From the Cafes of Rome

According to my research, the original dish that came to be named fettucini Alfredo was called fettuccine al burro and consisted of fettucini tossed with butter and cheese and then a second helping of butter. Roman restaurateur Alfredo di Lelio who tripled the butter to great fame – when was more butter ever a bad thing? Today the dish usually involves less butter and some heavy cream – which is a bit healthier and results in sauce that has a more appealing mouth feel.

Recipe here…

Recipe here…

Take it Easy

There’s something odd about buying meat off the back of a truck in vacant supermarket parking lot. The setting makes me feel as though I’m engaged in something unsavory — like buying porn — nevertheless, I do it on most Fridays. West Wind Farms, which is located up on the Cumberland Plateau, makes three regular stops in Knoxville, including the grocery store, on Fridays to sell chicken, beef, pork, and turkey as well as a collection of specialty products they make such as summer sausage, corned beef, and salami.

The couple who own West Wind are nice folks and if I remember correctly they’re both environmental scientists by training who decided to get into organic ranching. At any rate, on this day I’d been planning on getting a pork butt to make a pork daube. They didn’t have a shoulder but they did have a pork sirloin roast.

This is a cut from the opposite end of the pig and is also largely opposite in character. Where the butt has multiple muscles running in different directions with layers of fat separating the muscles, the sirloin is only two primary muscles with relatively little internal fat. The character they have in common is that both cuts tend to be tough which means they’re best cooked low and slow. But because of the lack of fat and connective tissue (both of which melt and produce a tender pork butt when braised or barbequed) the sirloin has a tendency to dry out. So I decided to roast it at 225F — very low and slow.

My thinking was this approach would minimize the contraction of the muscle fibers and so avoid toughening the meat and driving the juices out. I was right. I pulled the roast from the oven at 145F and after resting for 15 minutes slicing into it did no more than moisten the cutting board — the juices were all still inside and the roast was a perfect medium from about 1/4 of a inch inside to the center. And although not as tender as a loin roast, it certainly wasn’t tough.

Sirloin Pork Roast

3 lb. pork roast
3 lg. garlic clove &ndash smashed
Salt and pepper
Ground dried rosemary
1 small onion – diced
1 carrot – diced
1 stalk celery – diced
2 Tbsp. olive oil, separated
2 Tbsp. fresh thyme leaves
~3/4 cup red wine, separated

Heat oven to 225F.

Rub pork with one of the smashed garlic cloves. Sprinkle lightly on all sides with ground rosemary then season generously with salt and pepper.

Heat 1 1/2 tablespoons of oil in a large, oven-poof skillet over medium-high heat. Brown roast on all sides then transfer to a plate.

Add onions, carrot, and celery to skillet along with additional oil if needed and cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables begin to brown. Add garlic and thyme and cook a minute longer. Deglaze skillet with 1/2 cup of wine.

Place roast on top of vegetables and place skillet in center of oven. Cook until an instant read thermometer show the internal temperature reaches 145F (about 2 hours). Remove from oven from tent roast with foil.

Transfer 1 1/2 cups of vegetables from the skillet to a sauce pan and add enough additional wine to completely cover. Bring to a soft boil and cook about 15 minutes. Puree vegetable mixture in a blender or food processor. Taste and adjust seasonings. Serve over sliced pork.

Recipe here…

Hole in the Bone

In the past three years I’ve seen veal shanks at the supermarket exactly once, last week. So of course I had to buy them.

It’s been at least 20 years since I last made or had osso bucco, literally “hole bone.” The name refers to the circlet of bone in the center of each section of cross-cut shank. After cooking, the marrow in the center of the bone falls out or is scooped out leaving a circlet of bone — a bone with a hole.

Historically the dish is from Milan and was veal braised with white wine, cinnamon, allspice, and bay (called in bianco) then served on rissotto alla Milanese and garnished with gremolata (a mixture of parsley, lemon zest, and garlic). These days the recipes are often less traditional. The “sweet” spices are skipped and tomato is added in some form. This modern version, which includes tomatoes from the New World, is most often served on polenta, made of corn from the New World.

I decided to go a step further and rather than using polenta, I made grits that I flavored with Parmegiano and Fontanella cheese and freshly ground black pepper. This is a wonderful meal on a cold rainy night.
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