuffing. Continue with 2 or 3 other pieces of cooking twine.

Once it is tied smear the whole thing with the garlic/salt/fennel seed mixture. Place it back in the pan you made the stuffing in. In fact if there is any extra stuffing leave it in the pan. Put it in the oven and roast for about 25 mins or until the internal temp is 135F.

Pull the pork and rest it, tented with foil, on a cutting board or plate. Place the pan on the stove and turn the burner to medium. Add some white wine, oh say 1/4 - 1/3 cup. Scrape up all the lovely stuck bits. Reduce for 2 or 3 minutes. Add the other 1/3 cup of stock and let it bubble and boil and reduce for 2 - 3 minutes. Add some cream, oh say 2 TBS to 1/4 cup, again let it bubble and reduce for another 3 - 5 minutes. Taste. Adjust seasonings. Turn it off when it is both seasoned as you like and as thick as you like.

Slice your rested tenderloin and serve with the delicious pan dripping goodness. A little celeriac mash and some green beans wouldn't hurt either.

Ingredient list for those so inclined:

1 pork tenderloin

2/3 cup chicken stock

5 - 6 (or 7 or 8 if you are us) cloves of garlic, peeled

2 TBS fennel seeds

1 - 2 fennel bulbs depending on size

Kosher salt

black pepper

olive oil

1/4 - 1/3 cup white wine

2 TBS - 1/4 cup heavy cream

Fungus Amongus: Mushroom Fest

2011-09-11T17:47:16-04:00

Usually around the last week in July or the first week in August I head up north to visit Mom and SD in Maine traditionally that was the time they took their annual two week vacation but now they live there year round so I can go up and see the lake at different times. This week was the week between summer camp ending at Create a Cook and the new fall classes beginning so I took a few days to drive up and visit.

I left in the pouring rain on Wednesday and it followed me up the whole ride making a few stops along the way to pick up things to cook for dinner (Lancashire Hot pot and pork chops in a mustard cream sauce) Wed and Thur. First stop was to stock up the scotch selecton for those chilly fall nights. This is one of the ones I picked up.

There was also a quick stop for a season ending batch of GF fried clams as a treat so I arrived too late to check the woods, but a quick glance on either side of the camp road in told me the mushrooms were everywhere.

Thursday Mom and I were headed to Bath, Brunswick with some stops at a few farmer's markets on the way back but first First we headed down the north end of the camp road and holy mother lode of shrooms!

Now I only pick the two that I know well, chanterelle and lobster. But I did take photos of some of the others so I could do some research in my mushroom books. If anyone has an insight into any of these I would love to hear. Of course I don't need to give a disclaimer about not eating wild mushrooms unless you are 100% certain about their identification do I? No? Good.

Here are some of the fungus amongus all from the iphone I'm afraid so the quality is not the best.

Someone suggested stinkhorn, but I think they might be tuning fork fungus

Some sort of boletus. Knife for scale and the front shot.

and the underside showing the spongy layer instead of gills and a big old slug snacking away. Could it be boletus edulis? Only in my wildest dreams.

I do not think the cup shaped fungus on the left is poisonous, but whether it is edible or choice edible I'm not yet sure.

The only kind of 'lobster' I seek out in Maine. Technically this is not a mushroom but rather a parasitic asomycete that grows off another mushroom. Delicious and about $15 a pound right now at Russo's.

A better angle of those cup shaped mushrooms.

Surely this MUST be poisonous. Very Alice in Wonderland.

Another snacked on boletus. When you do find mushrooms it's often a battle between you, the worms, the bugs and the slugs to eat it.

Any input on the mushrooms would be appreciated. Right, off to check my books.

Makin' Bacon

2011-09-05T16:38:43-04:00

The time had come. I had a beautiful pork belly on my hands from Miss Maggi and Michael Ruhlman's Charcuterie, some pink salt(nitrate/nitrite haters read Mr. Ruhlman's solid rant about the truth here - hint, you've been having them all along even if it says NO NITRATES) and Bruce Aidell's Complete Book of Pork. The planets had aligned.

