Pulled pork for 100. That was what I was asked to come up with. I’ve never had to make that much food for one event before. I think the most number of portions I’ve ever done was something like 272 pieces of assorted makizushi for a Taiwanese Association event (with one woman loading up her plate with about 25 pieces but complaining that they were only so-so), but this time, it was enough pork to serve 100 people, and it was going to be the “main” dish to boot.

So, pulled pork, coleslaw, onions, dill pickles, sauce. For 100.

The challenge (aside from controlling the urge to keep squealing and wailing) was to see whether I could stop panicking scale up earlier attempts (adequate for 10-14) into adequate quantities with a standard refrigerator and a standard single oven (…eeeek).

The first thing to do was to work out how much raw protein I would have to start with. Assuming 100 g meat went into each sandwich and a loss of 50% following cooking, my quickie calculation indicated that 20 kg of pork shoulder would be needed:

That’s a freaking lot of shoulder. It’s worse when the realization hits that there’s only a single 27″ oven, meaning that it would have to be done in two batches and cooled and reheated to avoid nasty food safety issues. And because the batches are larger, it’s going to take a h*ll of a lot longer for each batch to finish. And… that amount of pork needs to be pre-ordered. Nice.

After the counterstaff at Boucherie Claude et Henri finished laughing, I eventually worked this out for prep; times and specific ingredient quantities are documented.

Ingredients

• 17.6 kg pork shoulder (this is the approximate weight of 2.5 shoulders)
• 2 L bottle of Dr. Pepper (the regular stuff, not diet)
• 6 x 150 mL tubes harissa
• cabbage
• sea salt
• granulated sugar
• cider vinegar
• sweet onions
• dill pickles

Preparation

Mix Dr. Pepper and harissa together. If using two ovens (either a double oven or two separate), or if one has access to a Gaggenau EB 385 oven, set the unit(s) to 150ºC / 300ºF. Place equal volumes of the Dr. Pepper solution into two roasting pans. Salt the pork shoulder and place one shoulder into each pan. Ladle the solution over the pork and place in the oven(s). If using a single oven, set the unit to 150ºC / 300ºF. Place half the Dr. Pepper solution into the roasting pan. Salt one pork shoulder and place into the pan, ladle the solution over the pork and place in the oven. The second shoulder will be cooked after the first one.

At the 3 hour mark, remove the pork and baste with the cooking liquid. Continue to baste the shoulder on an hourly basis, and roast until shoulder is done (verification by thermometer to 82ºC / 185ºF, or by checking if shoulder blade will extricate cleanly and easily). This is approximately 10 hours for a single shoulder in a single oven, and slightly longer in a Gaggenau EB 385 due to the increased mass.Remove pork from roasting tray and let rest for at least 30 minutes.

“Pull” the pork, shredding the pork, while removing the rind, bones and remaining fat and connective tissue. If serving on same day of preparation, keep warm, using a little bit of the cooking liquid to moisten the meat. If retaining for next-day service, cover meat and place under refrigeration until service. Reheat in low oven with some of the basting liquid for steam.

Finely chop the cabbage. Mix with 1:1 sugar and salt (as in 1 tablespoon sugar to 1 tablespoon salt), with quantity dependent on the amount of cabbage being processed. For 1.5 heads (approximately 2.5 kg), this is approximately 3 tablesspoons each of sugar and salt. Let cabbage stand for 5 hours. Squeeze out extruded water. Add cider vinegar to cabbage, mix well and let rest until pork is ready. Finely slice the sweet onions. Place slices in cold water for 20 minutes, then remove from water and pat dry. Retain until pork is read. Slice the dill pickles.

Defat the cooking liquid with a fat separator. Heat the cooking liquid to evaporate some of the volume. Adjust for seasoning (I used honey and cider vinegar this last time, but have used more ingredients in the past) and thicken with corn starch or veal glace de viande if required.

Service

It’s a pulled pork sandwich: cheapo white hamburger bun piled up with pulled pork, onion, coleslaw and pickle, and slathered with sauce.

Notes and aftermath

Too much meat!

Not that my calculations were wrong, it’s just that there was ultimately too much shoulder as it competed with what appeared to be 2 gross of hot dogs, 200+ ears of corn, 100 chicken drumsticks, coleslaw (another one), couscous salad, macaroni salad, baked beans, dozens of bags of assorted potato chips, and a hotel pan-sized tourtière de Lac Saint-Jean. And pie.

The 68 people who were present (a tad short of the 100 mentioned to me during planning) had a go of it and did finish about half before calling it quits. I was impressed – that was a pretty good performance on their part since they had pre-loaded on corn and hot dogs while I was still reheating the pork and finishing the sauce.

Where I did screw up was underestimating the volume of sauce required: should have made up additional volume with extra Dr. Pepper and harissa. The volume of cooking liquid was inadequate as I hadn’t anticipated that those going for seconds would just ladled the stuff on.

