Weeknight Entertaining: Port-Braised Lamb Shanks with Coriander, Fennel, and Star Anise

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Let's say you want to have a special evening. There's a fancy bottle of wine you've been saving, and you've invited a few friends over for a home-cooked meal. You have something to celebrate.

But you don't know exactly what time they're arriving—they could be stuck at work, or their train could take forever to come. If you plan a dish with too many last-minute preparations, you'll be bustling around while your friends relax and catch up. And you clearly don't have time for lots of shopping and complicated prep between the time you leave work and the time they come over. It's a challenge, the weeknight dinner party.

But take a deep breath. There is no reason you can't entertain on a weeknight, even have a truly decadent, enjoyable meal, without any stress. That's what braising is for. Everything is prepared in advance. You can gently reheat these port-braised lamb shanks for 45 minutes or an hour or longer while your guests arrive, while you drink toasts and eat lovely cheese, and the meal will be none the worse for wear. In fact, it will just get better.


It always amazes me how recipes for braised dishes fail to emphasize the value in cooking ahead. Cook for three (or more) hours the evening before your party, and let the pot cool off outside before you stash it in the fridge overnight. The flavors will mingle, and, most importantly, the fat will separate from the cooking liquid. On game day, you skim the now-solidified fat from the surface before reheating. And this dish has plenty. It's quite satisfying to remove it, knowing you're saving your guests from a greasy meal.

So the lamb reheated happily on the stove, and we sipped the wine and ate lovely cheese from Fromaggio in Essex Market. And Matt asked Peter to be his best man in our wedding, and they were both blushing and adorable, and the lamb fell off the bone as I tried to serve it, and it was as tender as can be.


Port-Braised Braised Lamb Shanks with Coriander, Fennel, and Star Anise
Adapted from Bon Appetit, March 2006
Serves 4

2 1/2 tsp ground coriander
2 tablespoons fennel seeds
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
4 large lamb shanks (about 5 pounds)
4 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 large white onion, cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces
10 garlic cloves, peeled
3 celery stalks, cut crosswise into 1 1/2-inch pieces
2 carrots, peeled, cut crosswise into 1 1/2-inch pieces
1 small leek
3 cups ruby Port
2 1/2 cups low-salt chicken broth
2 1/2 cups beef broth
6 whole cloves
2 whole star anise
2 bay leaves
1/2 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper

The day before the party, prepare and braise the lamb shanks. Measure coriander, fennel, and pepper in a heavy skillet. Toast on medium-high heat until aromatic and slightly darker, about 2 minutes. Transfer to spice grinder or mortar and pestle; grind finely. Rub each shank with spice blend, reserving a tablespoon or so. Sprinkle each shank with salt.

In large pot, heat port to a simmer. Simmer until reduced to about 1 cup, about 20 minutes. Add broth, boil until liquid is reduced to about 4 cups, about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, eat 2 tablespoons oil in heavy large dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add shanks to pot. Cook until brown on all sides, about 20 minutes. Remove to bowl. Add remaining 2 tablespoons oil to same pot. Add onion and next 4 ingredients; sauté over medium heat until vegetables begin to soften, about 5 minutes. Add remaining spice blend and stir 1 minute. Add hot liquid when reduced, scraping the pan and using the liquid to deglaze.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Return shanks to pot. Add cloves, star anise, bay leaves, and crushed red pepper. Cover pot and place in oven. Braise lamb until tender, 2 to 2 1/2 hours.
When cooked, uncover and cool slightly. Remove shanks from sauce, holding on a plate or bowl, and strain sauce. Return shanks and sauce to pot. Cover and keep refrigerated up to two days.

The day of the party, skim fat from top of the dish. Rewarm, covered, in a 350°F for 45 minutes to one and a half hours (until warm) before serving.

Place 1 lamb shank on each of 4 plates (can be served on top of polenta). Season sauce to taste with salt and pepper. Spoon sauce and over lamb and serve.

Barbecue While You Shop: Slow Cooker BBQ Ribs

I don't mean you can make ribs in the oven or grill while you shop online. You can, but this is better. The weather is great for a minute! Go outside!

These ribs cook while you're gone at work, while you're asleep, while you're hanging out with your kids, or while you're wandering Soho, checking out the sales at the art supply store and Sur la Table. I highly recommend the latter. (Though I think I managed to buy the only thing in there that wasn't discounted.)