During my cooking day with Ali we had mixed up Ruhlman's basic cure for bacon and we popped it in a cambro and tucked it away in the fridge for a week to rest up, tighten up and exude away.

During the week I ordered some wood chip, more like sawdust from here.

On Sunday I pulled it out of its resting place, rinsed the cure off and patted it dry.

I filled a half steam table pan (one of those grocery store disposable aluminum pans) with some of the wood shavings,1 pint of hickory and 1 pint of cherry, lit a few briquettes in the chimney and laid them on the shavings.

The grate went on the porky goodness was nestled on top. The vents on the top and bottom of the grill were open and I popped in a thermometer to ensure it hung in the 80-120F cold smoke sweet spot.

Husband and I continued our PURGE of the basement in anticipation of laying a new floor and periodically I would check the pig. A few times I had to add a few more white ash briquettes and shuffle things around and once or twice I think the temp might have climbed to the high 130's, but generally over the 5 hour period it was pretty consistent.

Here she is in all her smoke lacquered, porky, piggy, beauty resting and waiting to be sliced and eaten. I will NEVER go back again. This was hands down one of the easiest, highest gratification projects I have tackled. Go on, you know you want to make it.

Another day in the kitchen with Ali (pork belly, homemade Nutella, Lancashire hot pot and more)

2011-08-28T14:36:36-04:00

Alasdair (Ali) will be heading back to England in a week for school and won't be back until his half term break in October so I took a day off work and we made plans to have a cook-a-thon. Ali's main intent was to play with the Thermomix(TM) and convince his parents that it is the next tool he needs in his arsenal.

With no clear plan for what we would do I picked up a mish mash of items including a whole pork belly from my pal Maggie when I placed my meat order for work that week.

I spent the morning plowing though my cookbooks to decide on a plan. I started with Bruce Aidell, Martin Picard, Ruhlman and Keller and in the end I took the pork belly brine from Ad-Hoc and combined it with aspects of the one in Under Pressure.

We cut a nice piece off the belly and set it up in a brine of kosher salt, pink salt, sugar in the raw, bay leaves, peppercorns, thyme and rosemary. We set that up in a cambro and it went into the fridge. I'll follow up on how I finished those later, but right now I have half of it in rendered pork fat in a 200F oven for 6 hours for confit and the other half in 82.5C in the circulator for 12 hours. Both will set up and chill overnight as long as Irene is nice and keeps the power on.

Then we mixed up the bacon rub from Ruhlman's Charcuterie and rubbed another nice piece. That one is currently parked in the upstairs fridge in a cambro for the next 7 days. Next weekend I will follow Aidell's formula for cold smoking it over hardwood sawdust in my Weber if I can get my hands on any. Too bad the thermomix won't grind up the chunks of my cherry tree that Irene is sure to knock down today. I could make my own dust.

I still have two other pieces tucked away in the freezer for later projects. Once we dispensed with the porkie items we wanted to get the cheesecakes in the oven.

These are gluten free (crust is GF flour, almond meal, melted grass fed butter and a pinch of salt) and the filling (1 lb cream cheese, 4oz sour cream abt 2 T sugar in the raw, lemon zest and juice, a tweak of vanilla and 2 eggs) we used little ramekins and cooked them in a water bath for about 30 mins.

Since we made all this up as we went along we realised after that we probably should have shaved 5 minutes off the oven time but they were still very good. We made a topping of Maine blueberries cooked down with a drop of water, a pinch of sugar, some stem ginger in syrup and a splash of port.

While these were baking we tackled the Thermomix projects. First up was making a homemade version of the crack known as NUTELLA. He toasted up some hazelnuts

and while they cooled some sugar went in the TM and was ground fine.

The nuts went in, and some dark chocolate and we milled it, wiped down the bowl and added some cocoa powder, butter and milk. Heat it up to 50C and set it to stir and 6 minutes later...

better than Nutella.

I cleaned it out and we made a quick mayo and then Ali wanted to make a custard so he whipped one up in under 6 minutes with nary a scarmbled egg in site. I want to apologise to Siân now, because he is going to be bugging her for the next 6 months for one of his own.

