Right on cue...

Just as I'm starting to get a handle on my second new position -taking over the running of the city's Meals on Wheels operation- I've got to run out of town. Now admittedly I knew this was coming months before I took this new position and everyone relevant to it knew, but the timing is still less than stellar.

On the flip side, it's going to be fun. I'll be in Vegas handling some contracts for a chunk of the next week, which I've been looking forward to very much. A few orgs have finally bit on my physical security panels. "Clipboards and Catering Carts: Low-Tech Pentesting" got enough eyes on it that I'm being flown out to give proper in-person lectures and demonstrations.

Being noticed (and well regarded) for being invisible. It's an interesting way of things.

An Opportunity! ...As if.

Pete Wells is stepping down as the NYT Food Critic. This pleases and intrigues me, because that's a job *I* want. The relocation, I can handle. The requirements, I blow away. The expertise, I blow out of the water. The physical strain, I have no worry over. A lifetime of athletics and a thorough understanding of culinary nutrition and exercise science have left me more than prepared for fending off high blood pressure, diabetes, and gout.

Now, given the very predictable results I've seen when I put in for similar positions (Washington Post, Eater, etc), I'm not likely to get the call. But whoever they pick is almost inevitably going to crash and burn. It's all I've seen from every single not-me choice so far throughout the last several years, and I expect that to continue.

A dish I've been considering lately

No reason in particular. Certainly not a critically acclaimed expansion to Fantasy Meso/South America or anything.

'Cochinita Pibil'. It's delicious. One of a great many variations around the world of what one might call 'pulled pork' (and probably get smacked for calling it that, but it gets the gist across). It's not necessarily hard to make , but it definitely can be a bit tricky to get all of the commonly accepted essential components.

First and foremost, it's a pork dish. A slow-roasted pork dish, which means temperature control is more important than other slow cook methods like braising. Usually/traditionally it involves a whole or half pig, though for the home cooks, a sizable chunk of shoulder or butt will do nicely. If there's a fatcap or a slab of skin? Leave them on. Maybe score the fatcap with a nice crisscross to ensure faster and more even rendering, but you don't really need to play with it.

Next, the marinade. It's extremely vigorously acidic, so it shouldn't be done for too long before you get it cooking. The traditional method is heavy on the juice of the Bitter Orange / Marmalade Orange. I didn't have a lot of those, so I fine tuned with Cara Cara orange juice and Calamansi lime, both of which I happened to have on hand.

Other universal components are garlic (shocking, I know) and Achiote. The latter is a seed (looks rather like Fenugreek, actually), and when toasted/ground, provides a mild flavor and massive burst of color, somewhat akin to a red version of what you might get out of Turmeric. However much you're using is probably not enough.

One last necessary is the banana leaf. They become the vessel in which the marinated pork and other miscellany are wrapped to ensure the slow-roasting process doesn't dry it out. (I'm reminded of Beggar's Chicken there) You can usually find these frozen at Latin or Asian markets. They're pretty cheap and keep for ages.

The rest is other aromatics. You'll see varying quantities of things like Oregano, Allspice, Cinnamon (the real stuff), Peppercorns, and Bay Leaves. You'll also see additional water-heavy aromatics like onion, fresh chiles, and tomato for extra liquid generation (hedging one's bet- no way to tinker once this goes in the oven) and flavor development. I added smoked paprika to my marinade for additional color and smokiness since I didn't have access to the traditional cooking method.

My recent effort didn't use all of those spices I just listed in the marinade (a mistake, in retrospect). My concerns that the flavors would be too potent and throw off the balance of the finished dish led me to apply some of them in the preparation of the accompaniments instead. 

Most commonly this is served with a violently spicy salsa as well as pickled onion (wherein I used cinnamon, bay leaf, and smoked peppercorn to enhance my pickling liquid and apply those flavors from a different direction). I should have spiced up both. So don't be afraid to go hard.

Now, the cooking itself is interesting. The 'pibil' in the name denotes the usage of a pib, a sort of underground oven. Imagine doing this like you might a clambake, or on a campfire, covered and with coals. Since most of that's a little rough to manage in a home kitchen, I simply used the oven, and in case my banana leaves cracked open, I put everything in a lidded cast-iron pot. Wrap the pork package as airtight as you can in those banana leaves, then set it in the pot, clap the lid on, and away you go.