I really think slow cookers are worth the counter space, especially for busy folks. And I have precious little counter space. A lot of people have visions of mushy stews and everything tasting the same when it comes out of the crockpot, but really, anything that you braise can be slow-cooked, especially if you're willing to do a little prep work.


They may not be for the purists among you, but for the rest of us, these ribs are tasty, and cheap, and easy. Isn't that a worthy trifecta?

Slow Cooker BBQ Ribs
Serves two

1 full rack pork spare ribs, trimmed and cut in half
1 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
2 oranges
1 lemon
2 bottles of beer
1 dried chipotle pepper
1 18-oz (or so) bottle barbecue sauce (I recommend Stubb's)
hot sauce for serving

Rub ribs with paprika, garlic powder, and chili powder. If you have time, refrigerate after rubbing for 1-3 hours. Zest oranges and lemon. Juice oranges and lemon, adding juice to the slow cooker. Crumble chipotle and add to slow cooker. Bring ribs to room temperature if you refrigerated them. Brown each half of the rack of ribs on both sides in a heavy skillet. Add first half to slow cooker, pour a little barbecue sauce on top, then add second half. Add beers, then top off with more barbecue sauce. Add about 3/4 of the bottle of barbecue sauce total. Ideally ribs will be just submerged in liquid. If you have time, cook ribs for 10-12 hours on low. This way they will be most tender. If not, cook for five hours on high. Remove ribs from liquid (discard liquid), serve with the rest of the barbecue sauce and hot sauce.

If you're preparing these overnight, refrigerate ribs submerged in the cooking liquid (in a casserole, not your slow cooker insert) during the day. Before heating, remove fat from surface. Reheat in the oven, finishing with a quick broil to crisp them up if you want.

Something Warm: Spicy Steak with Peppers

Oregon's Willamette Valley is known for mild, gray, and drizzly weather. It rains, yes, but it rarely snows. Perhaps once or twice every few years there will be a storm, sometimes with some dangerous freezing rain, but all is usually melted by noon. I didn't own a real winter jacket until I moved east in 2000.


This is my parents' patio. Don't think we'll be dining outside this visit.

Luckily, we stocked up on groceries on Saturday. The unsalted roads have been treacherous since then. So it's a homebound week for reading and drinking tea, wrapping presents, and giving Matt the opportunity to win handily at Scrabble. I'd be embarrassed at how often I lose, but he's really quite skilled at it. We've been taking long walks through the snowdrifts, monitoring the progress of each potential route out of the neighborhood. Tomorrow we hike to the store if there isn't a way to drive, though I bet we could survive another week on the contents of my parents' voluminous freezer.

We had planned some dinners out which we have had to cancel. Sad as I am to miss my glimpse of Portland's dining scene this week, my mother always has something good to cook. Like this recipe she found in the New York Times last year was a winner: thin steak rubbed in smoky paprika and cumin, grilled rare and piled with slightly caramelized onions, jalapeno, and sweet peppers. It's a bit like a spicy cheesesteak without the cheese. The perfect warm, filling bite after a long walk through the snow. Though I could also imagine whipping this one up in the summer and serving with an icy margarita, if that's your thing.


My mom served it on grilled bread as an open faced sandwich. The steaks were a bit thick, even after the butcher butterflied them, so she flipped the steak to cook the second side slightly. (The New York Times suggests cooking only one side, but they're working with a truly thin steak.)

Grilling required shoveling a path through the snow to the outdoor barbecue, which was a bit ridiculous, but you could make a credible version of this in a cast iron pan. Though you may want to disconnect your fire alarm first. If you happen to have a little cheese around, you could try turning this into a full-on Spicy Pepper Cheesesteak. I bet it would be awesome.

Happy holidays from the Wild West. I hope you are all warm and cozy wherever you are.


Spicy Steak with Wilted Peppers
Adapted from The New York Times

1 large skirt steak, about 2 pounds (we used New York Strip instead)
1 teaspoon smoked Spanish paprika
1 teaspoon ground cumin
Fine sea salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, slivered
1 medium-size red onion, sliced thin
2 jalapeño chilies, cored, seeded and slivered
3 red bell peppers, (or a mix of red, yellow, and orange if available), cored and slivered
1 tablespoon sherry vinegar
1 tablespoon slivered fresh basil leaves.