To make up for the pain of hearing about a TM and since Ali is Mr. Molecular Gatronomy these days with his textura, glycerin and maltodextrin I thought I would make him learn to cook a traditional, or as husband would say, proper, English dish to bring home for his parents.

Lancashire Hot Pot is one of husband's favorites and it is very simple to put together.

Salt and pepper and then sear off some nice lamb loin chops.

Remove them from the pan for now and add in 1 chopped Spanish onion, 1 diced rutabega (swede), 2 or 3 diced carrots and 2 or 3 stalks of celery chopped.

Keep the dice a good size maybe an inch or so, because these veg will cook for 2 hours later. Stir them around, season well with salt and pepper and when the onions start to soften sprinkle over 2 - 3 TBS flour. Stir well. Add 8 ozs veal demi (I get mine from D'artagnan, but you can omit this if you can't find it and use more veal stock) and 1-1/2 cups of veal stock. Add in 1 TBS chopped thyme leaves, 2 bay leaves and 3 TBS worcestershire sauce. Taste for seasoning.

It should have a kick from the worcestershire, if not add a bit more. Nestle the lamb chops back in. Make sure the stock comes right to the top of them, if not add a bit more.

Take some yukon gold potatoes, I can't give you a quantity here because it depends on the size of your vessel, but we had a 14" All-clad pan and we used about 7, and slice them about the thickness of a popsicle stick with either a knife or a manodline and then shingle them in circles to cover the whole surface. Season well again with salt and pepper. Dot with butter.

Put a lid on and pop this in a 325F oven for 1 hour. After an hour remove the lid and back into the oven for another hour until the potatoes are soft, some of the liquid has reduced and the potatoes have begun to brown. Gently stick a knife in and test on of the lamb chops. If everything seems ready and you want the potatoes a bit browner, pop the whole lot under the broiler for a few minutes.

Around 6:30 we packed him up and shipped him home to continue cooking his hot pot. We've already made plans for another cooking fest in October. I need to start plotting.

Bits and Bobs

2011-07-31T08:58:30-04:00

Just a few bits and bobs before I return with some more food.

I bought this ginger 2 months ago at Russo's. It had some nodules sticking out of it and it was damp and fresh so I took a chance to see if I could grow it. Julia had written about trying to grow it in her garden before with some success. Well, things got away from me and it just sat on the counter. After a few weeks the nodules started to sprout the leaves and now the one nodule is starting to grow. She said she didn't really have luck growing it in a pot, but I'm going to give it a shot. Not sure if I should grow it in an orchid mix (very light and airy full of wood and leaf matter) or in a potting soil (more dense), but I'll do a bit of googling and see I can find some info on the enviornment where they normally harvest it.

Last weekend we went to Maine to see Mom and SD and to bob in the water with a couple of noodles. It was heaven.

We practiced CPR (Catch, Photo, Release)

Exhasted Samoyed puppies slept in strange positions after long boat rides. It's tiring to be bow puppy.

I wasn't leaving without picking up some local eggs so I decided to drive over to Mt Vernon to show husband the amazing general store, if they don't have it, you don't need it.

On the way we went through Belgrade and Rome and on the road to Mt Vernon there is a farm at the top of the hill that has a little shack with a cooler and a sign that reads EGGS and an old Folger's coffee tin as the honesty box. Mom and I call it Joe Cocker farm.

There is a barn with the doors open and 1970's radio is always playing. Joe Cocker's With a Little Help from my Friends was playing the first time we went. We have never spoken to anyone and there is no sign naming the farm so that is how we refer to it. Outside the barn are all sorts of cages with birds and rabbits, goats and pigs.

Here are some pics of some of the residents.

He kept rattling the cage hoping we had brought some snacks. Next time I'll bring some carrots with me.

Is he a pheasant? I'm not sure who he is but he is handsome.

Just hanging out listening to 1970's rock.

There are 3 or 4 white peacock and 1 gorgeous multi color one. There were some mighty ugly birds wandering around outside the cages I was wondering if they were the pea hens.

