Category: Pork

Pork Recipes

Sausage and Cod Stew with Garbanzos

People who love to drink while cooking will tell you to cook with the wine you’re drinking. I don’t have a problem with that idea except that I’m usually drinking a really good and expensive bottle to be cooking it. There isn’t a dish good enough that deserves cooked Barolo wine, or in this case, I was drinking a Vouvray. Save the nice wine for you and your loved one and pick up a less expensive white for this.

This sausage and cod stew, I think, is Spanish-inspired even though I still ended up using a different white wine from the Loire Valley. I wanted something hearty but not as thick as a winter dish. I initially planned to do some kind of meatball stew, but the fresh sausages in the supermarket were hard to resist. And when I saw how good the cod steak looked too… well, then.

The chiles here are optional. I used two of the dried Sichuan peppers I brought back from Bhutan, but I gather you can use almost any red chile. It’s really just for a quick kick. It won’t ruin the dish if you decide to skip it. I also used a steak of cod rather than a fillet; that way, it will hold up during cooking and for storing after.

Ingredients:
oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 dried red chiles
a handful of fresh basil
3 fresh sausages, sliced in 1-inch pieces
1/2 bottle white wine
4 red potatoes, quartered
1 can of plum tomatoes
1 can of chickpeas, washed, drained
salt and pepper
a handful of green beans, stringed, halved
1 steak of cod, sliced
a handful of parsley, roughly chopped

1. Heat some oil in a large Dutch oven over medium heat and sauté the garlic, chiles and basil. Add the sausages and cook until browned.
2. Pour in the white wine and add the potatoes, tomatoes and chickpeas. Season well with salt and pepper and simmer for 20 minutes, until the potatoes are tender and while stirring every couple of minutes.
3. After the soup has simmered, it should have thickened a little, so stir in about 1/2 cup of hot water. Add the green beans and bring everything to a boil to cook the beans. Add the fish and parsley and cook for another 5 minutes. Turn off the heat and let sit, uncovered.

Pork Pozole

To the people of Mesoamerica, corn was a very sacred plant and this pre-Columbian Mexican soup was only consumed during special occasions. Ancient Mexicans believed that the combination of corn and meat was a religious communion of their sacred plant and humans: prisoners were killed in religious sacrifices and served as meat for the whole community. Today, we thankfully settle for pork.

To become hominy, corn kernels are dried and soaked in an alkaline solution and goes through several chemical changes that turns them into nixtamal. (The ground version is made into dough for tortillas, tamales and arepas.) The word hominy is just a Powhatan word for maize.

I love this soup for its heartiness, and yet its lime-cilantro-flavored broth is thin enough to be considered light. Feel free to skip the potatoes here if you want the hominy to be the star of the show.

Ingredients:
2 pounds pork butt, cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes
1 head of garlic, halved
1 onion, quartered
a few pieces of small potatoes, rinsed thoroughly
1 28-ounce cans hominy, drained and rinsed
2 tbsps dried oregano
cayenne pepper
salt, pepper
a few handfuls of cilantro, chopped
lime wedges

1. In a large soup pot, bring the pork, garlic, onion and about 8 cups of water to a boil. Skim off the impurities that float to the top. Lower the fire down to a simmer. Cover and cook until the pork is very tender, about 2 hours.
2. Discard the garlic and onion. Stir in the potatoes, hominy, oregano and cayenne and season the broth with salt and pepper. Bring to a simmer and cook until potatoes are tender.
3. Turn off the heat and stir in some of the cilantro. Serve and ladle the pozole into bowls with the remaining cilantro and lime wedges at the table.

Thit Heo Nuong, Vietnamese Pork Chops

Vietnamese grilled pork, or thit heo nuong (insert Vietnamese characters in there), remains to be one of my favorite Vietnamese dishes. I still remember when my parents and I would eat in Chinatown’s Nha Trang restaurant every week. The dish did not cost much and it always came with a lot of rice; to my family, there was no better deal than that. Even my brother, who now lives in Singapore, makes sure that Nha Trang is still one of his stops when he visits us here in the States.

Even though I work a few minutes’ walk from Chinatown these days, I find myself too lazy to shop and eat there unless a specific craving knocks on the door. I recently saw some beautiful pork chops at Fairway supermarket in Harlem and thought about this dish as soon as I picked up one stalk of lemongrass from their produce section. Say what you will about being uptown, but I’m grateful I can find fresh lemongrass when I need it.

