Top | While my sautoir gently sweats — Blog
(post, John Dryzga)
My Sundays usally follow the same script, a visit to Mom and a shopping trip to Whole Foods and/or Trader Joes. These shopping trips usually take the form of a meander though the aisles looking for anything that catches my eye as opposed to stocking up on the staples. My path took me past the meat case where a pork butt caught my eye. Not being able to resist it's siren squeal, a two pound hunk of porcine goodness found its way into my market basket. When I returned home from work on Tuesday, I started pre-heating the oven even before I removed my coat so that we could enjoy the pork as dinner and not a midnight snack. Having had success with Sara Moulton's recipe for a whole pork shoulder, I prepared my much smaller cut along the same lines. Soon, the condo was filled with the delightful scent of pork, onions and apples. The dimunitive pork butt was cooked to falling apart perfection in about two hours. A quick reduction of the cooking liquids produced a sauce that would have rendered shoes, cardboard, and old socks toothsome. The succulent meat napped with the sauce created a dish that was not long for the plate. The whole butt gone all too soon. Only a CSI level inspection of the plates would have revealed any food residue as they were bascially licked clean. I am a fan of just about any braised dish, but man oh man, this one is just a huge winner.