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A wonderful thing: Garlic!
A food post.
I love garlic. Always have. Mom's good friend married an Itallian gentleman, and his sauces were redolent with garlicky goodness. And THE definitive Cajun potroast is stuffed with garlic. Let me explain how it works. Like most Cajun recipes, it's an idea more than a list of quantities, and once you try it, you'll wonder why you never did it before.
Stuffed pork roast: This calls for a pork roast. A butt or a shoulder will do. Don't waste your money getting a fancy bonelss cut or a loin. Don't worry about it having a layer of fat. You want a good-sized chunk of a hog.
Get a head of garlic. You may use all of it, maybe not. Depends on how brave you are for your first try. Peel the garlic cloves until you have a good-sized pile.
Now, here's the complex part. Take a small sharp knife, like a paring knive. Do an O.J. Simpson on the roast. Just a good, deep stab. Withdraw the knife. Stick one of your garlic cloves deep down into the hole. You may also want to put in a pinch of salt and some black and red pepper. It won't hurt. Mom would also stick a whole cayenne pepper in the hole, and the white part of a green onion (shallot to the pretentious) in the hole and cut them off flush with the surface of the roast. (in case you're wondering, the heat of roasting cooks most of the heat out of the cayenne pepper and leaves a wonderful flavor) That's the basic move. Continue to vandalize the roast with similar holes a couple of inches apart, all the way around. Finally, rub the whole thing down with salt and black pepper and a little red pepper.
Okay, set your physically abused roast aside while you chop up a couple of onions. You don't have to be really neat. a course chop is fine. Set these aside. You can add some chopped green onions, too...
Now, for the pot-roasting part. I'm going to make the obligatory plug for cast iron. There's nothing better for a pot roast. Put the pot on top of the stove, add a little oil to help things get started and turn up the heat and let the pot heat up until the oil is hot enough to where a drop of water makes it spatter. Plunk your roast into the pot. Brown it on all sides. If you're doing this right, you'll think you're almost ruining your pot and the meat, because it will get dark brown crispy spots on the meat and sticky brown things on the bottom of the pot. That's what you want. These are the key to a great gravy.
Now, without reducing the heat, dump in the onions. Allow them to saute in the oil and the fat rendered from the roast. Don't get scared. You don't want any wimpoid translucent sauteed onions. You want these things to get brown. Not tan, BROWN! Like in almost black...
By this time, the bottom of your pot should be looking like a Superfund site. That's great! Everything should be sizzling nicely. So dump in a cup or two of water. Lower the heat. And let things simmer. For hours. Occasionally raise the lid and turn the roast. Let the water simmer away and add some more. Putter around the kitchen. Do the laundry. Make a quilt. Whatever, just don't stray too far from the pot. Every now and then, lift the lid, turn the meat, and check the water, well on its way to gravydom now. Cook until the grease is rendering from the roast. If you are nervous, you can check the internal temperature with a thermometer, or just stick aknife deep and make sure the juice that comes out is clear. Actually, this is an all-day dish, so don't get impatient.
Somewhere along the line, prepare side dishes of your choice, and a pot of rice. Okay, I know some of you don't do rice, so good potatoes will work, too.
Serving time comes. The roast will be almost falling off the bone, fork-tender. Cars will be stopping on nearby thoroughfares as their drivers smell the roast. They will roll on the gorund and wave arms and legs ecstatically in the air. Fend them off. Let the roast sit on a platter for a few minutes before carving.
Gravy? If you've done right, the onions will have disintegrated into a delicious brown gravy, augmented by juices from the roast and all those little brown crusties we talked about earlier. It should NOT require thickening. If you do need to thicken, a little cornstarch and water will do the trick.
Slice up the roast and serve it with your favorite side dishes. The gravy traditionally goes over rice. I think that you'll enjoy this one.
There is a room for modification. This is more a guideline than a recipe. Like I said, you can just use garlic, or you can add things like Mom did. If a few holes tingled your taste buds, you can add more. And this is a great winter recipe, because you'll have a good-sized pot simmering on the stove for hours, dumping humidity and heat (and wonderful smells) into your house all the time...
And if you're just a garlic FREAK:
Baked garlic! Take a couple of heads of garlic. That's HEADS, not cloves... preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Remove the loose peels from the heads of garlic. Take a sharp knife and cut the top of the head off. That's the pointy end, where the stalk used to be. You want to cut just far enough down for the cut to expose portions of all the cloves. Take a little olive oil and lube the whole head. Drop a pinch of salt on the exposed clove ends. Put the heads into the oven for about an hour, or until the heads are squeezably soft. The smell will be marvelous.
Take the baked garlic and squeeze it from the heads. It will come out mushy and delicious. Spread it on buttered (or lightly oiled with good olive oil) Italian bread, and enjoy!
One caveat. Your breath will be the least of your problems with this dish. Too much, and your SKIN will exude garlic smells...
And if you REALLY want a treat, after you've spread the baked garlic over the oiled Italian bread, top it off with a few anchovy filets. And get yourself a bottle of stout red wine...
