Oh, nothing to see here. Just whipping up some rosemary tincture.
It’s easy: take lots of fresh rosemary (enough to pack the vessel of your choice – I used a squatty 1/2 pint jar), chop roughly, pack said vessel, and cover with booze that is at least 80 proof (I used 95 proof Maryland Club whiskey because YAY, MARYLAND, and also it’s what I had to use up).
Place cap on vessel and store in dark, quiet place. Intrude every other day or so to give it a shake.
Do this for two to four weeks. Then you could strain the tincture and repeat with more fresh rosemary for a sort-of-cheating double tincture, or you could strain and store forever in a dark glass bottle, preferably with a dropper.
Uses up fresh rosemary that would otherwise go to waste, eases headache and indigestion, has antioxidant properties, enhances memory, may fight cancer, and is an antioxidant.
Your dose may vary. Some people say that for headache, take a full dropper (or a teaspoon), wait 30 minutes, and repeat if you still have a headache.
Yes, pregnant women can take this, but as always, use your brainpan and check with your doctor if you aren’t sure about taking herbal tinctures, especially the kind you made yourself.
I am looking forward to building more of an herbal medicine chest this year. Any suggestions?
This is about a delicious cake, and the creative life, and how they are intertwined with each other.
It has been almost exactly a month since my last blog in this space, and I think that might just be my rhythm now. I never wanted this blog to be a space where I felt obligated to post – where’s the fun in that?
Such irregular posting does violate the cardinal rules of Building An Audience, though. I also don’t stuff my posts with keywords (long-tail or otherwise) or have ads on my site. I have only just within the last year or so started putting the recipe in the title, but my titles still won’t win any awards (or drive much traffic, if I am honest, which I always try to be).
But here’s the thing: this blog, and the recipes I make and share IRL and in this space, reflect my creative practice as it evolves.
This year has been a bit of a revelation for me in terms of seeing myself, finally, as an artist. Part of that is due to a supportive partner who is, himself, an artist. I have not had a romantic partner who has ever seen me in that way. It would be easy to say that they were to blame, or they were unsupportive, but that’s not it.
It was me.
In the last couple years I have been feeling something beneath the surface, like there was this Thing That Was About To Happen. I thought it might be some breakthrough in this blog, or some incredible opportunity or travel experience. Although I have traveled and made some incredible food and had opportunities arise, that wasn’t it.
You know that feeling when someone keeps telling you something about yourself, and you sort of nod and smile, thinking you are agreeing when you actually are only taking it in on the surface, and the largest part of you isn’t all there, agreeing, even as you nod and smile?
That was me when Khristian referred to me as an artist or a creative.
That was me even when I told people I was a writer.
This year, the switch flipped.
I ended 2018 writing a lot for other people. Last year, I wrote the equivalent of five full-length novels for other people (and one novel for myself). This was valuable and good in that it financed some incredible things last year (trips to Amsterdam and Canada, plus a writing retreat and a piece of property in Canada), but at the end of the year, I was tired of writing for other people.
So I cut back, starting in February, and have been working on my own work, my own creative life, since then.
I attended an incredible workshop called Making Your Life As An Artist, set some goals as a result of that workshop, and have been steadily working at them since the workshop.*
I have been working on a real artist mission statement.
I am exploring new media, moving into the visual arts and seeing how that fits with my writing life.
I am submitting to publications, residencies, retreats, and galleries.
I am committing to spending more time IRL with people I care about or want to get to know better, and less time on social media (which sort of screws the whole driving-traffic-to-your-site thing, too, but that’s ok).
I am committing to my work, even as I make less money for other people’s work (but stay open to opportunities there, too).
And good lord. What a difference it has made. I feel energized by my practice and have been pushing past doubt and insecurity. I am still plagued by Imposter Syndrome, but it is a low hum on occasion instead of a daily shout. I find myself trying to figure out a better way to keep track of ideas, and I am exploring how I truly work best (spoiler alert: I am not particularly disciplined).
But let’s be honest (which we should all always try to be). I can still procrastinate like nobody’s business. I still have days when the Call of the Bed is mightier than the Muse. When the roar in my head and the worthless feeling and the anxiety start to creep in the darkness around the edges of my vision, clouding my ability to create much of anything.
Enter procrastibaking (not my word, but apt).