1. Use a large, sharp knife to butterfly skirt steak (or have butcher do it) and cut into 4 portions. Combine paprika, cumin, 1/2 teaspoon salt and pepper and rub onto outer side (not cut side) of steak. Place spiced-side down on a platter. Set aside.

2. Preheat grill or grill pan to very hot. Meanwhile, heat oil in a skillet. Add garlic, onion, jalapeños and a dusting of salt and sauté over medium-low heat until soft. Add bell peppers, increase heat to medium-high and sauté until bell peppers just begin to wilt but are still slightly crisp, about 5 minutes. Remove pan from heat.

3. Grill bread until just barely toasted and place on platter.

4. Place steak spiced-side down on grill or in pan and sear, close to source of heat, 2 to 3 minutes, until just starting to brown around edges but still nearly raw on top. (If your steak is not super thin, flip steak and cook one minute on other side.) Transfer to a serving platter, seared-side down. Briefly reheat peppers, add vinegar and basil, stir, then pour over steak, spreading to cover meat. Serve over toasted bread.

Yield: 4-5 servings.

Frankies Spuntino's Cavatelli with Brown Butter, Sage, and Faicco's Hot Sausage

Frank Bruni outed our favorite restaurant last week in the New York Times. It was hard enough to get into Frankies Spuntino before the article. Now, good luck!

Still, I urge you to go to the restaurant. I urge you to put your name in (they won't take reservations, and won't take your name over the phone—they have to "see the whites of your eyes," they once told us), grab a drink at the cheap bar down the block, and bide your time until you can order this pasta. Go ahead and order the antipasto plate with its delicately sliced prosciutto and lovely roasted vegetables, but don't skip this cavatelli. It's hot and spicy and rich, perfectly al dente. We devoured it (for the umpteenth time) the night we got engaged, late after calling our families to spread the news and tipsy with champagne and the sparkle of Matt's great-grandmother's ring. But it's really great on an ordinary day, too.

Today, walking around in the cold winter sun after a stop at the Strand, I steered myself westward. Faicco's pork store, where Frankies gets its sausage, is a worthy destination. Even if its 28 degrees out. Not only do they make terrific sausage, but they sell a variety of fresh and cured meats as well as imported canned goods and pasta. I picked up a braciole (pre-rolled!) for Sunday Ragu along with the craveable spicy sausage. I harvested the last of our sage, though we could have added more, since the sage loses its bitterness in the sauce and really is an essential flavor in the dish.


The elements of the recipe are simple: short, stubby cavatelli (ideally fresh, though I substituted another short dried pasta), brown butter, sage, and sausage. A little garlic. The sausage infuses the sauce with savory heat. I'll continue to tweak when I try this again, but here's the gist:


Cavatelli with Brown Butter, Sage, and Hot Sausage
Inspired by Frankies Spuntino (if only they would give me their recipe!)
Serves Two

1/2 pound cavatelli or short pasta
3 links hot sausage (I heartily recommend Faicco's if you're in New York.)
3-4 T butter
1 cup sage leaves. Don't be stingy.
3 cloves garlic, chopped
parmesan, salt, pepper for serving

Bring water to a boil. Brown sausage, whole, until mostly cooked. Remove from pan and slice into coins. Cook pasta according to package directions—do NOT over cook, pasta should be quite al dente. Meanwhile, add butter to the pan, cook over moderate heat about 5 minutes until beginning to color. I may have stopped too early, this should get quite nutty. But do not burn! Add sage leaves and garlic, cook for a minute to infuse flavors. Return sausage to pan, toss. When pasta is cooked, drain and add (along with a few tablespoons of pasta water), cook for a minute over low heat, stirring. Add salt and pepper to taste, serve with parmesan and red wine.

Maiden Voyage of the Slow Cooker: Hoisin Garlic Ribs

Picture from Crate and Barrel

My fiancé Matt is quite good with presents. When we first started dating, he gave me a weekend subscription to the New York Times, which saved me a painful pre-coffee trip to the newsstand and suggested to me that he might be interested in sticking around for a few more weekends. My parents were totally impressed (perhaps that was the real goal.)

Since I've gotten more interested (obsessed) with recipes that involve lowww and slow cooking, I may have mentioned once or twice that a slow cooker would be a worthy addition to our kitchen. Also, my friends Laura and Adam made an AMAZING brisket in their slow cooker that I just might have praised a few times. Matt knows how to take a hint, and since my birthday we've had a slow cooker on our counter just waiting to be tested.