I mentioned temperature control. I meant it. When I say slow-roasted I mean s l o w. We're talking the 250-275F for four or five hours kind of slow. You've got to give it time for the collagen to convert to gelatin, and the tissues to break down / soften. Without the added liquid from, say, a braise, it can take longer and it's much easier to accidentally end up with a dried-out, sad result.

But that's the lot of it, really. Once it's tender, just shred it and make tacos. Meat, spicy salsa, aromatic pickled onions, maybe some cilantro. Can't beat it.

Ow!

Bit of an accident. Busted up my ribs. Spent the last couple weeks trying not to cough, sneeze, laugh, etc.

Catering gig went off without a hitch at least. Or as much as can be expected for a toddler's birthday outdoors on a 90 degree day. I hardly needed to light the chafing dishes!

New things, new gigs... and school's out!

 What a month.

New job- not a restaurant, at least not yet. I reloaded my first aid certs and got picked up as a lifeguard at the city pool, so that's a good bit of usefulness (and I didn't have to pay for the certifications, so double bonus). More work to come, I'm sure, but for now that stops the bleeding of my savings.

Catering has gone quite well too. After the last big one (which was apparently an offsite meetup for a bunch of Vtubers in the area for a convention) I'm hip deep in preparing for another big event in a couple of weeks. Summertime can mean a lot of outdoor events (Lots of summer birthday parties too! Hard to celebrate on a school night.), and not everyone wants to run a grill all afternoon or make the common backyard barbecue sides. A knack for the classics can potentially carry one quite a ways as long as they taste sufficiently better than the ones at the supermarket.

Short update- been busy!

Short version: Multiple interviews over the last week or so, things look good. I may have found a suitable position offered by staff that actually recognize what makes a perfect candidate. Shock!

Also booked a catering job near the end of the month, so that's been rather occupying as well. I realized that I hadn't updated my catering menu offerings (Or prices! Yikes!) since before the plague, so that's taken a fair bit of research and effort as well. I may do a writeup on that this week if I can squeeze it in.

Munchies: ViceTV Gives Retrospective Food-For-Thought

 

I've said this before- when you open a cookbook, you can gain an impression of the time, place, and circumstance from whence it came. Be it the photography (or lack thereof), the writing voice of the author, the people and establishments referenced, or any number of other things, almost any cookbook that's not actively trying to be a reference text (and most that are) can be dated to some greater or lesser degree. 

This is "Munchies:  Late-Night Meals From the World's Best Chefs". Sounds awesome, no? Now, this concept was a unexpectedly slow burn. Riffing on the rise of an open, honest, appreciative approach to food in entertainment media over the course of the mid-2000s, eventually VICE started leaning in with 'Chef's Night Out', a raucous mess following chefs and foodservice professionals of all sorts as they stumble through their after-work whatevers.  

It's full of the usual mix- people you might have heard of, people you'd rather never hear of again, rising stars, jaded pros, they're all here. But boy, does this incarnation read like they shanked it. Most of the stories and recipes in here are quite disjointed, as befits an attempt to turn a watched experience into a read one. They want to be interesting but often aren't articulated in ways that do them any favors. A fair number of the recipes are a long way from home kitchen friendly, and some of them seemed a rather far cry from delicious to boot. (Look. I'm not a serious cheese guy. But breading and deep-frying chunks of Camembert and drizzling them with maple syrup? I weep for that wasted syrup.)

But what Munchies does do, and rather well, is evoke a quite poignant and painful memory of a very specific period in the culinary industry's modern era- what it felt like to be a chef as the public was being made aware of / wrapping its head around the notion that working a blue-collar job might actually be okay. That it might not have to carry the social stigma that comes with long hours and inadequate pay. That maybe those things might even improve. An era of, if not comfort, at least confidence that the world might be willing to understand that the people who hold society up are the ones worth understanding and celebrating. A genuine time in food media where the concepts and attitudes that could have changed the world's perceptions of the industry essentially hit a concrete wall and vanished from the public eye what felt like overnight. 

Everything spoken of with such joy, such exuberance, is just... gone. That world has ended. Much of it died in 2016, not long before this book actually came out. It probably felt like an obituary on the New Releases shelf. What remained of the feeling this book fought for was dealt a crushing blow in 2018 with the death of Anthony Bourdain, and the plague cut down what felt like the last of it.

People are trying, here and there, but there really just isn't much to smile about in the world of food these days. Munchies tried to make it feel current with classic undertones, and frankly if the world weren't such a disaster it would be. As is though, it feels like a memorial to what could have been. A loss, and perhaps the end.