Summer: The good, the bad, the hotter’n all hell

 

Summer bounty: Crowder peas, slaw, capreses, SV pork loin. Marvelous!

It has, friends, been summer. More specifically, it has been summer in a home whose central air unit is undersized for the amount of square footage it is designed to serve. Which means it has been too freaking hot for cooking in the evenings, which is, y’know, when I can cook. So there have been a lot of salads, a lot of make-aheads, a few Crock-pot meals, and some take-out, at least until this last week, when it’s cooled off to the point I have turned the stove on briefly to cook a few things. Like fried okra. And purple hulled peas, and crowder peas, and squash, and eggplant, and such. Oh, and corn. We have corn. Dear Sweet Baby Jesus, we have corn, and I’ve eaten it half a dozen times already since I got the first corn maybe three weeks ago.

Will have corn tonight, as a matter of fact. With a slowly-grilled Boston butt, which is slowly grilling as we speak. And a tomato and cucumber salad, and some slaw, and maybe some baked beans. More on that later.

Yes, Virginia, you can barbecue

Being that it’s Friday morning, I’m up early, and if I weren’t doing this I’d feel guilty about not getting up and putting dirty dishes in the dishwasher, and given that I haven’t posted all week and I had the photos for this one in the can, I figured I’d do a detailed tutorial on the art of barbecuing.

Barbecuing. Not cooking out. Barbecue does not involve beef, fowl or fish. It is a stretch to say the word “barbecue” by itself encompasses pork ribs. True barbecue, used as a noun and not an adjective or a verb, means pork shoulder. Or the whole pig, which I’ve never tried to do but I can testify is good.

For some stuff, the old trusty barrel grill can't be beat.

You can barbecue on a regular grill, as long as it’s big enough you can arrange your meat where it gets only indirect heat. In my case, I’ve got an old barrel grill that allows me to put a sizeable chunk of pork shoulder, often sold in the grocery as Boston butt, in the center, with a heap of coals on both sides. But first, there are some steps that butt needs to go through.

A pig loves him a sweet potato

Faced with a night at home and nothing thawed, one must repurpose leftovers. In this case, pulled pork barbecue.

I married that stuff off to a sauteed sweet potato, with bridesmaids of tomato and mozzarella, and dinner was damn fine.

Pig and sweet potato. Alternatively, tomato and mozzarella. No complaints.

I had this pulled pork. It had been residing in a plastic baggie in my fridge for a week and two days, which meant it was getting toward the “use it or throw it out” deadline. It was too damn good to throw out. So I used it.

I contemplated this on the way home. I said to myself, “Self? If you’d saute a sweet potato….and if you’d throw that leftover barbecued pork in it….you might have something pretty good.” So I got home, and I did just that. I had a single lonely sweet potato; peeled and diced in 1/2 inch or so dice, it yielded perhaps 1 1/2 cups or so. I threw those in a skillet with some canola oil to commence cooking. I got the baggie of barbecue out of the fridge, and chopped it relatively fine.

Experimentation, or, kitchen as location for the exercise of weird ideas that sounded good

I am not altogether sure about this.

Lentils, simmering.

In the Christmas present, a cool green cast iron Dutch oven. Thanks, Child B!

So far, so good.

Shallots, sauteeing.

And for some reason, the photo I inserted here is not showing up. Nevertheless, still so far, so good. And then we get to this:

H'mmm. And I repeat, h'mmm. But, how 'bout that Dutch oven, huh?

Lentils, barbecuing. This, I am just not so sure about.