In the last ten days I have felt a bit listless, a bit unsettled. A massive anxiety attack, the first in months, left me feeling wobbly. Even as the visual aspect of my creative practice exploded, my writing has begun to flail a bit.
My simple solution? Bake cakes.
Bake cakes, and give them to people.
Bake cakes, and eat them for breakfast.
Take a long walk with the dog, by the water, then come home and have some cake.
I have made three cakes in the last ten days: a carrot cake, a lemon bundt, and this glorious bastard: the Smith Island cake.
Smith Island cake is Maryland’s state dessert. I blogged about it once on this site but was not impressed by the results of my baking and did not post them (just a blog with some links). Even the person who claims to be THE Smith Island cake master USES A BOXED CAKE MIX (which makes me sick. REALLY? Just makes Maryland bakers look like a bunch of amateurs. But I digress.).
But I was definitely casting about for something to take my mind off of my creative work. And this cake is a good bet. Consisting of eight layers with a nearly-pourable, ganache-like chocolate frosting, it requires, at the very least, a system for baking (unless you happen to have eight, 9-inch layer cake pans. I have two.). You need to time your cakes precisely, and you need to have a little something to occupy your mind in eight-minute intervals while you perform the oven dance of shifting cakes and cooling cakes and lining cake tins. I worked on my artist statement in fits and starts that didn’t allow me to think too deeply about what I was creating (a good thing).
IT IS WORTH IT. This cake was absolutely incredible.
The recipe that inspired it is from Saveur, with some changes. The cake is, as ever, gluten-free, and I swapped out the milk (mostly because I did not have milk and didn’t want to leave the house). Their method seemed ridiculous to me, so I changed that around a bit, too. Read all the way through before you start, then follow the instructions for best results.
Better yet: if you are local, I am now selling a limited number of cakes every month. Made to order and good for at least 12 servings, so you don’t even have to get your hands dirty. Get in touch early in each month, even if you don’t need it until the end, to reserve your spot. More details here.
Otherwise, here’s the recipe for Smith Island cake that will inspire swoons. #Trust
Smith Island Cake
Ingredients
Cake 3 sticks butter, melted and cooled 3 1⁄2 cups all-purpose gluten-free flour 4 teaspoons baking powder 1 1⁄2 teaspoons kosher salt 2 1⁄4 cups sugar Milk: 1/2 cup evaporated milk and 1 1/2 cups oat milk (or just 2 cups whole milk, see Recipe Note) 1 tablespoon vanilla extract 6 eggs
For the Icing 2 ounces unsweetened chocolate 2 ounces semisweet chocolate (I used chips. Hey now.) 2 cups sugar 1 cup evaporated milk 6 tablespoons butter 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Super helpful special tools: parchment paper, baking scale, cake turntable, offset spatula
Method Get ready: Get out two 9-inch cake pans and trace their bottoms on parchment paper. Cut out eight parchment paper circles and set aside. Preheat oven to 350°.
In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt. In another large bowl, combine cooled butter, sugar, milks, vanilla, and eggs. Whisk to combine all wet ingredients well.
Add dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and use a whisk to get most of the lumps out of the flour (some will remain).
IMPORTANT: If you use regular flour (not gluten-free, do not overmix. You will develop your gluten, and the cakes will be tough and awful. Whisk until just combined, no more, than proceed).
Allow batter to sit and collect its thoughts for 15 minutes. While it sits, spray your pans with cooking spray, line the bottom with parchment, and spray again. Alternately, you could butter and flour but WHAT A PAIN IN THE ASS.
Stir batter until smooth.
Here’s where it gets technical. I used a baking scale to accurately measure the total weight of the batter and then divided it by eight. This makes your layers even and ensures you actually have eight layers (fewer than that and it’s technically not a Smith Island cake). If you don’t have a scale, each layer has a little over one cup of batter.
Move each cake pan around so the batter spreads evenly over the bottom. Bake for eight minutes, then swap pan position in the oven (left moves right; right moves to the left), and bake for another seven minutes (or until the cake is lightly browned).
Remove from oven and place in the freezer for 10 minutes. Remove cake from pan, and place on a wire rack to cool completely. Re-spray and re-line cake pans, then re-peat for remaining batter. I gave my cake tins a wash and dry after the second layer in each.
Let the layers cool completely before frosting. I started my frosting as I started my 7th layer.
Make the icing: Place chocolates, sugar, evaporated milk (should be the remainder of the can), butter, and vanilla in a high-sided, heavy-bottomed saucepan. Bring to a boil, stirring often and watching carefully.
