Category: Uncategorized

Mediterranean Pork Pot Roast

I like pot roasts for a number of reasons. First, everything cooks in one pot, so cleanup is easier. Second, cooking a roast on top of the range doesn’t heat up the house as much as roasting it in the oven, which is very important in the summer if you live in a house without central air conditioning. Third, braising the meat with liquid over gentle heat will guarantee a moist and tender roast. Fourth, the liquid you choose can add more complexity to the flavor than even the best rub. Fifth, I love the aroma of a pot roast simmering on the stove. And sixth, it reminds me of the many pot roasts my mother fed us when I was growing up.

Maybe I should reverse the order of the reasons, but I have friends whose mother’s never welcomed their sons or daughters home from school into a kitchen perfumed by a good pot roast cooking for supper. Some of them never even had freshly baked cookies or bread warm from the oven with butter and homemade jams and jellies. I was lucky in that way.

My mother made pot roasts with beef, pork, venison and even once with meat from a bear we had bagged, which was one of her few disasters. Here is a reference describing some problems we had in trying to cook bear meat. I don’t think that my mother ever wrote down recipes for different kinds of pot roasts, and by the time I was born, she had already been cooking them so long that I doubt she ever looked in a cookbook for a pot roast recipe. She did occasionally try one from Woman’s Day or another magazine or newspaper, but usually she trusted her instincts, which were pretty good.

I doubt that she ever consciously used the combination of spices known as Herbes de Provence in anything, but her spice cabinet had most of the herbs used in this famous blend. The herbs vary somewhat from blend to blend, but they all are from plants that grow well in the mild Mediterranean climate of the region.

The herbs, wine and vegetables work together to make this a delicious one-dish meal.

INGREDIENTS:

1 tsp. olive oil
3 – 4 lb. pork shoulder roast
1 medium onion
3 cloves garlic
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 chicken bouillon cube
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. rosemary
1/4 tsp. thyme
1/4 tsp. oregano
1/4 tsp. marjoram
1/4 tsp. summer savory
1/8 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
3 – 4 potatoes
4 – 5 carrots
Extra dash of salt
2 T corn starch dissolved in a quarter cup of cold water
1/4 – 1/2 tsp. brown gravy sauce (optional)

PROCEDURE:

Clean and chop the onion into a quarter-inch dice and set it aside in a small bowl. Remove the paper and stem ends from the garlic cloves and mince them. Add the garlic to the onion. Trim any excess fat from the meat.

Put a large skillet or Dutch oven over moderate heat and film the bottom with a little olive oil. Brown the meat on all sides. Put the water, wine and bouillon cube into the pan. Arrange the onion, garlic and bay leaf on and around the meat, then sprinkle the salt and spices evenly over the meat and vegetables.

Cover the pan and bring it to a simmer. Cook the roast for one and a half hours. Check every twenty minutes or so to make sure that the roast is still surrounded by liquid. If necessary, add equal amounts of water and wine.

Clean the potatoes and carrots while the roast is cooking. I chop the carrots into two-inch pieces and slice the larger carrots in half lengthwise. Chop the potatoes into halves or quarters, depending on the size.

Arrange the potatoes and carrots around the meat and sprinkle the vegetables with a little salt. Cover and cook for half an hour, then check the vegetables for doneness with a fork. Feel free to cook them a little longer if they still feel hard when you pierce them.

Remove the meat, potatoes and carrots from the pan and take the pan from the heat while you dissolve the corn starch in cold water. If necessary, add enough water and wine to make two cups of liquid. Stir the corn starch mixture into the roasting liquid and return the pan to the heat to make the gravy. Stir constantly until the gravy is clear and thickened. Add a few drops of brown gravy sauce if you want more color.

Taste and adjust the seasoning.

Summer Cooler

You don’t know how good buttermilk tastes until you have climbed a mile up a mountainside on a hot day. Despite our lack of hiking shoes, a friend and I had decided to see what Bad Reichenhall, Germany, looked like from Austria. It was 1965 and we were studying conversational German in that small German city. We crossed a footbridge over the creek that marked the border and started up the mountain.

It was an easy walk through open space on the edge of town. There were no signs, fences or guards, but once we had walked over the footbridge, we felt like world travelers. To be honest, Austria was pretty much like Germany, but it was the fourth country I had set foot in, the first three being the USA, Canada and Germany.

While there were no guards, there was someone watching us from a spot several hundred feet above us near a small building in the pasture. We began wondering if it was really wise to walk in someone else’s pasture without permission and briefly considered making a run for it back to the safety of the city. But we were young and confident that we could talk our way through any problem.

Though we were perhaps a bit too confident in our conversational German, we did manage to explain to the old lady overseeing her cows that we were American students at the Goethe Institute who just wanted to enjoy the view of the city from her beautiful pasture. She smiled and told us that we were welcome.

She could see that we were hot and thirsty and asked us if we would like “ein Becher Buttermilch” (a cup of buttermilk). We both said we would. She stood up from the bench she was sitting on, wiped her hands on her apron and went into the shed which we recognized as a spring house. A minute later she came out with two stoneware mugs that must have held a pint each.

How generous of her, we thought, until she said, “Funfzig Pfennig jedes” (fifty cents each). We would have paid more. The buttermilk was cold and delicious, with little bits of butter floating in it. It was so good, in fact, that we made the climb twice more over the next month and had a chance to learn a little about her. Among other things, we learned that she sold her buttermilk to lots of hikers and her butter to a shopkeeper in Salzburg.

Today much of the pasture is covered with a housing development, and hikers who want a glass of buttermilk need to find a different lady on a mountainside.

There are, of course, a few people who say that they don’t like buttermilk. Here is a way to overcome that prejudice. A student from Texas introduced Jerri to this recipe when she was a house fellow in Slichter Hall at the University of Wisconsin. It sounds odd, but it is delicious and refreshing. Here’s what you do.

INGREDIENTS:

Buttermilk
Sherbet

PROCEDURE:

Put two scoops of sherbet in a tall glass. Add ice cold buttermilk. Stir gently with an iced tea spoon. Enjoy like a root beer float with less sugar.

NOTES: Orange and raspberry sherbets are our favorites, but you can use any flavor you like. As an option, serve a scoop of sherbet covered with three or four tablespoons of buttermilk for a light dessert.