So, successful scale-up. I think the crowd at least liked it, but I don’t think I personally want to repeat the exercise any time soon.

I want one. I want this jamón. Never mind the estimate of approximately USD$1800 per ham once they’re ready for delivery in 2011, I want one to call my very own.

I don’t mind that José Andrés would get some of the money – he’s a good chef and he works hard to promote and import the good Spanish products.

I want my own pata negra jamón ibérico de bellota from Cinco Jotas. I want to use a sujihiki to carefully cut dainty little slices of  jamón and eat them accompanied with an oloroso xérès until I’m in a porky stupor.

Maybe it’s the stress that’s pushing all the buttons for having me wanting something meaty every single day, but I’ve had this great recurring dream where retainers would peel me grapes while I’m carried around like Hedonism Bot through Huelva and other parts of Andalucía to sample all the various jamónes ibéricos de bellota while using a porró to drink Viñedos de Ithaca’s Odysseus PX Pedro Ximénez. Ah, nice to dream and I’m sure that would be a great thing to do one of these days.

Boy I can’t wait until this MAA is over.

What can I say? A year ago I was complaining about how freaking how and sticky it was. This year, I’m just complaining about freaking hot and sticky it is. Plus ça change as the water bottle is still getting warmer by the minute, but still better than August 17 back in 2008.

The eggs are out of the way, and as I reminisce about the typhoon raging over Taiwan on this date all those years ago, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Fermin’s bone-in jamón ibérico de bellota can now be easily had. Yep. Only USD$ 1200 and shipping costs stand between me and My Precious.

The belly is probably my favorite cut of pork to work with. Pork belly is proto-bacon, the piece of the oink that most people see transformed as streaky bacon in all of its salty crispy deliciousness (or pancetta which is an Italian take on the same thing).

Pork belly is soft and full of fat and collagen which produces an unctuous result when it’s slowly cooked. It can be cooked with or without skin (the skin makes a terrific crackling), braised or roasted whole, rolled, sliced, ground… and it’s always good so long as you don’t do anthing abhorrently stupid with it.

This cut is beloved in Asian cooking: the normally fat-averse  Japanese are obsessed with it, it’s braised and roasted in Chinese cuisine and makes the most excellent char siu, and the Koreans slice it and have samgeopsal gui (삼겹살 구이; pork belly barbecue). Even the Norwegians have it as part of their XMas traditions (okay, so Norwegians aren’t Asians).

And while pork belly is certainly unctuous I’m not writing about it this very minute. This post actually started life as an ode to a pork belly sandwich snack, but is now essentially blah-blah about pork shoulder, or more specifically, the Boston butt (the top half).

Aki Kamozawa and Alexander Talbot of Ideas in Food are probably two of the best-known Internet food bloggers thanks to some really stunning modern food concepts and a whole lot of quirkiness towards recipes.

One thing that caught my eye was an “accidental” recipe they developed using Dr. Pepper and kimchi to roast a pork picnic shoulder. I wasn’t particularly interested in the kimchi but their original idea to slow-roast the shoulder with Dr. Pepper and harissa looked good on screen. Unfortunately, Aki and Alex often do not outline a lot of their ideas with trivialities like details so what I reverse-engineered a replica using 300ºF, Dr. Pepper and harissa.

Ingredients

• pork shoulder with skin on (preferably Boston butt)
• harissa
• Dr. Pepper (full sugar, not the diet version) 

Preparation

Make a solution of harissa and Dr. Pepper (1 L Dr. Pepper and 520 mL harissa paste provides an interesting balance between sweet and spicy). Salt the pork shoulder and place into the middle of a roasting pan. Add the Dr. Pepper and harissa solution, baste the pork and place into a 150ºC / 300ºF oven. The shoulder does indeed look horrible at this point.

Baste the pork occassionally with the pan juices, adding additional Dr. Pepper or water if the pan becomes too dry. The amount of time required for roasting depends on the size of the pork shoulder but for 4 kg of meat, it will take at least 8 hours as the goal is to hit an internal temperature above 82ºC / 185ºF.

At the end of cooking, remove the pork shoulder from the roasting pan and let it rest for at least 30 minutes. Remove the crackling and any remaining fat. Shred the meat using hands or two forks.

Remove the remaining pan drippings and de-fat the liquid. Deglaze the roasting pan (use water, Dr. Pepper, vinegar or a mix of liquids) and add to the drippings. Reduce the liquid to the consistency of a sauce, adjusting for seasoning (I used salt, vinegar, honey and nước mắm).

Service

Dr. Pepper-braised pork shoulder essentially means a pulled pork sandwich. So, cheapo white hamburger bun piled up with pulled pork, onion, coleslaw and pickle, and slathered with sauce.