I sort of forgot mine a little and neglected the stirring, but that forgetfulness was brief. I used a whisk to beat until it was smooth and shiny. Remove from heat and cool. I did not find this frosting to thicken much at all, which was absolutely fine. Don’t expect a buttercream texture, but it should be thicker than a glaze.
Cake assembly: Use a cake turntable if you have one. Place one layer on the turntable and top with 1/4 cup of frosting. Use an offset spatula to spread all the way to the edges – the layer of frosting will be thin. Repeat with all layers but leave the top bare (for now).
Place cake in ‘fridge for about 15 minutes, then finish icing. If the icing has gotten too thick to pour, heat slightly, then pour over the top of the cake and use your offset spatula to smooth the sides. The icing on the sides will be thin, but that’s ok. #Trust
Chill cake completely before serving. Serves 12.
Recipe Notes
I am a big fan of using what you have and avoiding excessive trips to the store. I had oat milk and used it rather than buy milk I would not drink. I have not tested this recipe with other milks.
I did not test this recipe with regular flour. As long as you are careful with the mixing, you should be fine.
*Making Your Life As An Artist is a part of ArtistU, and I encourage any creative people out there to take advantage of the class if it rolls into town. Even if you don’t go, they offer their materials for free – a free book and a free workbook. Check them out.
If I could put time in a bottle…it would look like this.
My Superfriend, Bonnie, previously mentioned in a post that featured her incredible Toasted Cashew Hummus, has been making fun of me lately.
I hadn’t seen her in awhile, the result mostly of her traveling to two different countries in the space of two weeks (and staying there, and knocking heads together when necessary, and co-authoring a paper on a new method for treating – curing? diagnosing? I can’t remember – tuberculosis) while still organizing childcare for two of her three children and dealing with a broken water heater from another continent.
In the midst of all of this, she had (rather foolishly and perhaps to her deep regret) committed to cooking me my Second Annual Birthday Dinner, just one week after she returned to the States. When I stopped by the Sunday before the dinner and she asked me how I was, I spoke the truth.
“I’m tired, ” I said.
She looked at me in a way that could only be described as askance. And can you blame her, really?
I am a freelance writer who teaches yoga and cooks for people. The actual hours I work every week vary greatly, but they don’t come close to the 40 that many others routinely put in. I am also living a child-free existence until June 10th, which means that “homemaking” consists of making sure the dog hair doesn’t get any higher than the bottom of the couch and the toilets are cleaner than a truck stop’s.
But I have been exhausted these past three weeks, drained and sleeping poorly and feeling anxious and sweating pretty much every little thing that my brain can make up to sweat.
This is where a caveat about how I know how much harder everyone else has it, and I shouldn’t complain usually comes in. And make no mistake: this is not a complaint.
I feel incredibly lucky that this morning I got to walk to a coffee shop in Baltimore’s beautiful spring blossoming. And after that I got to sit on the floor of a bookstore and leaf through cookbooks for an hour. And after THAT I got to walk through a sunshower of cherry blossoms raining on the sidewalk on my way home to meet Khristian, where we ate breakfast together and I made bread.
So there is no complaint here.
But there is something important here.
Even if I don’t have a full-time job, I am still allowed to be tired. I am still allowed to feel, as has happened in the past three weeks with multiple projects, overscheduled and understaffed. I know what it’s like to work 80-hour weeks and be a parent, and certainly my fatigue now does not have the same feel to it as that.
Sometimes, though, I just get tired. Tired of meetings every day. Tired of being “on,” and tired of a schedule. People sometimes dismiss themselves and their feelings because other people have it so much worse than they do, and while I think that in the big picture that is the best way to operate, that can be taxing day-to-day. It’s okay to own your struggle, your fatigue, your frustration, your anxiety – even if others have more cause to feel those things.
And again, I have to put in a plug for not only Superfriend Bonnie but also the other people I know, parents or not, partnered parents or not, who are killing it everyday and are SO. FREAKING. TIRED. also. I don’t know how you do it.
Still.
I just want to be at home, puttering, and today is a day for that. Today was the first day in awhile that has been unscheduled and unclaimed from the moment that stupid bird woke me up with the sun at 6:04 a.m. until I lay my head back down on the pillow and my millennial neighbors pick up their ill-tuned guitars and start wailing.
