So as I review yesterday's holiday prep festivities, I ask myself: what did we do to that pork to make it so good?
To not sully geekette's new food blog, I will herewith memorialize the process:
Holiday Christmas Lights
3 lbs pork rib deboned (rib without rib)Preparation time: pretty much all year. Guido and I used to get into the Christmas spirit by driving off to the Galleria Mall in White Plains to shop for gifts and grouse at life, but gone are the days where we can pull off spur-of-the-moment seasonal adventures. On this particular project, we got started shopping at about noon and we were eating by about 6 p.m.
6 thick-sliced pork chops
2 lb sweet Italian sausage
1 large bottle Cinzano sweet red vermouth
Pigmans Rub-a-Dub Beef and Rib Rub
8-10 strings of outdoor Christmas lights
The first step is to get the grill heated. This is probably the first point at which a real barbecue specialist would throw his hands up and storm off, saying I don't know what I'm doing. Well, I don't. I have a grill that generally has two setting: "cold" and "reactor core." Pre-heating is still a good idea, so I let it go hot while I get everything else in order.
It is my experience that the best way to get everything else in order is to drink vermouth -- lots of it. So I pour some out for us. And I apply the rub to the rib-slab and the pork chops.
Migrating outside, I stick the vermouth bottle and the drinking glasses into the snow-pile that sits like a high-hat atop my patio table. I take the big bowl of pig to the grill and start arranging... Because that's another built-in limitation of mine: my grill is small. So I arrange the pork chops to sit on their sides (bone-down, so they get the brunt of any direct heat). The rib-slab can only go broadside down, taking up pretty much the other half of the grill surface.
Then I need to tinker with my equipment. The adjustment knobs on the front of the grill are pretty much useless, so I have to squat in front of the unit, reach my hand onto the tank valve and tilt my face into the inferno to see my progress. I turn down the propane as low as it will go without going out... Then I close the lid and walk to the front of the house to dis-entangle strings of lights with Guido and his brother Julio.
The next step is to drink the rest of the vermouth and hang the lights onto the hedges. An even more impressive ritual is the raising of the giant wreath -- with one person on the front walk and the other in the upstairs window hoisting it up on a rope and affixing it to the window-jamb. What makes it impressive is that we usually leave this task for last (after we've had most or all of the vermouth) and no one has yet fallen to their death in a tangle of rope and wreath.
Every 30 minutes or so I checked on the pork. At one point the flame went out, so I re-did the adjustment ritual -- not well either because 20 minutes later I saw lots of smoke which meant I had a flare up and a fat fire. I got that taken care of, re-arranged the meat, re-adjusted the heat, and we were back on track. Everything was browning so nicely. After about two hours of this, I turned the rib-slab and noticed that a strip of meat pulled off and stuck to the tongs -- seeing the meat fall off so easily let me know I was in the zone. I tasted it.
Whoa.
Then I piled everything up onto the side to make room for the sausage. So the last half-hour was on a higher heat, at least on one side -- but still not the heat I'd normally use to sear and cook on a normal grilling day.
I think the entire cooking time was a little over two and a half hours -- and again, a barbecue pro would scoff at that. Real barbecue needs much more time, and smoke, and whatever else.
Yeah, yeah, I know. But this was a workingman's meal!
I still need to put lights into my front window. I'll do that tonight.