And last, if it works, a little snippet of my favorite sounds on the lake. We have a platoon of loons this year. Up to 9 or 10 of them swanning around, fishing in the morning, calling out from cove to cove in the evening and at night. I was grilling and I recorded this snippet, the noise in the background is Mom in the kitchen and my SD watching the Red Sox.

Download Loon call

Porchetta or Pork Butt(shoulder) on the Spit

2011-07-26T07:47:39-04:00

Porchetta (pork butt on the spit)

This is a 10 minute of prep time recipe that will knock your socks off. Big flavor, incredibly moist (even as leftovers!) and it will make your neighborhood smell like an Italian street festival minus the ubiquitous peppers and onions if you live in New England.

In a food processor toss in 12 or so peeled cloves of garlic, 2 TBS of fennel seeds that you toasted lightly in a pan until they were fragrant, 1 T kosher salt, 1T ground black pepper, 2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes, leaves from 1 sprig of rosemary.

Puree this all up in the food processor and then add enough olive oil to make it a paste. Rub this all over your 5 - 6 pound pork butt (shoulder) preferably butterflied open like a book so you can spread the flavor everywhere. Once it is nicely rubbed roll it up and tie it in a nice bundle and let it sit in the fridge overnight.

I have a Weber kettle grill so we started 1 chimney full of hardwood charcoal and when it was ready we laid it on either side of the grill leaving the center open. We tossed on a few longer burning charcoal briquettes to keep the fire going. I speared the pork onto the spit and started it spinning. When the chimney cooled enough to handle we lit another chimney full and added more coals on each side. We put an aluminum disposable roasting pan down under the roast to catch the drips and prevent flare ups. The lid went on and it did it's nice slow spin, spin, spin for about 2 hours. 135F - 140F is your magical temperature for delicious porkie doneness. I happened to have my iphone by nearby and not my usual camera so these pictures are not the most brilliant in color, but you get the idea right?

We took it in and let it rest for 15 minutes and sliced. See the delicious juice! not only was this good for dinner, but unlike most pork it was great and still moist as leftovers. I made staff lunches with sliced porchetta, apple/jalapeno jelly, mayo and romaine. I just had mine on a salad.

Don't be afraid of throwing a big roast on the grill! For those who are spitless and need to cook this in the oven the recipe is based on this if you need oven directions.

Weekend Farmstand Haul

2011-07-19T08:15:44-04:00

A sunny Saturday and the top down. I went out rte 119 to Groton, back to Pepperell and Littleton and then a stop in Concord. Here is a paleo girl's haul of goodies and delights.

John Crown Farm for another free range chicken, a rib eye, some grass fed ground beef, and a lovely bunch of red onions.

Springdell Farm for some of their goat for curry, beef tenderloin for his majesty, he who only likes the tenderest part of the cow, and a few packs of pork chops. I also grabbed one of their punnets of cherries. There is a little sign that says they come from a local gentleman's tree. I bought one last year and I don't think it made it home intact. I spent the ride popping cherry pits along 119 like a crumb trail. This time it made it home and The Stig, as you can see, enjoyed them as well.

Spring Brook Farm for milk for husband, cream, fresh garden peas, a few ears of corn on the cob (yea, not paleo I know, but Native Americans were HUNTERS AND GATHERERS. 1 ear people, I had 1 ear), Cabot cheddar from the wheel for his majesty the cheddar lover, a yellow tomato, eggs and a few zucchini.

Again Stig would like to show you how good the peas were.

Last stop was Concord Fish & Prime for some steaks for the grill and more goat which was absolutely divine. Really people you need to climb aboard the goat train it's delicious and unlike goat cheese can do goat meat does not taste like a goat smells.

Later I'll tell you about the porchetta we did on the spit on Sunday. The Stig was waiting for me to finish.

Korean Radish Salad or Banchan with a twist

2011-07-05T22:35:46-04:00

First seed you attempted to grow? RADISH!

Large contents of your CSA box until at least August? RADISH!

You've had them with butter in a sandwich, you've added them to every salad, you've kept a bowl of them in your fridge in cold water ready to dip in salt and snack? RADISHES!