The best way I know to stop time when this happens is to put something up, and preserved lemons seem like the way to go.
It’s a simple process that nevertheless takes 30 days to bear fruit (ha). And every day you visit your lemons and give them a little shake.
For the next 30 days, even if I am busy or tired or have too much to do or have to be less of my normal introverted self and more of the extrovert that some of my jobs require, I can look at my little pint jar of sunshine-y time and remember that day I sat on the back deck for just as long as I felt like.
What helps you stop time? What reminds you to slow down?
You have places to go, people to see, and lots of stuff to do.
That’s cool.
But can you stop for just one minute? Maybe two, if you read slowly?
I just saw this on the interwebs, Purveyor of Many Things Great and Terrible, and I feel like maybe you (yes, YOU), need to read this today.
You will, of course, need a snack.
It is, as you may realize, the tail end of citrus season. When I was growing up, my parents would ship my brother and I off, solo, to family in Miami over the holidays. We would leave a cold, sleety, dark place and be discharged from an airplane into balmy, breezy air and a week of (often) unchaperoned adventures in either my grandparents’ development or my cousin’s apartment complex.
There was a kumquat tree in the front yard of my grandmother’s house.
Kumquats. Even the name is exotic and unusual and complex and way sunnier than this past week has been, and I’m not just talking about the weather.
They are the strangest citrus; you eat the whole thing. Nearly every website that talks about kumquats has a click-baity title like “The one astonishing thing about kumquats,” or “The strangely counterintuitive thing to do with kumquats,” as if kumquats are somehow built into our intuition about things in general.
But I digress.
Kumquats start out mouth-puckeringly tart, with less bitterness in the peel and pith (sweetness, even), and end up with a marvelous caramelly sweetness that spreads over your tongue and completely erases the initial tart flavor. even slightly unripe or slightly over-ripe the process of flavor is pretty much the same, with minor variations in intensity.
I don’t know that we gorged ourselves on these, but I do remember eating my fill whenever I felt like it, or just mindlessly reaching up and grabbing one as I passed by the tree. Kumquats were as much a part of my childhood as any other memory I have that was good and innocent and as sweet and beautiful as the nighttime Miami breeze on my bare shoulders in December, a thousand miles away from home.
I saw kumquats again in the grocery store this week and finally grabbed a few after years of passing them by. As my birthday fell on the snow day, and I happened to have the will, the time, and the ingredients, this lovely concoction came about and emerged, damn near perfect, on the very first try. So simple and complex and utterly delicious.
Today’s assigned reading is below the recipe. For those of you in tl;dr mode, there will not be a test on the reading, and maybe you don’t want to hear some of what I have to say (beyond the food). So if you take it upon yourself to skip the reading and just make the snack, that’s cool.
I know you’re busy.
Honey-Roasted Kumquats With Homemade Ricotta on Gluten-Free Whole-Grain Bread
Note: Hell, YES, I made all of this. Not. Hard. Full disclosure: I was trying to just link to the bread recipe from America’s Test Kitchen How Can It Be Gluten-Free cookbook, but it’s not published online. Which sucks, because now, just for you, I have typed it all out. This took awhile. If you are gluten-free, you can send your appreciation in the form of good old American dollars because it was a royal PITA. If you are not gluten-free, you can skip the recipe and use any old crusty bread you like.
Unlike other recipes on this blog, each component is written out completely, and they are organized in the order in which they should be made.
Ingredients
GF-Whole Grain Bread (this takes awhile, so maybe start here)
1 1/2 cups warm water (110 degrees)
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons honey
11 1/2 ounces (2 1/3 cups, plus 1/4 cup) gluten-free all-purpose flour (I used my own flour blend, but see recipe notes)
4 ounces (3/4 cup) Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-Free Mighty Tasty Hot Cereal
1 1/2 ounces (1/2 cup) nonfat dry milk powder (in the baking aisle)
3 tablespoons powdered psyllium husk
1 tablespoon instant or rapid-rise yeast
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
Optional: 2 tablespoons unsalted sunflower seeds
Method
Spray 8 1/2″ x 4 1/2″ (or 8″ x 4″) loaf pan with cooking spray. Tear off a sheet of aluminum foil that will fit around the loaf pan. Fold it so it is double, lengthwise, then forma collar around the top of the loaf pan so that a double thickness of aluminum foil rises at least one inch above the top of the loaf pan. Staple to keep collar in place and set aside.
