noodsletter #.0012

Broccolistronkalypse, shanks, Italian groceries

Hello! Happy New Year!

You’ve received this email because you’ve signed up for noodsletter. Thank you. The recipe section is at the end, everything else on top. This week’s recipe:

Pork Shanks*

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Broccolistronkalypse

I put up a snap of a broccoli stalk “salad” on Instagram and apparently it’s got a few fans, including one who is Dutch, which is how I was introduced to the word “broccolistronk”—amazing.

I would love to take credit for the idea—and its popularity!—but I got the idea from my colleague Daniel Gritzer, who’s noted he likes to cut them into planks and dress them with olive oil and salt.

However, if you’re going to eat the stalks in this way, I strongly recommend that you mandoline them into ribbons. The ribbons look very pretty, of course, but what’s important is they taste great—like broccoli stems, but better. With a simple trick of geometry a broccoli stem is completely transformed by a mandoline; its flesh becomes at once crisp, crunchy, and soft, its sweet taste both cruciferous and mild. It is, in short, improved. You should try it!

You’ll need a mandoline—a sharp knife won’t cut it (properly)—and since you need a mandoline you need a cut-proof glove. I am not just a convert to the cut-proof glove corps; I am an evangelist. Buy a cut-proof glove! What’s amazing about a cut-proof glove used in conjunction with a mandoline is that all of a sudden running things through it isn’t terrifying, which means you’ll actually want to use the damn thing more than once a year. In turn, you’ll come to understand a mandoline is incredibly easy to clean if it isn’t covered in blood and you can still use both your hands. Safe and easy to use, produces incomparable results, wow, you’ll use your mandoline (and cut-proof glove) all the time.

I don’t know that anyone needs a how-to here, but here’s how I do it. I tend to cut off all the fibrous exterior; anything that isn’t a jade-green (to me, I’m colorblind) I peel off. I start by doing brutal cuts with a large knife along each side of the stalk, squaring it off. Then I use a y-peeler to get all the rest off, which leaves me with this sort of mini celtuce-looking thing.

Then I run the broccolistronk log along its length down the mandoline. Here is a photo of me attempting to demonstrate how I do this with a cut-proof glove on. As you can see, you can’t see anything except the cut-proof glove, but basically I flex my finger so they bow outwards and away from the mandoline blade and use the heel of my palm to push the stalk while using the flat of my palm and my middle fingers as a guide.

Look…at that… glove!

As you can see, I discard the little bits that don’t get beribboned, and by that I just dunk them in salt and shove them in my mouth…even unberibboned broccolistronk is very good (with salt).

Drizzle the ribbons with lemon juice, (good) olive oil, and sprinkle with flaky salt and you can call it a day. But if you like, particularly if you’ve got a lot of ribbons (from, say, 5-6 broccoli stalks), you can layer them on the plate with the lemon juice and olive oil. It’s a little fussy, yes, but you get a more even distribution, and the more the ribbons are slicked with oil the silkier they become. Also, if you’ve already got a cheese grater out, a scattering of parmigiano between each layer is an excellent idea, as is topping the whole thing (after adding the flaky salt) with a layer of grated parm.

The only warning I have is that if you salt the ribbons and let them sit for longer than a minute, they will get watery. (If you work quickly, you can scatter salt between each layer, which is great but you really have to serve it/eat it immediately.)

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Book

Across the street there was a small Italian grocery which, I remember, was regarded as intrusive when it first appeared. The owner’s son played football for the high school team, so now it was like passing a place where some local dignitary had made his mark; and tins of olive oil decorated with exotic designs in silver filigree and dark outlining, gold roses and medallions of victory on a pink ground, were stacked at the site like a trumpet’s flourish. To me olive oil was something that came in skinny little bottles and was shaken over lettuce in discreet drops like perfume, consequently the effect of those towers—and the wide red cans of tomatoes, the long gray ropes of garlic and sheaves of thin brown barky loaves, the sausages as engorged as snakes, the big dark barrels of sardines, I supposed, pickles, olives (who knew what else lived in those salty ponds?), the huge smooth cheeses and jungle-colored peppers, purple eggplants, queerly shaped squash in white, orange, yellow, and green (nothing my mother ever let in the house), the frankly naked hams and raffia-webbed demijohns of wine—was somewhat the same as a carnival: the display was loud, vulgar, bombastic, and unbelievable, and I was at once frightened and tempted, intimidated and drawn.

From The Tunnel by William H. Gass.

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“News”

“Americans may not love their greens,” Zhu observed, “but they always feel at home with their broccoli.”

“I feel fine,” said the woman who is 106 years old and has eaten a Big Mac every Sunday after church.

Really appalling how restaurant workers are treated. Just, like, all the time, constantly, forever.

French dressing, bound by arbitrary rules no longer!

While that was glib, I feel less glib about the similar ruling on Gruyère (excuse me, gruyere). Any legal argument that rests on what the American public “understands” seems particularly weak to me these days, but what do I “understand,” ya know?

The Nasal Ranger!

Ruth Ware @RuthWareWriter

Do you have meals you still think about? I have dishes from like 5, 10, 20 years ago that I still think about sometimes - pommes aligot at a restaurant in Paris in 1999, this amazing roast suckling pig in Venice, a truffle risotto at a hotel outside London.

The question in this tweet seemed absurd to me, but I suppose that accounts for my career choice, this newsletter, everything about me. I think about meals I’ve eaten nearly constantly.

A nation of unionized Starbucks.

historyeats

A post shared by Historyeats (@historyeats)

Not going to link to this, but this is some religion-of-relics type stuff right here:

For the first time ever, we made chips with potatoes grown in fields mixed with soil from NFL home grounds.