While I love my dutch oven and will continue to use it frequently, I don't love leaving the oven on for eight or twelve hours at a time. And I don't love being stuck in the house for that time, either. I've noticed that slow-cooker recipes online are somewhat limited to Sandra Lee-style easy recipes, but I think the electric slow cooker absolutely has a place in the serious gourmet kitchen.

For her maiden voyage, I rubbed St. Louis style ribs (sawed in half by the butcher at Whole Foods) with garlic, ginger, and ground sichuan peppercorns. After a bit of marinating (but no browning), I threw them in the slow cooker with three sliced onions and about two cups of liquid (sake, beer, hoisin, sriracha, fresh orange juice, honey, soy sauce.) The ribs cooked for about 12 hours on low while I slept. It was a little weird waking up to the smell of garlicky chinese food, but amazing to literally have dinner cook on its own. No stirring, no worrying. I refrigerated the ribs in a baking pan with the liquid and skimmed the fat when I got home. After a bit of covered reheating in the oven, I brushed the ribs with a mixture of hoisin, sriracha, honey, and orange juice to sweeten them up a bit. After glazing, we crisped each side in a hotter oven for about 10 minutes.

And they were pretty incredible. The meat fell from the bones into our mouths—you couldn't really nibble. The meat was falling apart, the bones were falling apart, and the taste was rich and intense, balanced with the sweet and spicy glaze. We had planned to finish watching a movie while we ate, but these ribs were so good we couldn't concentrate on anything else. Plus, it's hard to read subtitles while you're licking your plate.

The Chosen People's Pot Roast: Gail Simmons's Mother's Horseradish Brisket

Everybody and their grandmother (particularly their Jewish grandmother) has a recipe for brisket. A rub of lipton's onion soup mix . . . a beer . . . chili sauce . . . But I'm not going to talk about my grandmother's recipe. She may have one, I should have asked her on the phone today when she called to celebrate our shared birthday (love that!) But brisket actually doesn't appear that often in my childhood memories—my father is suspicious of meat that's wet, so we didn't eat it often. I never thought much about brisket until I started dating Matt four years ago and found myself at his folks' place for holidays.

I was amazed how little rushing around the Virginia house there was before holiday meals, no matter how many friends and relatives were about to descend. Unlike the frantic last-minute kitchen craziness to which I am prone, (and may possibly have inherited from my mother, who also shares my knack for using every single dish in the kitchen to prepare and serve a meal) holiday meal preparation with Matt's mother is a calm, well organized affair. She has a system.

Under the brisket part of this system, brisket is cooked well in advance, and most likely frozen. (There is also a turkey part of the system, which I will explain at some later date.) Brisket actually improves with a little storage, as long as it is reheated with plenty of liquid. You can serve a ton of people, and you have to do that day is pop the casserole in the oven—brilliant! And Karla's recipe is truly delicious, really moist, and perfectly accented by the pile of carrots that cook with it. Her secret ingredient (I'm not actually sure how secret it is) is a can of Coke. Perfect caramel flavor without caramelizing onions forever. I think the other secret is that it cooks a LONG time. On a weekend. Far ahead of the holiday.

Of course, what fun would it be to just stick with the classics? Rebel that I am, I decided to try a new recipe. The new December issue of Food and Wine featured Gail Simmons's family method for brisket, which added a rub of prepared horseradish. (I bet it would be good with fresh horseradish too.) Since I didn't have beef stock, but did have leftover turkey broth from our Week of Sickness, I added about a quarter of a can of Coke to the broth to deepen the flavor. (It's not sweet, I promise.) I also put all the veggies in at once, because I don't mind a truly mushed potato drowning in briskety gravy. In fact, I like that sort of thing. I substituted leeks for the celery, since I hate buying a huge head of celery just for two ribs. Threw it in the oven and waited three hours while watching Gossip Girl and drinking wine with our neighbor.

The recipe instructs you to remove the lid and cook uncovered to reduce the liquid. Perhaps my dutch oven doesn't seal perfectly, but by the time this was over, there wasn't a ton of liquid left. If I were doing this again, I actually might skip this step and just continue cooking covered, since browning the finished product probably only dries it out, and the liquid was just fine without it. Brisket isn't supposed to be able to win any beauty pageants.


