Slow, slow, quick quick slow
May. 13th, 2013 12:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceI do lovety-love the application of unhurried time to food. Which is not to say that I do not also love its opposite, the fire and flash of swift cooking, but there is something about a dish that takes all day, the way it saturates the house with its odours and the back of my mind with its presence, so that I know I'm cooking even while I'm cycling to the library or reading through my proofs or drinking a cold beer in the garden while I wait for m'wife to come home.
Like today, f'rexample. The yogis will be coming for dinner; and it's just barely past noon now, and the bulk of the cooking is done already. That's the other thing about long slow cooking, it tends to be very low-pressure: you've got all the time in the world to get it started and to get it right.
So I made chicken stock in the slow cooker overnight, and this morning I went to Lucky's first thing and bought a bone-in shoulder of pork. (They call it a picnic roast here, though I am not entirely clear why: "Pork shoulder picnic or shoulder arm picnic are labels defined by the government," says the internet, which is not entirely helpful.) By ten o'clock the rind had been diamond-cut [side-note: when you have to keep reminding yourself to go lightly, to glide the blade rather than slash, to let the rind open beneath the edge rather than cutting through to the meat? It is probable that your knife is adequately sharp. *smugs*] and the face of the meat rubbed with a garlic-and-herb paste; by ten-thirty it was in the oven, on a rack over stock and vegetables and port. Where it will stay until half-eight tonight. And there will be carrots, and a fava-bean salad, and I haven't decided what else (potatoes? bread? something, for those of us who don't feel we've eaten unless we've eaten carbs), but none of it is going to be in any hurry at all.
Like today, f'rexample. The yogis will be coming for dinner; and it's just barely past noon now, and the bulk of the cooking is done already. That's the other thing about long slow cooking, it tends to be very low-pressure: you've got all the time in the world to get it started and to get it right.
So I made chicken stock in the slow cooker overnight, and this morning I went to Lucky's first thing and bought a bone-in shoulder of pork. (They call it a picnic roast here, though I am not entirely clear why: "Pork shoulder picnic or shoulder arm picnic are labels defined by the government," says the internet, which is not entirely helpful.) By ten o'clock the rind had been diamond-cut [side-note: when you have to keep reminding yourself to go lightly, to glide the blade rather than slash, to let the rind open beneath the edge rather than cutting through to the meat? It is probable that your knife is adequately sharp. *smugs*] and the face of the meat rubbed with a garlic-and-herb paste; by ten-thirty it was in the oven, on a rack over stock and vegetables and port. Where it will stay until half-eight tonight. And there will be carrots, and a fava-bean salad, and I haven't decided what else (potatoes? bread? something, for those of us who don't feel we've eaten unless we've eaten carbs), but none of it is going to be in any hurry at all.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-13 09:50 pm (UTC)