Whisk water, eggs, oil, and honey together in a bowl.
In a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, mix flour, hot cereal mix, milk powder, psyllium, yeast, baking powder, and salt until combined.
Slowly add water and mix on low until dough comes together, about one minute. Increase speed to medium and beat until sticky and uniform, about six minutes. If using sunflower seeds, reduce speed to low and add them now, mixing until combined.
Scrape dough into prepared pan and use wet fingertips to smooth dough into pan. Smooth the top of dough and spray with water. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and set aside to rise at least 90 minutes in a warm, non-drafty place.
Adjust rack in oven to middle position and preheat oven to 325 degrees. Remove plastic wrap and spray loaf with water. Bake until top is golden brown, crust is firm, and sounds hollow when tapped (Side Note: I cannot tell when bread is done by tapping it. If you can, more power to you. But that’s the direction America’s Test Kitchen gives, so I am reporting for you. #YoureWelcome), about 1 1/2 hours, rotating pan halfway through (Side Note the Second: I forgot to rotate. Bread still fabulous.).
Transfer to wire rack and let cool in pan for ten minutes. Remove from pan and cool completely for another two hours.
Bread can be double-wrapped in plastic and stored at room temperature for 3 days, or you can slice it all up, wrap in plastic and store in a freezer bag in the freezer.
Recipe Notes
Flour substitutions America’s Test Kitchen recommends (but that I did not test myself) include King Arthur’s Gluten-Free Multi-Purpose Flour and Bob’s Red Mill GF All-Purpose Baking Flour, but King Arthur’s makes the crumb of the bread denser and Bob’s Red Mill is drier with a bean taste. Seriously, people. Just send me a note on the Let Me Cook For You page and I will give you a price for some of my flour.
Please, if you are a gluten-free baker, buy a scale. The best $20 you’ll spend.
Homemade Ricotta
1 cup whole milk (see Recipe Notes)
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 tablespoons champagne vinegar (or any white vinegar)
Method
Bring milk, heavy cream, and salt to a rolling boil. Remove from heat and stir in vinegar. Let sit until it begins to curdle, about 2 minutes, then pour into a strainer lined with cheesecloth. Strain at room temperature for at least 20 minutes. For thicker cheese, twist the cheesecloth into a tight ball to get even more water out.
Recipe Notes
Milk can be pasteurized, but not ultra-pasteurized. Ultra-pasteurized milk doesn’t work. #AskMeHowIKnow
You can discard the whey (the liquid that drains from the solid ricotta), use it to bake bread with, or give it to your dogs or chickens.
Honey-Roasted Kumquats
Kumquats, sliced in 1/4″ rounds, seeds removed (see Recipe Notes)
4 tablespoons champagne vinegar
2 tablespoons honey
Method
Slice kumquats and place in a bowl with vinegar and honey. Macerate for at least 30 minutes and up to four hours.
When you are ready to eat, preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Spray with cooking spray.
Place kumquats on cooking spray and roast for about 20 minutes until honey begins to caramelize. I didn’t flip them over, but I suppose you could if you like.
Recipe Notes
I used kumquats that are approximately the size of a ping-pong ball if that ping-pong ball was more of an oval. There are also smaller varieties with different variations of flavor. For this, I used about six kumquats, but honestly? I could have eaten eleventy million more. So there’s that.
ASSEMBLY
You need bread, ricotta, kumquats, fresh basil, freshly cracked black pepper, and maybe honey and fleur de sel.
Slice bread and toast lightly.
Slather ricotta on toast.
Place fresh basil leaves on ricotta, then top with roasted kumquats. Add a few grinds of freshly cracked black pepper, and if you want a little more sweetness, just a wee drizzle of honey and a flake or two of salt.
Assemble your toasts, have a seat, and get to reading.
RULES FOR BEING HUMAN
1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period.
2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school, called life. Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant or stupid.
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error – experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately “works.”
4. A lesson is repeated until learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can then go on to the next lesson.
5. Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.
6. “There” is no better than “Here”. When your “There” has become a “Here”, you will simply obtain another “There” that will, again, look better than “Here.”
7. Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself.
8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9. Your answer to life’s questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.
10. You will forget all this.
11. You can remember it whenever you want to.
These are not my rules; I am just reporting on them. What would you add?
Get up. Pee. Brush teeth. Drink water, take supplements.