So, did the RADICAL addition of horseradish change things drastically? Did we even recognize that it was brisket? Was our world turned upside down?

It was brisket. Brisket is really good. Delicious and rich and soothing. You might get a touch of horseradish flavor, and you could add more to the gravy if you wanted. Otherwise, standard, in a delicious way. When I make this again, though, I might try a lower-and-slower weekend method. I don't think this was quite as fall-apart tender well-cooked as it could have been, but I still ate the leftovers at work with only a plastic fork.

Horseradish Brisket
adapted from Gail Simmons
Food and Wine

One 5 1/2-pound first-cut brisket
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
3 1/2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 medium onions, halved and thinly sliced
4 garlic cloves, minced
4 carrots, cut crosswise 1 inch thick
2 medium parsnips, halved lengthwise and cut crosswise 1-inch thick
2 celery ribs, cut into 1 inch pieces (I subbed in leeks)
1/2 cup prepared white horseradish, drained
2 cups dry red wine
2 bay leaves, preferably fresh
3 cups beef stock (I subbed in 3 cups total turkey broth and Coke (not diet))
4 medium Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces (I only used two)

1. Preheat the oven to 325°. Season the brisket generously with salt and pepper. In a very large enameled cast-iron casserole, heat 3 tablespoons of the vegetable oil. Add the brisket and cook over moderately high heat, turning, until browned all over, about 12 minutes. Using tongs, carefully transfer the brisket to a rimmed baking sheet, fat side up.
2. Pour off all but 3 tablespoons of the fat from the casserole. Add the onions and half of the garlic and cook over moderate heat until softened, about 3 minutes. Add the carrots, parsnips and celery and cook over moderate heat until browned in spots, about 6 minutes. I added potatoes at this point too.
   
3. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, combine 1/4 cup of the prepared horseradish with the remaining garlic and 1/2 tablespoon of vegetable oil. Spread the garlic-horseradish paste on the fat side of the brisket.
4. Pour the red wine into the casserole. Bring to a boil and cook over high heat, scraping up the browned bits from the bottom of the casserole, 1 minute. Push the vegetables to the side of the casserole and add the bay leaves. Set the brisket, horseradish side up, in the center of the casserole. Pour the beef stock around the brisket and bring to a simmer over moderate heat. Cover the casserole, transfer to the oven and cook for 1 hour.
5. If you didn't add potatoes at the beginning, scatter the potatoes around the brisket, cover and cook for about 2 hours longer, until the meat is very tender. Increase the oven temperature to 350°. Uncover the casserole and roast for about 30 minutes, until the brisket is browned on top and the gravy has thickened. Do not do this if the liquid is already reduced enough, just continue cooking a 325, covered.
   
6. Carefully transfer the brisket to a carving board and let rest for 30 minutes. Discard the bay leaves. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the vegetables to a serving platter and cover with foil to keep warm.
7. Pour the brisket cooking liquid into a fat separator and let stand until the fat rises to the surface. Pour the cooking liquid into a gravy boat and discard the fat. Whisk the remaining 1/4 cup of prepared horseradish into the gravy and season with salt and pepper.
8. Thinly slice the brisket across the grain and transfer to the platter with the vegetables. Spoon some of the gravy over the brisket and vegetables and serve, passing the remaining gravy at the table.

Make-Ahead: You Should Totally Do it This Way
The recipe can be prepared through Step 5 and refrigerated for up to 3 days. To reheat, skim the fat from the surface of the liquid. Slice the cold brisket, return it to the casserole and reheat gently in a 350° oven. Transfer the brisket and vegetables to a platter and serve.


Wine Suggestion:
We drank an affordable Carignan, which really brought out the herbal flavor of the horseradish. I'm not sure I'd ever seen this unblended before, but it was really tasty. Quite full-bodied for an unoaked wine.

The big reveal: Porkstravaganza!

Before I begin, let me be sure to emphasize this: pulled pork is for neither the faint of heart nor the impatient. You cannot rush it, you cannot push it, and you cannot expect it to stop and wait for you while you run around trying to get bleach out of your eye (long story). However, if you are made of the appropriately stern stuff, this melting, luscious chunk of meat is well worth the wait and the effort.



