Monday, May 31, 2010

Pork and Shilling

I did a little cooking this weekend...
We had the TWWKMTs brother and sister-in-law in from Greenville SC in for the holiday.
They came down  for a little R&R- beach time and hanging out at the Estrogen Palace.

During the week I came across a recipe at Homesick Texan for a new dry rub for pulled pork...

(Photo - Lisa at Homesick Texan)
(Homesick Texan is a blog I read with great delight...
Lisa's writing brings a special authenticity to her  recipe posts... If you have any affection for Texas cuisine, you should keep HST on your blogroll or RSS feed.)
She has a recipe for a Coffee-Chipotle rub that sounded great, so I picked up 2 pork shoulders at Costco and whipped together the rub and let one of the shoulders steep in it overnight.

I threw it into the oven at 250 at 8:30 Saturday morning... it hit 190 degrees at 5:30 that prevening...
I gave it 40 minutes to rest, then shredded it up with 2 forks. It just fell apart.
It was awesome... We fell upon it with the gusto of hound dogs. Not a shred leftover for the Perfect Child.
She chose to spend the evening with The Boyfriend... Her loss. (Or maybe not. Time will tell.)
Fortunately for her, I have a second shoulder absorbing the rub as we speak... I'll throw it in the oven on Tuesday morning- it'll be done about the time I get home from work and hopefully the PC will deign to grace us with her presence and get to enjoy some java-pepper-pork this time...

TWWKMT is cooking ribs this afternoon- she asked for a little help in preparing the slabs before seasoning and cooking... She wanted to trim them and cut them into 2 or 3 rib sections.

A few months back I got hit up by Bingles - (Jingles boy) about a Cutco dog-and-pony show.
Cutco employs young people to sell knives to friends and family- they teach them to sell, how to properly demonstrate the features for the knives, etc...
I really didn't have the need for yet another blade... I have several reallyreallyreally nice blades I have picked up over the years including a yanagi ba sushi knife and a santoku I got in Tsukiji several years ago...

(I didn't take out a second mortgage on the house to get them, but TWWKMT was very displeased when she saw how much I spent on two toadstickers.) They pretty much fill all my needs.  But- back to the story...
Never let it be said that I don't do my part to help the Youth of Today.
We got a 4.5" trimmer and another santoku... When we got them, I checked them out- they were pretty nice. But since I now have 3 santokus (my good one, my daily use one and now the Cutco) we put these knives away.
Which brings us to today- My everyday use santoku is in my portable cooking kit, which is buried away with my camping stuff. My Japanese one is in The Vault and a pain in the ass to get to on a whim.
So, to trim up the ribs I grabbed the Cutco blade and went to town.



Wow.

I hadn't really put the Cutco through it's paces, but in trimming the slabs of ribs and rendering them into 2 or 3 rib chunks, the Cutco really did a great job... It sliced through the rib cartilage like butter...
It cost almost as much as my Japanese blade and is almost as good, and doesn't take a 15 hour plane ride to pick one up...

If anyone tries to set you up for a Cutco demo,  take a listen... the blades are really pretty good.

And the coffee-chipotle pork rub?

It's a winner.


TBG- ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒE

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