Go downstairs. Start coffee. Let dogs out. Let cat in. Sip coffee. Let dogs in. Feed dogs. Sit down to the computer.
Sip coffee. Check email. Sip coffee. Check work email. Sip coffee. Visit The Facebook. Make more coffee. Get down to writing/recipe research/yoga class design/etc.
It takes a lot to get us out of our routines. From dogs to children to adults, we are all of us creatures of habit. When I was a horse owner, even the horses knew what to do and when; it got so that I didn’t have to put halters on to move them from pasture to pasture, and they stood in the same spot every day for dinner.
The dog knows when it is 5 p.m. just as if he had a watch strapped to his wrist. And could tell time. And had any understanding of the concept of “time.”
But I digress.
Routines provide a sense of structure that can be comforting and predictable. “Predictable” is often used as an epithet, but predictability is what our lives are based on. This keeps the trains running and makes sure that the grocery store has enough toilet paper on any given day (or your own personal bathroom at home, which is why most people in the U.S. go shopping every week).
Sometimes, though, routines call to be busted up. Routine-busting can be because you are compelled to do something differently because whatever is going on forces you to make a change.
And you know it’s bad if an introvert comes off the couch. #HearMeRoar
If something is gone awry, it might be because whatever routine we have fallen into no longer works, or our routine is suddenly disrupted. We might call it something else, but it’s that transition period between the old and the new – not the the old or the new itself – that causes us such turmoil. Once that period of transition is over, we fall into a new routine until the next thing happens.
This transition is both full of promise and scary as hell, simultaneously. Parents know that the first night with a new baby is joyful and nerve-wracking. Travelers know that coming into a new country for the first time is anxiety-producing and thrilling, often in equal measure.
On a daily, more microcosmic level, this idea of routine versus no routine (or a shook-up routine) is the difference between cooking and making dinner.
Making dinner is that thing that happens between 5 and 7 p.m. every night where you have the gaping maws of your family staring at you, opening and closing like baby birds who have forgotten that they possess opposable thumbs and can get their own damn snack before dinner.
Making dinner is why there is food in boxes that you add milk and butter to in order to get something resembling macaroni and cheese. It’s why there are rotisserie chicken soldiers, hot and ready, when you walk into the store at 5 pm, desperate because it’s Monday and you know everybody at home is hangry and you just need to shove something in their face so there is no arguing.
Cooking is something altogether different.
Cooking is wandering through the farmer’s market and seeing what looks good.
Cooking shops for each meal separately, not all at once, once a week.
Cooking has a sip of wine and is often alone with music playing and maybe a snoring dog (because it’s not necessarily 5 pm yet so the dog isn’t drooling and staring at you).
This recipe is in between making dinner and cooking. There is some leisure to it, but it doesn’t actually require much hands-on attention. There is only one ingredient in this that might require a leisurely trip to a store, but everything else can be thrown into the cart with all of the other groceries.
Leftovers are just as good as the day before and so make excellent brown-bag lunches that will make all of your co-workers drool. I imagine you could also make a ridiculous sandwich with this on some crusty bread with arugula.
Harissa And Orange Spiced Pork Shoulder
Just the delicious beginning.
Full disclosure: as much as I would like to say it’s mine, this idea is taken from another recipe and adapted with amounts added. The other recipe is a video and doesn’t really specify anything but cooking times, so I made some adjustments to that and also the ingredients based on what was available.
Optional: lime wedges and fresh flat-leaf parsley, rough chopped
Method
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Combine harissa, tomato paste, vinegar, agave, and garlic in a small bowl. Season pork shoulder with salt and pepper, then rub the harissa mixture all over the pork shoulder (hands work best here). At this point, you could let the pork shoulder sit for a few hours (or overnight), or you can proceed.
Place pork shoulder fat-side-up in a Dutch oven or similar oven-safe, heavy cooking pan with a lid. Pour orange juice around the pork shoulder and throw in the thyme.
Cover pork shoulder and let it roast, covered, for 2 1/2 hours (or so).
Increase heat to 400 degrees and add cannellini beans to the pot. Cover and return to the oven for another 45 minutes to an hour.
When ready to serve, remove pork shoulder and slice. Return pork shoulder to the pot, or arrange on a platter and serve with sauce poured over.
If desired, squeeze fresh lime over the pork shoulder and garnish with fresh chopped flat-leaf parsley.
