And it all begins with getting tired of eating the same thing over again. As asians, we both enjoy eating rice, stir fry vegetables, and tofu. Not everything in one dish, but you know what I mean. But these days I noticed that D never finish his dish, and cut down from three bowls of rice to two. I said, hmmm.. from someone who gained five kgs since I moved in, eating less is not his first interest. I started to get suspicious. Maybe he has got tired of the chinese food. I am not the best chef at home, he is, but I don't have any complexity as far as cooking goes. There is a possibility that me too I am sick of rice tofu and stir fry vegetables, not everyday is tofu, but you know what I mean. As Sirli said one time in our team chat, once we don't feel like cooking our food becomes flat and not delicious. Guess this is the right time to browse some more recipes.
I consulted food network so often for the western dish, even for the boeuf bourguignon. Stayed for a long time in US I am more confortable reading the recipes in english. I might have to spend more time on the web on searching for the best french cooks, I adore the way Jacques Pépin explain how to cook, but then except for him I don't have any other reference. If you have a nice french dish blog or site to follow that you consult from time to time, please let me know, I'll be more than happy to find out.
This morning as I woke up, clicked on this recipe that I saved two days ago. It has five stars rating, but only six reviews. Compared to this one has 250 reviews with the same ratings. Difficult choice indeed, or easy rather. I hate to choose things, so, what I did was I combined the two.
Et voilà to experience the same delice we enjoyed last night you'll need:
Ingredients:
750g pork butt (en français c'est echine, you can see which part of the pork here in français, and here in english)
1 tbsp brown sugar
2 tsp paprika
1 tsp mustard
1 tsp cumin
1.5 tbsp tomato paste
1/4 cup rice vinegar (the real recipe use apple cider, if you don't have either one you can use any white vinegar)
1 can of soda cola or dr pepper
1 tbsp chili paste (or depends on how spicy you'd like; it can be sriracha or a julienne of chipotle, or anything spicy)
1 tsp vegetable oil
1 onion
salt and pepper
Direction:
Quarter the onion, if you cry while cutting onion, try taking out the roots by cutting it off slantwise forming the letter V, it works for me.
In a bowl, prepare the sauce: combine the brown sugar, paprika, mustard, cumin, tomato paste and vinegar.
Heat the oil in your cast iron casserole (or whatever casserole you decided to use where your pork butt would spend the rest of his three hours) and brown the meat in a medium fire, not too heavy for it'll burn off the meat. I took my time until it is rather brown and caramelized. Turn down the fire to low and toss in the onion, and the sauce, and the soda pop. Turn up again the fire, to bring it to boil, then turn the fire low, and close. You can open to see how your meat develop after one hour, but normally it takes three hours.
You'll know it's done when the meat is completely easy to be pulled, copying how Ree Drummond describe it in this recipe "When it's done, the pork will be dark an weird and wonderful, it'll also be fork-tender. That's when you know it's done"
For the accompaniment, we had it with, take a guess!, rice, salads, and french baguette.
Thank's to my beginner's luck, everybody was smiling ear to ear and slept so well last night. Looking forward to make more, say, soon.