Now what? You ask.

Looking for something snappy to have with that fatty delicious barbecue? I've got just the simple ticket.

Of course normally you would make this with a Korean white radish or maybe if you were feeling cross cultural and adventurous a daikon.

This weekend presented a plethora of Korean barbecue at my house from Kalbi to lip smackingly delicious short ribs. I served this beside my favorite hands down favorite banchan , David Chang's scallion sauce. Dear lord it is good. (Recipe found in the kalbi link above).

Pardon my iphone snap, but there was dinner to eat! Just trust me and make this. Absolutely lovely.

Koread radish salad (American style)

6 - 8 radish, washed and cut into sticks like carrot sticks

1 tsp salt preferably kosher or sea

1T sherry or cider vinegar (i like the sharpness sherry vinegar brings)

2 cloves of garlic minced fine (or if you are me 3 and maybe, just maybe,4 cloves)

1 - 2 T Korean pepper (Gochugaru) very inexpensive but has a distinct taste and heat level. Order online if your local Asian bodega doesn't stock it - pop it in most anything.

1/2 t raw honey (if you are paleo) or sugar

1 scallion, cut thinly white and green

1 - 2 t toasted sesame seed

Sprinkle salt over sliced radish and let it rest for 10 minutes or so. Drain off the water that exudes out of the radish. Add the remaining ingredients. Stir. Taste for salt and heat and vinegar snap and adjust accordingly. Chill. Serve as one of many sides with barbecue. Cuts right through the fatty deliciousness of pork.

John Crow Farm Spit Roasted Free Range Chicken

2011-06-29T10:29:48-04:00

See that deliciousness spinning down below? That my little chicken skeptics was the finest chicken I have eaten in a very, very long time. It might involve a little work or travel to get it, but it was worth every delicious bite.

My Dad moved to Newburyport a few weeks ago and I told him I was looking for grass fed beef so if he passed any in his travels I asked him to let me know. Bright and early on a sunday morning he sent an email with just this picture enclosed.

He lives near the Newburyport farmer's market which runs on Sunday morning and he had seen this vendor there. A little google detective work later I found out the farm was located out near my favorite driving route out through Pepperell and Bolton. It was a gorgeous sunny day so I threw some ice in the cooler and Panther and I hit the road.

The farm is right off 119 on Old Ayer Road and is really easy to find.

I pulled up and these ladies cruised right on over. Yup, about as free range as can be. You know the seagulls in Finding Nemo? I kept hearing these chickens saying "car. car. car. BUG!, car, car".

And there were these lovely bovines hanging out under a nice shady tree.

There is a small store on the grounds with a few chest freezers inside and some products from the nearby Herb Lyceum sprinkled around. One freezer was empty but the other had these lovely chickens inside.

I chatted with the woman for a bit and found out there wasn't much in the store because they had picked up most everything that morning to hit the farmer's markets. They go to three on Sunday alone and there is a link on the website that shows their farmer's market schedule. I'm probably going to contact them next time to see if I can have what I want to order remain at the farmstand so I can pick it up.

This past Sunday after a gorgeous morning spent at British Car Day at the Larz Anderson museum I decided it was time to break out the grill and the spit. I raided the herb beds, made a compound butter, tucked it under the skin, threw the rest inside with some lemon chunks and strapped it on the spit.

I could spend some time here trying to find some nice florid prose to describe the taste, but really, in the end what I would be trying to say is that it tasted like chicken. Real chicken. Not flaccid grocery store, factory raised, corn fed chicken, but real chicken, almost quail or pheasant like. It had *gasp* TASTE! We had some for dinner that night and then I made the rest into some killer chicken salad for lunches this week.

So if you are looking for a nice ride on a weekend and some delicious meats, look for them at the farmer's market or take a nice ride down 119 like I do and hit all the amazing places. I'm sure I'll be there this weekend.

