Cooking Blog 2: Eastern Carolina Jerk Pork

 

Let me tell you about Barbecue and about Jerk sauce.

Living in North Carolina I have become familiar with two distinct schools of thought on barbecue sauce. They both incorporate the same two basic components, tomato sauce and vinegar, but Eastern Barbecue emphasizes the vinegar and the Western tradition emphasizes the tomatos.

Anyway, so I got some Jerk sauce from the Teeter, but it ended up being mostly just molasses. It wasn’t even spicy, just syrup. So it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to try to cut it Eastern Barbecue style, and I added a tablespoon or two of Cheyenne pepper and crushed red peppers.

For this meal I then marinated a pork chop (in my case, defrosted it in a plastic bag with the sauce in a pot of water). Preheated the oven to 425, and cooked it in the marinade, rotating it in the oven occasionally for fourty-five minutes. It would probably be better with rice, but I only had potatoes so I mashed them.

Ideally for the sauce you would want to still have more molasses than vinegar but tonight, I ran out of molasses. 😦

In the picture you can see some grilled and kinda pickled zucchini that ended up being like a little pile of wusabi on the plate that I covered the pork with. That stuff just about kicked my teeth in, if there’s interest then I’ll tell you how that happened.

I do everything

So I, it turns out, am able to feed myself competently in this world. This represents one such success.

I took a gallon sized plastic bag and put a chicken breast, some olive oil and some garlic powder in it and submerged it in warm water. Until it thawed.

While this was going on I skinned, deseeded and cubed a cucumber.  I put this in a tupperware and added (a tiny amount of) salt, and then closed it and shook it up. Then I added sour cream and dill (dried dill, you can buy fresh and it will taste better, but will you use the rest of it before it expires? dried dill lasts longer), you want to be able to see the dill in the final product, then I shook it again.

Then I rolled and smoked a blunt, one day, perhaps, we will get there.

When the chicken thawed I cut it into cubes and removed the fat and veins. Then I greased a pan and cooked the chicken over a burner.

When that was done I loaded the chicken into a pita, then spooned the cucumber mix on top of that.  I sprinkled some feta cheese on top of that.

Sorry, I don’t measure anything. If this is incoherent as a recepie to you then I understand, but to others it will make sense and now you know why you will never see me bake anything.

There is, I have found in my life, a huge difference between people who build their life on well measured preparations, and people who ad lib their way through compromises. You know if I say tablespoon that the facts on th ground will be however many shakes you judge appropriate.

Think about that, but know that the reason there is only half a sandwhich there is because I devoured the bigger, more delicious looking half before I convinced myself to start blogging “what I ate for dinner.”

Bam.

It just happened.

Bobby  Flay probably wouldn’t approve of my methods, if you can interpret that recepie then god bless you and know you are a kindred soul.