21 January 2016

American? Southern? Mexican?

I have more snow pictures, but they all start looking alike after a while. We were busy yesterday, so I didn't take any new photos. Instead, here are some kitchen images. Can you tell what this is?


Not, it's not a cake or anything like that. It's pulled pork. I cooked it — 2.5 kilograms of sauté de porc — in the slow cooker for about six hours. I guess that would be called pork stew meat. Chunks of shoulder and rump of pork. And then I mashed it with a potato masher to turn it into "pulled" or shredded pork. De la viande de porc effilochée. Here's a whole blog post in French about pulled pork. North Carolina comes to France...


As it cooked, I seasoned the pork with hot pepper flakes, a little white wine and vinegar, liquid smoke, bay leaves, some powdered cloves, and of course salt and black pepper. Pulled pork is what is known in my native region in the U.S. as "pork barbecue" or just "barbecue" — with different sauces in the eastern and western parts of the state of North Carolina. In Eastern N.C., people cook whole hogs on a big barbecue grill until the meat is tender and succulent, and then their guests stand around the grill and pull pieces of pork off with their fingers or a couple of forks, put the meat on a plate, and sprinkle on barbecue sauce.


Above is a photo showing what it looked like when we ate some right out of the slow cooker. The first two photos show what it looked like when I pressed it into a dish to store it in the refrigerator for a day or two. The four quarters of the pressed, pulled pork weigh 400 grams each. What we ate directly out of the crock pot was probably about 400 grams too.


A couple of days after I cooked the pork I seasoned some of it with chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, some more hot pepper flakes, and a good amount of cumin, plus a little tomato paste, to make what in Mexican or Tex-Mex cooking is called carnitas. It was good in tacos with some salad, tomatoes, rice, and black beans. Actually, that's what we're having for lunch today: Mexican "lasagne", made with corn tortillas, black beans, steamed rice, pulled pork carnitas, tomatoes, and cheese. I'm already starving.

12 comments:

  1. I grew up in NC but my mom was from California. There was no pulled pork in our house. I guess you could say I was a deprived child :)

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    1. I don't know if pulled pork barbecue was big in Charlotte in the past, but I went to a good BBQ restaurant in Rock Hill when I was over there two or three years ago.

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  2. Your lunch sounds delicious!

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    1. The Mexican lasagne made with corn tortillas instead of pasta, and with black beans, tomatoes, rice, and cheese. It was really good for two meals this week.

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  3. Most definitely one of our favorite meals to eat.
    One improvement in France over NC would be better bread to eat pulled pork with?
    I do recall them serving it with some sort of Wonderbread slices back in High Point.

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    1. When you eat N.C. barbecue as a sandwich, the bread doesn't matter that much. It's just a container. But I agree that the meat is really good with French bread. Or hushpuppies — fried cornbread — as it is served in most Eastern N.C. restaurants. I know of at least one barbecue restaurant in North Carolina that served barbecue as a sandwich on corn bread.

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  4. Delicious!I like reading the things you put in. I was taught to boil a piece of pork shoulder for about an hour, then flake it and pour my favorite barbecue sauce from a bottle over it. It's good, but definitely not in your league.

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    1. I don't boil the pork, but braise it in a small amount of liquid, which is not water but vinegar and wine. Maybe that's a fine distinction. Eastern N.C. barbecue has a hot-pepper vinegar sauce on it -- no tomato or ketchup. Western N.C. barbecue has a tomato-vinegar sauce, and isn't nearly as spicy. I come from the eastern part of the state, but I like both styles of barbecue.

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  5. Dang, that looks good!

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  6. The pork here in France is really good and lean. It's also not expensive. The pork I used for this batch of pulled meat was almost too lean.

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