Wine pairing

I lean towards saying “you’re kidding” since it’s essentially a pulled pork dish. I would think more beer or a soft drink like say, Dr. Pepper since it spends its time in the oven swimming in the stuff. However, a New World Merlot such as a 2002 Jackson-Triggs Family Grand Reserve Merlot could pair pretty well, since it’s got similar plummy caramel characteristics as the Dr. Pepper.

Notes

The flavor combination obviously works and there isn’t a whole lot of mise-en-place involved so it’s ideal for a set and mostly-forget dish when one is busy doing other stuff (e.g. watching Rocket Robin Hood or reading up on pharmacokinetics – whatever turns your crank). About the only serious prep was chopping cabbage for coleslaw, which I guess could be replaced if store-bought is deemed okay.

So now the challenge will be to see whether the quantity can actually be efficiently scaled up to produce enough pork for 100 sandwiches using a single oven. It can obviously be done but I have my doubts about the efficiently part as this looks more like a job for a double oven (“Here I come to save the day…”).

The ingredients for a roast pork sandwich don’t necessarily have to be assembled as a roast pork sandwich – they look nice (and taste nice) as a straight-out plating.

I thought it was so-so, because I don’t particularly care for wet sandwiches and I thought that the excess of provolone detracted from the pork and the broccoli rabe (rapini).

So why bring it up? Because rapini was on sale and I just had to pick up a bale of the stuff before promptly forgetting to eat it.

I was also scribbling to my pal Amy about her constantly being busy and I couldn’t make comments about lack of blogposts without having some updated content of my own (pot calling kettle black etc etc).

So, rather than stuff ravioli or have a very large vegetable side, I decided to go get a pork roast and redo the sandwich which omitted the elements I didn’t like. And with nicer bread, ‘cos upon reflection I realize I don’t like the bread that the Philly pork sandwich and cheese steak use either. I don’t need blah bread (this isn’t the home turf of the Westons and I know James Maguire) and since I can get good bread without having to bake it myself or ensconce myself amongst the Plateau-ites, I may as well use good bread and save some of the anger management.

Ingredients

• 1 pork roast (classic roast pork sandwich uses leg/ham, I used loin roast), approx 2 kg/4.4 lbs
• onions
• herbes de provence
• rapini, cleaned, peeled and cut into shorter lengths
• 5 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 dried Thai chili peppers
• crusty bread (I used a Parisienne from Boulangerie Le Pain dans les voiles)
• glace de viande (approximately 30 mL / 2 oz)
• apple cider
• apple cider vinegar
• apricot jam

Preparation

Coat the top of the pork roast with herbes de provence, salt and cracked pepper. Let sit 2 hours at room temperature to bring up internal core temperature of pork. Slice onions and place in the middle of a roasting pan to make a cushion for the pork roast. Preheat oven to 177ºC / 350ºF. Add 100 mL / 3.5 oz each water and apple cider to bottom of roasting pan. Set up a probe thermometer and roast pork until internal temperature reads 66ºC / 150ºF (approximately 1.5 hours depending on oven; add small amounts of liquid to maintain a moist roasting environment). Remove roast from pan, tent with foil and leave in a warm spot. Remove onions from pan and reserve.

Add additional water to deglaze bottom of pan and transfer to a small pot. Add the glace de viande and reduce this liquid, adjusting with cider, cider vinegar, jam and seasonings to create a pan sauce to taste.

Near the end of the roasting time, sauté rapini with garlic and chili peppers.

Service

Open the bread loaf as desired (cut all the way through, make slices, open like a hot dog bun, whatever turns your crank).

Thinly slice the pork roast. Dip slices into the pan sauce to coat the slices and also to warm them up slightly. Place slices into bread.

Top with rapini as desired. Add reserved roasted onions as desired. Spoon over additional sauce and serve immediately.

Notes

The Parisienne from Le Pain dans les voiles is slight too wide a loaf to work well with this sandwich, and it’s far too large to make one sandwich. Then again, it’s not like I’m going to eat a giant sandwich at any one sitting, but cutting the Parisienne into more manageable pieces sort-of detracts from the experience and also loses the all-important end pieces. I think their batard would have been a better option as a single-portion size so I’ll have to get those for the next time.

As for the sandwich fillings themselves, I like this version better since I can control what the sauce tastes like and I can control what my rapini is going to be like as well. Hand-cutting the pork results in a more toothsome slice of oink thanks to the thicker slice and not using the leg/ham affords a less oinky flavor.

For those needing wanting to add cheese like DeNic’s sandwich, they hand-cut pieces of Provolone from a large block. Regular Provolone would be kinda “meh” but a Provolone piccante could be nice. I think this could also work pretty well with Tomme de Grosse Île, Comté, or even Jarlsberg for those wanting the mild route. At this point it no longer resembles an Italo-American sandwich but one doesn’t need to be a culinary Luddite who’s hidebound by tradition.