Lucky you if you have access to an open grill. I used my frying pan here but also my iron grill press to flatten the meat and cook them faster on each side. The caramelized marinade on the pan is great as dressing if you have a bunch of mixed greens to serve as a side–just wipe the bottom of the pan with the leaves!

Ingredients:
1 stalk lemongrass, chopped in 3 pieces
4 cloves of garlic, minced
3 tbsps honey
2 tbsps fish sauce
4 pieces bone-in pork chops
juice from 1 lime
pepper
oil

For the dipping sauce:
fish sauce
white vinegar
1 small knob of carrot, finely grated

1. Whisk lemongrass, garlic, honey and nam pla in large bowl. Add lime juice and pepper. Place pork in the bowl and turn to coat. Let stand and marinate, or refrigerate for up to 24 hours.
2. When ready to cook, heat a frying pan with some oil. Add marinated pork chops and fry, turning over to cook the other side every 3 minutes to avoid burning the marinade. Use an iron grill press if handy to cook the meat faster. Remove to a chopping block and let rest.
3. Make the dipping sauce. Combine a few jiggers of fish sauce and vinegar in a small bowl. Add the carrots and mix well. Serve with the pork and some white rice.

Kimchi Chigae, Korean Soup with Pork Tenderloin and Tofu

Chigae, or more appropriately jjigae, is a Korean stew made of a variety of vegetables and meat cooked in a broth seasoned with kochujang, or red chili paste. It’s more of a soup to me, really, but I’m not about to correct whatever the Koreans say.

Recipes online ask for pork tenderloin, but I find that a waste of perfectly good meat when all you’re doing to it is cooking it for hours. I think pork shoulder is more economical here so long as you have that big hunk of meat cut up in manageable pieces.

Ingredients:
1/2 pork tenderloin, sliced crosswise into 1/4-inch thick pieces
salt
pepper
sesame oil
scallions, chopped, whites and greens separated
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 tbsps kochujang
chili powder
1/2 lb extra firm tofu, sliced into 1/2-inch cubes
2 cups cabbage-based kimchi, with liquid
1 tbsp rice vinegar
1 tbsp soy sauce
steamed white rice

1. Season the pork with salt and the pepper and set aside. In a large pot set over medium-high heat, add the sesame oil. Once it starts to get hot, add the pork. Cook until the pork is browned on all sides. Transfer to a plate and set aside.
2. In the same pot, add the sliced scallion whites and cook until soft. Stir in the garlic until browned and then stir in the kochujang. Add the kimchi, rice vinegar, soy sauce and enough water to make sure everything is half submerged. Season with salt and bring to a simmer for about 20 minutes.
3. Add the tofu and return the pork to the pot along with any accumulated juices and simmer for 3 more minutes just to cook the tofu and reheat the pork. Serve the soup in bowls sprinkled with the sliced green scallions and steamed white rice.

Orecchiette with Shredded Pork and Greens

This isn’t a recipe for a new dish as much as it is a recipe for leftovers. I had made the Japanese buta no kakuni, or pork belly, two weekends ago and still had leftovers that kept pretty well in the fridge. When it came time for a home-cooked meal this week, I scooped some of the meat up together with the already-coagulated soy-flavored liquid and heated it in a wok before tossing in with some pasta and kailan, or Chinese broccoli. Almost any greens will do, but I prefer the sturdy bitter type. You can substitute shorter penne for the orecchiette, too, if that’s what you have in your pantry.

The sweet soy liquid that cooked down added to the sweetness of the meat and I didn’t have to season it with salt and pepper. Sometimes, the work you put ahead of time pays off much later–and in multiple meals. It’s like orecchiette with sausage and broccoli florets, only by your Asian grandmother.

Ingredients:
4 handfuls of orecchiette pasta
cooked pork belly (see recipe for buta no kakuni below)
a handful of kailan, throughly washed, chopped
red chile flakes

1. Bring a large pot of salty water to boil and cook the pasta until al dente, or about 20 minutes. Drain while reserving some of the pasta cooking water for later.
2. Heat a skillet and reheat the cooked pork belly. Prod the meat gently with a wooden spoon to shred it. Toss in greens and season with red chile flakes. Turn off the heat and add the pasta until well-combined.