The joy of cooking

If I had a Food Network show, it would be called either “The Lazy Chef” or “The Industrious Chef.” I know those two adjectives seem at odds with one another, but that’s because my cooking is usually at one end or the other of the spectrum—quick & easy or full steam ahead.

I have a bad habit of waiting until I’m hungry to start thinking about what to cook, which means that I end up making whatever is quickest or easiest. That is the realm of The Lazy Chef. To try to counter my Lazy Chef, I often cook multiple servings of one dish on the weekend so I have something healthy and satisfying—but also quick and easy—to reheat during the week. This is where The Industrious Chef enters the picture. Between being a picky eater and a Lazy Chef, I have an aversion to cooking from recipes (at least to using them as written); most of what I cook is either a dish I made up, recreated from a dish I ate in a restaurant or morphed from one or several recipes.

My latest experiment was to recreate my favorite dish at a local Mexican restaurant which they call spicy pulled pork tacos. The pork is shredded, tender and succulent, and spicy without being obnoxious. I’ve had a similar dish at other restaurants where it was called pork carnitas, but I found out that classic pork carnitas are fried in lard and are crispy whereas the pork in the dish I wanted to recreate was slow-roasted and juicy.

After perusing a half dozen or so recipes on the web and choosing ingredients or cooking methods from them that fit my purpose, I created a spice rub of chili powder, cumin, oregano, cinnamon, black pepper, two varieties of Mrs. Dash and a tiny dash of season salt (being hypertensive, I have to watch my salt intake--my preference would be to have added more salt for flavor).

I’d found boneless country style pork ribs on sale, so I used those in case the experiment was a bust. After rubbing the pork with the spice rub, I put it in a heavy, covered roasting pan with about 2/3 bottle of amber beer, a splash of Worchestershire sauce, 2 roasted, peeled and chopped Anaheim peppers and 2 bay leaves. I roasted the pork “low and slow” on 250 for 2 hours. I then pulled some of the pork apart to see if it was cooked through and at the level of tenderness that I desired. It was cooked through, but not as tender as I wanted, so I lowered the heat to 200 and put it back in--about another hour, I think.

The aroma that issued forth from my kitchen was incredible and the depth of flavor was definitely pleasing to the palate. It wasn’t a perfect recreation of the dish I’d had in restaurants, but it was delicious. I pulled the pork apart and let it sit in the cooking liquid (but out of the oven) a while longer so more of the meat surface got flavored. I made some brown rice, threw in some rinsed pinto beans, and used the pork cooking liquid to flavor the beans. I wrapped some of the shredded pork in a tortilla with salsa, served it with the rice and beans, and I was in heaven.

While my pork definitely had a spicy undercurrent, it wasn’t as bold as the dish I was trying to recreate. After having the pulled pork with salsa, I decided that, when I make this again, I will add ½ a jar of salsa to the pan liquids that the pork slow cooks in and reduce the beer by half.

That is an experiment for another day. Right now, the Lazy Chef needs to heat up some spicy pulled pork with rice and beans for her dinner! :)