The HMS Pork Shoulder was set to sail on Sunday evening, so I started the project on Friday, stripping the skin from the 10-lb shoulder (a harrowing process i hope to repeat as little as possible) and docking it in a heavily salted and seasoned brine. I left it mostly unattended in the refrigerator for the next 24 hours, after which I drained it, patted it dry, gave it a nice massage with lots of spice rub, and put it in my preheated 225 degree oven. And there it stayed for the next 16 hours or so in the company of a shallow pan of water one rack below.

The REAL fun began about 10 hours later, though, when the sweet, spicy smell of the roasting meat began to drift lazily through the apartment, coaxing us gently into the waking world with its savory fingers.

I am hard-pressed to find another reason that I would so cheerfully wake at 6:30 on a Sunday morning.

But, wake I did, and from then on the great chunk of meat required a bit more of my attention--though I'd covered it in foil, it needed basting (with bourbon and pan drippings) every couple of hours and a near-constant monitoring of its internal temperature. When it hit 200, I turned off the oven and let the meat cool down in tandem with it. This is key--the slow cooling helps keep the moisture in.



Once it was cool enough to touch, i went after it with a pair of forks (though not before i rather stupidly tried to remove it from the roasting pan using the bone as a handle--if your pork is cooked properly, the bone will just fall right out), shredding it into a savory filigree that went gorgeously with the Cross-Bronx barbecue sauce (so named because the flavors are a riff on the famous Manhattan cocktail, made ghetto fabulous by the use of black cherry soda), sticky onion relish, and copious quantities of liquor and good company.

So what did I learn? Pulled pork is awesome. Slow and low is key. There is something viscerally delightful about being able to subdue a cut of meat using a spoon. And bourbon makes everything better.

(but I already knew that.)





PULLED PORK

1 8-10 lb, bone-in pork shoulder, skin removed

DRY RUB:
equal parts:
Onion powder
Garlic powder
Cumin
Paprika
½ part kosher salt
½ c brown sugar

BRINE:
2 quarts cold water
½ c spice rub
½ c brown sugar
½ kosher salt

36 hours before serving:

1. prepare the brine.
2. Place the pork shoulder inside a 2-gallon, zip-top bag
3. Pour the brine over the pork, ensuring that it’s completely submerged.
4. Refrigerate for at least 8 hours, ideally for up to 24.

15-24 hours before serving:

1. Preheat oven to 225 degrees Fahrenheit. Place a shallow roasting dish filled with water on the bottom rack of the oven.
2. Remove the pork from the brine and place in a roasting dish. Pat surface dry.
3. Cover entire surface with remaining spice rub mixture—really massage it in, and be sure to get it inside/under any flaps you might encounter.
4. Place in oven until the meat hits 200 degrees at the thickest part—approximately 1.5-2 hours per pound. Check on it every few hours to ensure that there is liquid in the bottom of the roasting dish; baste with this liquid (or, if you’re feeling feisty, add a little bourbon to the mix) every four hours or so. Remove the water pan from step one after it’s run dry.
5. When the meat hits the target temperature, Turn off the oven. Loosely cover the pork, and allow to rest for two hours.
6. Tear that sucker apart with forks. Serve it with the Cross-Bronx barbecue sauce.

CROSS BRONX BARBECUE SAUCE

1 c onions, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 20 oz bottle of ketchup
½ c bourbon
½ jar cherry preserves
10 oz black cherry soda
¼ c orange juice
¼ c dry vermouth
¼ c balsamic vinegar
½ c brown sugar
kosher salt
black pepper

1. In a deep saucepan, sauté the onions in a few tablespoons of olive oil or butter over medium heat, until just translucent (about 6 min).
2. Add the garlic; sauté for another minute
3. Add ketchup, bourbon, preserves, soda, juice, vermouth, vinegar and sugar. Bring to a slow boil, then reduce heat to a simmer.
4. Simmer until reduced by half, so it’s nice and thick.

As with every recipe I write, amounts are approximate—tinker and test until it tastes right and delicious to you.

Coming soon on Pithy and Cleaver: Porkstravaganza 2008

Stay tuned, folks: this weekend comes part two* of my pulled pork project, Porkstravaganza 2008. Come Sunday, I will be roasting up 8 pounds of pure porcine poetry in the pursuit of the perfect medianoche. If you have any words of wisdom, leave them in the comments. If not...well, you'll get a full report next week.

Once more unto the breach!

* I can already hear you asking what happened to part 1--suffice it to say, it predates this blog, and didn't turn out quite the way i wanted it. Delicious, yes. But nonetheless not quite what i was after.