This chop was every bit as juicy as it deserved to be, as juicy as it looks here.  I haven’t always been able to accomplish that feat, and never before without immersing chops in a pot of cooked cabbage of some sort along with its liquid.

Smoked pork chops and roasted asparagus [Grüner gebratener Spargel mit Kassler]:  I can’t speak highly enough of this combination, even in concept alone, and this time the execution (by the way, it’s very, very simple meal) was a total success.  Of course, as usual, everything came from the stalls of local fishers and farmers at the Union Square Greenmarket;  everything, that is, except for the olive oil, the salt, pepper, the wine, and the music.

Just as fortunate, it was served on a perfect cool spring evening.

Asparagus time in the US still means only green asparagus time, but I’m not complaining when the vegetable is as good as this one.  As for the smoked pork chops, my local source may be the best of them all.  Thanks John.

• in an oval, low-sided enameled cast iron pan, some butter heated and whole ramp bulbs from Berried Treasures swirled around in it, two smoked loin pork chops from Millport Dairy added, covered with tin foil and kept above a very low flame (just enough to warm them through, as they were already fully-cooked), turning the meat once, then, near the end of their time in the pan, the ramp leaves set aside earlier, now sliced along their length, added, the pork removed, plated, brushed with horseradish jelly from Berkshire Berries, then both the cooked and wilted ramp elements
• large spears of asparagus,  from Stokes Farm, dotted with butter, from Millport Dairy, salted, roasted at 450º for 15 to 20 mins, rolled twice, freshly-mortared black pepper added at the end
• the wine was a simple Austrian white,  GV Grüner Veltliner 2013
• the music was Locatelli

This was a very German meal which warmed the kitchen, the breakfast room, and a pair of interested diners on a cold February night.

• two extraordinarily juicy smoked pork chops from Millport Dairy, seared briefly in a hot pan on both sides, buried in a pot of Sauerkraut (that is, a jar of drained and well-rinsed Bubbies sauerkraut, chopped onion from Lucky Dog Organic, chopped carrot from Keith’s Farm, whole allspice berries and pepper corns, one large bay leaf, salt, and enough water to cover everything, brought to a boil and simmered for about an hour) and heated for about twenty minutes
• two unpeeled ‘red potatoes’ (red skins, white inside) from Samascott Orchards, scrubbed, then boiled in heavily-salted water, drained, dried in the still-warm vintage Corning Pyrex Flameware blue-glass pot,  quartered, tossed with a little butter, and sprinkled with homemade breadcrumbs which had been browned in butter
• the wine was an Australian Riesling, Pewsey Vale Eden Valley Dry Riesling 2013
• the music was a number of delicate early-nineteenth-century chamber works by Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart

dinner, 3/9/12

My ancient copy of Mimi Sheraton’s The German Cookbook comes to the table again:  I had brought home two beautiful smoked pork chops (Kassler Rippchen) from John of  Lancaster County’s Millport Dairy stall at the Union Square Greenmarket two days before, and the contents of our larder at home pointed me to how I should serve them.  I already had a bag of sauerkraut, some great potatoes, a medium onion and one green-ish apple (all but the cabbage picked up on earlier trips to the Greenmarket), so the solution seemed obvious.  It would be Kassler Rippchen and sauerkraut.  The only question would be what wine to accompany it, and the Austrian light-to-medium red we had on hand was an excellent, if perhaps unusual choice.

• Kassler Rippchen, in this case meaning two excellent smoked pork chops from Lancaster County’s Millport Dairy, seared very quickly over a very hot flame, then placed in a 375º oven, near the end of the 45-minute cooking time for its other contents (the pork, smoked and ripened in a salt brine, does not have to be ‘cooked’ any further itself), inside a covered casserole which had begun with a mixture one chopped Gold Rush apple from Phillips Farm and one chopped onion, lightly-sautéed, half a pound of rinsed sauerkraut, also briefly-sautéed after the apple and onion, and in the same pot, and half a pound of small thickly-sliced (un-peeled) Bintje potatoes from Mountain Sweet Berry Farm, the mix moistened with a bit of good chicken stock and a bit of dry white wine
• wine:  Austrian, Rose Schuster Zweigelt Classic 2009 Burgenland from Astor Wines

Well, that headline was really unnecessary, but while the meal wasn’t about color, it wasn’t diminished by its richness (which, I have to admit, wasn’t entirely serendipitous).

‘Leftover Kasslerbraten‘. The unembellished words don’t begin to describe the awesomeness.

We had begun feasting on this nearly 7-pound roast the first day of this year. We enjoyed its third, and, sadly, its final act, with last Sunday’s dinner.  The second act had been presented shortly after the first, and fully a pound of the roast had remained even after that.  I carefully wrapped that piece, and it rested inside the freezer until this weekend.

To the very end, a superb smoked rib.

