I had a finger and spoon lunch yesterday that I immediately ranked in the Stretch Cooking Top 10 for bang for the buck, measured by the value of the experience against the cost of the preparation.
It was a chunk of leftover barbecued pork shoulder (the finger food) and a bowl of leftover greens (mustard, turnip, spinach, collards) with bacon and turnips (the spoon part). I heated both in a toaster oven at 325 for 20 minutes. The pork was pure carnivore candy. I broke it apart with my fingers and consumed it deliberately, one caramelized, tender, redolent, morsel at a time, a few of them with crispy bits of fat attached. The greens were perfectly cooked to death, Texas style, with a bacon spike, sweet bites of turnip, and peppery pot liquor, and a flavor depth that only four days of refrigerator time could provide. I used a couple of warm, tightly rolled flour tortillas to mop things up.
This pork was the very last chunk of a 12-pound package of boneless pork shoulder I bought at CostCo in May for $17.46. I made "Braised Pork Carnitas" with the first six pounds, for a dinner party. The next three pounds were an experiment, based on a recipe from the "Homesick Texan" blog of Lisa Fain, who has figured out a way to make genuine carnitas at home by letting them render their own fat, and then fry in it.
Last Saturday, I thawed the last three pounds and barbecued them the same way I barbecue ribs. Stack a fire of thirty mesquite charcoal briquets and a handful of hardwood mesquite charcoal, on one side of the Weber kettle. A drip pan on the other side of the grate, just to keep fat out of the kettle bowl. Season three one-pound chunks of pork shoulder with salt and pepper and place them on the grill over the drip pan. Place the lid on the kettle so the vent is over the meat. Every 45 minutes, flip the meat over and place the opposite side toward the fire, and add six or seven briquets. They will be done in 3 ½ hours. Don't bother with sauce; you can't catch enough drippings for the job, and the pork doesn't need it anyway.
You can use a rub on these, but I prefer just salt and pepper. The fattiness in the pork shoulder bastes the meat as it smokes, leaving a signature flavor that you really shouldn't mess with.
I got the mixed greens in a huge bag at Trader Joe's, plus three turnips from the supermarket. Trim and dice the turnips and cook in water just to cover until they are tender. Dice six slices of bacon and place in a large (8-quart) pot with water to cover and place over high heat until the water boils off and the bacon starts to fry. Add one medium chopped onion, cook over high until tender and a brown glaze is forming on the bottom of the pan. Add the turnips and their cooking water and use a spatula to scrap the glaze off the bottom. Turn heat to low, heap the greens into the pot, cover, and let simmer for an hour or more. After 30 minutes, when the greens have shrunk, stir the bacon, onion and turnips into them.
The turnips act like a sweetener. For the longest time, I tried to cook greens like my grandmother Susie used to, and they came out way sharper than I remembered, even bitter. Finally I figured out adding turnips to the greens, and that did the trick. The greens still have a strong flavor, but the turnips cut the sharpness. I think Susie mashed the turnips into the greens, which is why I didn't remember them.
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