Always curious when the big critics hit the same spot on the same week, as with these review of Semma in NYT and NYMag. I’ve never been to any of this restaurant group’s places, and they sound amazing, but it seems like the only subcontinental restaurants that are covered these days are backed by this group.

Alejandro Zambra on mushrooms.

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Recipe

Pork Shanks*

Listen, there’s only so much you can do with a pork shank and a bad photographer.

I want to start with a caveat: This isn’t a “tested” recipe; it’s what I made for myself for dinner, which I wrote down. It was pretty good, but I made some errors along the way, which I’ll point out, so if you find yourself with huge pork shanks one day, you can eat something that is a little better than “pretty good.”

A lot of recipes for shanks call for “meaty shanks,” and when I hadn’t made many shanks I found this confusing. No longer: look, shanks galore, some meaty and some not.

Four of these I’d say are “meaty,” the other four are better used for stock since the meat to connective tissue and fat ratio is a little low. I ordered these from Heritage Foods, a pricey outfit that nevertheless sells very nice pork (I’m sure their other offerings are nice but the prices for chicken, beef, and prime lamb cuts are way past my comfort zone). I was shopping for pork belly for pancetta and chashu when I came across the sale (this was also where I purchased the lamb offal that I’ll write about for paid subscribers… exciting!)—this was fifty bucks. As you can see from the color, this is quite nice pork, deep red, robust.

You’ll want to tie your shanks with twine around their circumference, just so they hold together once they’re tender, but don’t throttle them; tie them too tight, and they’ll burst through their bonds when you brown them. Just about finger tight, I believe is the phrase. When you brown them, don’t do as I do and try to use less oil than you need. They’re irregularly shaped, so you need a pool of hot oil deep enough to come into contact with any surface at or near the surface of the pan. I used two tablespoons of oil, thinking the fat would render and make up for the obvious lack, but alas. This excess of oil is particularly important for browning the circumference nicely, which is very beneficial to the final dish. You can just pour off most of the fat after the shank pieces are browned and before you add the onion; you only need about two tablespoons at that point.

I’ve given a quantity for stock, which is correct for shanks of this size (that is, quite large, quite tall) in the pot I was using (a 5-quart Dutch oven). The main thing is to get the shanks almost but not quite covered…this is fairly important. If you have thinner shanks or a narrower pot, you’ll need less liquid, but only just; in any case, you’ll want to check the pot every hour or so while it’s in the oven to make sure there’s ample liquid so nothing burns.

Speaking of, the amount of liquid that evaporates off is directly related to how you cover the pot. When I say “leave it open a smidge” I mean this, this is a smidge:

You could, of course, remove the shanks when they’re done, defat the braising liquid, and then boil it down. That’s a good idea, but it’s a little more effort than I wanted to make when I made this. If you want to do that, I would leave out the added salt to the liquid, and be sure to taste the sauce as you reduce it, as it might become inedibly salty.

Also, needless to say, this recipe takes a long, long time to make, and a shank really should be served with buttery and cheesy polenta. Plan accordingly.

Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 4 one-pound pork shanks, tied

• Kosher salt

• 4 tablespoons neutral oil

• 1 tablespoon fennel seeds

• 1/4 large onion, chopped

• 10 cloves garlic, smashed

• 2 leeks, cleaned, white and light green bits chopped

• 2 stalks celery, diced

• 1 small carrot, peeled and diced

• 1 bay leaf

• 1.5 tsp double strength tomato paste or estratto

• 1/4 cup white wine, Shaoxing wine, or sake

• 1 teaspoon usukuchi or soy sauce

• 1/2 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt

• 4 cups homemade or low sodium chicken stock

• Polenta or rice or couscous, for serving

• Gremolata, for serving

• Flaky salt, for serving

Directions

1. Liberally salt the shanks and place them on a rack set in a rimmed baking sheet, uncovered, in the refrigerator, for at least 1 hour, preferably overnight.

2. Preheat oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Heat oil in a 5-quart Dutch oven over medium-high heat until shimmering. Pat shanks dry of any surface moisture and add to the oil, serving side down, and cook until nicely browned, about 10 minutes. Flip and brown other side, about 8 minutes. Using tongs and whatever skills you have with balancing oddly-shaped objects, brown circumference of each shank thoroughly, about 12 minutes total. Remove shanks and set aside. Spoon off all but 2 tablespoon oil in pot.

3. Turn heat to medium and add fennel seeds. Cook until they start to pop, about 30 seconds. Add onion and cook, stirring frequently, until just beginning to brown, about 6-8 minutes. Add leeks and garlic and cook until softened and reduced in volume by about half, about 6-8 minutes. Add celery and carrot and cook until just aromatic, about 2 minutes. Add tomato paste and cook, stirring and smushing vigorously, until everything in the pot is stained red, about 3-5 minutes.

4. Add wine, deglaze, scraping up any stuck bits on the bottom of the pot, and cook off completely, about 5 minutes. Add stock, usukuchi, and salt, stir to combine, then add shanks to the liquid; they should be poking out of the surface of the liquid like alligators in a swamp. Increase heat to high and bring liquid to a boil. Cover with a lid, making sure to leave it open a smidge for some moisture to escape during the cooking process. Place pot on the middle rack of the oven and cook, checking every hour or so on the liquid level to make sure the pan isn’t going dry and burning, until shanks are meltingly soft—a sharp knife should slide in and out with no resistance—about 3 hours.

5. Serve topped with vegetables and sauce over polenta, cous cous, or rice, with gremolata and extra sauce and flaky salt alongside.