A Thang for Black Gravy

I guess I didn't realize it, but Tom Perini has definitely gone viral. I was so impressed last week when Paula Deen on TV picked him as the king of Texas brisket barbecue, and when he gave her a sample, she kissed him FULL ON THE LIPS.

Then, today, I became aware of the new issue of Saveur magazine ("Savor a World of Authentic Cuisine"), with its cover story, "Twenty-Four Reasons Why We Love Texas."
No. 5: Tom Perini. If you missed my groveling blog about Tom last week, he and I grew up together (I was a year older) in Abilene, Texas, so I can truly say, "I knew him when."

A newer acquaintance, via the blogosphere, is Lisa Fain, a Texas native living in New York City, who does the "Homesick Texan" food blog. She has an essay in the new Saveur, which is how I came to know about the magazine in the first place. She also has at her site a recipe for carnitas, which I tried Sunday, which was the original starting place for this blog, until I looked at Saveur online and saw Tom Perini at No. 5 statewide.

The carnitas came out very nicely and there turned out to be a bonus. The recipe says to let the carnitas brown in its own fat, which has rendered out earlier in the recipe, and to stir the meat frequently so it doesn't stick to the pot. I didn't stir it regularly enough, and then I forgot to stir it at all, so when I came back, the pork was fine, but in the bottom of the pot was a dark layer that the chemists would call a tight lattice of fat, blood and sugar molecules forged by heat into an impenetrable mass.

And so a circle closed. When I was growing up, in Abilene, Texas, alongside Tom Perini, who at the time appeared deceptively ordinary, my grandmother Susie knew two ways to cook meat: well-done and weller-done. I loved the black objects she brought to the table, whether it was meatloaf, pork chops, or pot roast. They may have been chewier than most, but they also provided a unique intensity of meat flavor that I have never forgotten.

So I looked at the mahogany slag in the bottom of my pot after dinner on Sunday and saw opportunity. I turned the heat to medium-low and poured in a cup of water with a couple tablespoons of vinegar, and I let the liquid get steamy, and then I started to scratch at the slag with a spatula, gently scratching and probing, like an archaeologist. My goal was the black gravy that I remember gathered beneath Susie's roasts. It took about 15 minutes, but then I was able to pour a couple of cups of black gravy into a plastic container with the leftover carnitas.

All day yesterday, I was looking forward to dinner. I knew from experience that there was only one satisfactory accompaniment for the black gravy, and that was another Susie specialty, corn bread thangs. The thangs would be a bit of trouble, and hideously caloric, and during the afternoon I considered rice, or potatoes, or white bread, but I knew all the while what the deal was. I put the carnitas and black gravy in a saucepan to warm up, and I made a couple of big thangs, which are only cornmeal, salt and pepper, bound into patties with hot water and fried golden-crispy in oil. A good thang is crispy on the outside, steamy on the inside, and remarkably dense. If you let a corn bread thang get cold, you can drive nails with it. It was this density that the gravy's own flavor density required.

Karen walked past, pinched off a bite of warm, gravy-painted pork from the saucepan, ate it, and exclaimed in a rapturous tone how good it was, and I smiled at this latest evidence that I had married the right woman. But she only wanted a bite. I poured the gravy over the thangs, with some beans and the carnitas on the side. It wasn't a plate you would see a picture of in Saveur, but it sure was good, and totally Texan.