• two ribs from a large smoked pork roast which we had first enjoyed with friends on New Years Day 2019, heated for a few minutes in a little butter inside a medium antique copper pot on top of some sliced baby French leek from Mountain Sweet Berry Farm and some chopped baby celery from Norwich Meadows Farm, the chops covered, turned once, and arranged on the plates, covered with the little bit of the juice they had produced, together with the slightly carbonized pieces of leek and celery, a bit of horseradish jelly from Berkshire Berries spread on  top, scattered with some chopped celery leaves

• sixteen ounces of ‘Purple Peruvian’ potatoes from Norwich Meadows Farm, washed and scrubbed, but unpeeled, boiled in well-salted water, drained, dried in the still-warm large vintage Pyrex glass pot, then halved, rolled in a little butter, seasoned with local P.E. & D.D. Seafood salt and freshly ground black pepper, garnished with scissored bronze fennel buds and flowers from Rise & Root Farm in the Union Square Greenmarket

• thirteen and a half ounces of very sweet flat green pole beans (I’ve always called them ‘Romano beans’) from Norwich Meadows Farm, briefly parboiled inside a treasured large stainless steel pot purchased from Peter Hoffman in his Savoy Restaurant, after it had closed, quickly drained, then dried inside the same pot while beans and pot were still warm, set aside in a bowl, reheated in a cast iron pan with a little olive oil while the Kassler was being warmed, seasoned with salt and pepper, finished on the plates scattered with micro lemon balm from Two Guys from Woodbridge
• the wine was actually a cider, a wonderful, very dry New York (Hudson Valley) exemplar, Brooklyn Cider House Bone Dry cider, from the makers’ stand in the Union Square Greenmarket (it’s pretty awesome, and we’re definitely going stock up some more)
• the music was an album which included Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto, Trio, and Romances, in performances of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Joseph Silverstein, with the soloists Joseph Silverstein (Violin), Veronica Jochum (Piano), and Colin Carr (Cello)

We do eat meat occasionally, but we don’t eat like this very often, and I definitely don’t cook like this very often.

Roasts, stews, and long slow braises however do have their satisfactions, especially in colder realms in and colder months, like, well, parts of New York, this month.

One of the other pleasures of a rich meal is in the planning, the anticipation, and the preparation (the last, especially when there have been several (2) days of preparation.

The music is also a part of the experience, and especially if the windows can be closed. On this night it was Busoni’s “Faust’.

And the serendipity! I love turnips, and on the day before I was to prepare a marinade for this goat leg, when I had not yet decided on what to accompany it with, I came across a table display of white turnips in the Union Square Greenmarket, including a number of quite small ones. They were a size I had never cooked before; I may never even have seen such small turnips before, but I had been aware of their existence for decades.  Julia Child wrote about ‘navets’ in her ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking,

“The turnip is a wonderful vegetable when given the treatment required to bring out its delicious qualities. It wants and needs to absorb butter or meat fats, which is why turnips are particularly succulent when finished off in a stew or a braised dish, or in the juices of roasting meat.”  

She was writing something like 60 years ago, mostly for American readers, so she found it necessary to explain that she wasn’t talking about the turnips with which I grew up in the Midwest in the middle of the last century,

“In France rutabagas, or yellow turnips, are practically unheard of as food for humans, but they may be used interchangeably with white turnips.”

She went on to point out that In the country which inspired her career they would be shaped into what was called tourner gousses d’ail ou olives, so of course I always cut my large turnips into little clove of garlic or olive shapes (although larger than the model she referred to).

This past Sunday I finally had the correct size of turnip in my hands, and for the first time ever I simply had to peel them. They started and ended pretty round, so more like olives than gousses d’ail this first time out. Here they are just after I added them to the braise roughly 90 minutes before it was done:

With the turnips, this past Sunday evening, we enjoyed a slowly-cooked leg of goat that had begun with a mirepoix and was braised with the help of some rare aromatic liquids, some of which had been a part of earlier meals.

I began defrosting the 2.64-pound goat leg from Lynnhaven Dairy Goat Farm in the Union Square Greenmarket inside the refrigerator early in the afternoon on Thursday, rubbed the peppercorn/garlic/lemon zest/parsley marinade into the goat leg around noon on Saturday, then returned it to the refrigerator, inside the covered pot in which it would later be braised, removing it 24 hours later, and I placed it in the oven after preparing a mirepoix for it and immersing the goat in 4 different rich liquids shortly after 3 on Sunday.

The pot then remained in the oven for 4 and a half hours.

I used a recipe for braised leg of lamb that had been languishing inside one of my recipe a folders for years; I had spent a good deal of time researching ideas for cooking what isn’t really a very conventional piece of meat. I knew from the beginning however that goat was similar enough to lamb to be readily substituted. In the end I decided to use this fairly straightforward Sam Hayward recipe for a braised leg of lamb, a clipping I had cut out of the New York Times 15 years ago, that I found in front of my nose, in my ‘lamb’ paper file.

The braising liquid was from 4 sources: a good red wine, Marc Isart La Maldicion Tinto de Valdilecha 2017; from Copake Wine Works, a previously-frozen Kassler Braten stock; a veal tongue stock; and a pretty decent low-sodium chicken stock.

Of course the rich, mahogany-colored sauce was pretty awesome.

At the very end I did add something not in the original recipe, a garnish of chopped garlic mustard from Alewife Farm

• one pound of very small white turnips from Norwich Meadows Farm, peeled, joined the goat and the liquids about 90 minutes before the pot was removed from the 250º oven

• one bunch of collard greens, also from Norwich Meadows Farm, stripped of most of their stems, torn into small sections, washed several times and drained, transferred to a smaller bowl very quickly, in order to retain as much of the water clinging to them as possible, braised inside a large, heavy antique tin-lined copper pot in which 2 halved clove of garlic from Chelsea Whole Foods Market had first been allowed to sweat in some olive oil, adding a little of the reserved water along the way as necessary, finished with salt, pepper, finished with a drizzle of olive oil
• the wine was a Greek (Eastern Macedonia and Thrace/Drama) white, En Oeno 2010 (Cabernet Sauvignon 65% / Merlot 30% / Cabernet Franc 5%), from Foragers Market Wine
• the music was a recording of Busoni’s ‘Dr. Faust’, in a performance by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ferdinand Leitner