John Crown Farm- Groton, MA

Slow Cooked Pork Shoulder in the Italian Style

2011-06-26T15:04:43-04:00

Summer you say? So hot you can only eat salads and look at homemade gourmet popsicles? Well not in New England buddy. You've heard of the Mason Dixon line, that mistical invisible divider of the North and the South? We're currently living north of the mason dixon of sumer weather, we are firmly planted in early cold wet spring even though the calendar indicates we are not so many days from July. I want to have the urge to just toss something on the grill and whip up a gorgeous salad of fresh garden grown greens but mother nature has decided that I will whip out my crock pot and hunker down with stew instead. FINE! I can play that game.

On Thursday I raided the chest freezer in the garage and found a pork shoulder I had brought back from a farmer in Maine kicking around in a dark corner, I tossed it in the fridge to thaw and headed off to work. I knew it would end up as some semblance of pulled pork, I just wasnt sure what country the pulled pork would be from. Thursday went by without a chance to research any recipes and I headed home without stopping at the store. Friday I ended up staying home to update the work calendar so I had to raid fridges and pantries and in the end I settled on Italian.

I prepped everything in the morning and then wandered upstairs to my computer to work on the calendar. Sometime around 3:00 my house started to smell like my Italian grandmother had been in the kitchen all day. It was in the slow cooker on low for about 7 hours, but I'm pretty sure it would have been fine to eat after around 5 hours. We had it with cauliflower that was tossed with garlic, olive oil and lemon juice and roasted. Caulifower and tomato sauce are a match made in heaven, trust me on this.

Slow Cooked Pork Shoulder in the Italian Style

2- 28oz cans of tomatoes (I chose one whole and 1 crushed and both were fire roasted.)

5 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced

1 large Spanish or 2 small yellow onions cut to 1/4" dice

1 carrot grated finely (My Mom always added carrot to her sauce)

1 red chili chopped, seeds included (you could also use dried crushed red pepper to taste)

olive oil

1 pork shoulder 4 - 5 lbs

Kosher salt

4 oz guanciale or pancetta diced

6 cloves garlic, peeled

1/4 - 1/2 cup Italian flat leaf parsley

2 cups dry red wine

6 - 8 sage leaves

1 sprig rosemary

handful of thyme

First make your sauce. In a heavy bottom pan drizzle a few tablespoons of olive oil. Add the onion and the garlic (don't worry, since the pan is cool the garlic won't burn), cook this over low heat until everything is nice and soft and just starting to get some color. Add the chopped hot chili and stir for 30 seconds. Add the grated carrot and cook 1 - 2 minutes or until carrot is soft. Turn up the heat, tip in the crushed and whole tomatoes and their juices (again, don't worry about adding the tomatoes whole, you'll chop them with a spoon as you cook) and bring everything up to a high simmer. Turn the heat down and cook for 20 - 30 mintes stirring ocassionally and chopping up the whole tomatoes with your spoon as you go. Cook until some of the liquid evaporates and the sauce thickens. Season to taste with some kosher or sea salt.

While the sauce is cooking salt the pork and let it rest.

Make the soffrito: In a food processor pulse the guanciale or pancetta, garlic cloves, thyme and parsley until fairly smooth.

In a heavy bottom skillet or dutch oven add 1/4 cup of oil. When the oil is shimmering add the soffrito and stir. It will begin to melt into the olive oil and smell very fragrant. Add the sage leaves (whole is fine) and rosemary. Be careful to not burn the garlic, adjust the heat if neccessary. Cook 2 - 3 minutes. Pour this into the crock pot.

Return the pan to the heat and add the pork starting with the fat side in order to render some fat for the pan. Turn the shoulder and brown evenly.

While this is browning the sauce should now be done. Add this to the crock pot with the soffrito.

When the roast has browned add it to the crock pot squishing it down nicely and nestling it in the sauce. Add 1 cup of red wine to the pan and deglaze scraping up and brown buts ad reduce by half. Pour this into the crock pot and add the 2nd cup of wine.

Cook on low for 5 - 7 hours or until the pork shreds easily. There will be a good deal of fat that has risen to the surface. Just skim it off with a spoon before you remove the pork and stir everything together. Place the pork on a platter and either slice, chunk or shred it. Serve the sauce on the side to pour on everything. No really, everything. So good!