And now...

...for something completely different. The contrast between where we used to live and where we live now is striking when you look at these photos I've found in my archives. Just compare them to the ones I've posted over the past week.

I took this shot from about 20 miles south of San Francisco, in Belmont, California,

where I was working in January 2002. I had just acquired a Canon Pro90IS

digital camera with a long zoom. That's the Bay Bridge on the right.

Since Walt is showing pictures from New York, I thought I'd go across the country to San Francisco. We lived there from 1986 until 2003, when we packed up and moved to France.

I took this shot from the S.F. neighborhood where we lived from 1995 until 2003.

We didn't have this view from our windows, though — I had to walk a ways.

All these pictures were taken in December and January — some in the late 1990s, and others in the early 2000s. As you can see, the weather out there was often beautiful in wintertime. It was the windy, foggy, chilly summers you had to watch out for.

This one is a view of downtown San Francisco from Twin Peaks at sunset.

I got my first digital camera in 1998, I think it was, thanks to CHM and Walt. They went together and bought it for me as a Christmas present. Digital cameras were expensive back then.

Here's another shot from our S.F. neighborhood. Looks like it was a smoggy day.

That same Christmas, I bought Walt a new film camera and some lenses. He wasn't ready to go digital yet. Though that first digital camera is long gone, I still have the 2002 Canon digital camera and it works perfectly, but I never use it any more. It's too big and bulky. I probably couldn't give it away, much less sell it, at this point. I'm sure Walt couldn't sell that old film camera.

The Renaudie crew

Yesterday I changed my blog banner photo to match the season. January. Cold. The photo itself is not great, but it conveys the message.

Our house is visible in the distance.
As always, you can click on the picture to see it at a larger size.

Here's a photo of the vehicle the vineyard workers drive to work in. They've been driving the same little white van for at least 9 years now — or ten. This is our tenth January in Saint-Aignan.

A wide view of part of the vineyard — this was a much sun as we got all day long.

The Domaine de la Renaudie's vineyard crew is two men and a woman, all in — probably — their 30s. They work together in every seasons and through all kinds of weather. They like Callie, but Callie is a little afraid of them when they're all bundled up in their winter clothes.

Moon day — le jour de la lune

I'm not sure that I knew that Monday meant "the day of the moon." It's obviously the same thing in French: lundi, ou « le jour de la lune ».

If there's a moon these days, we wouldn't know it. Skies are gray, gray, gray. The news readers say a lot of people are experiencing symptoms attributable to a vitamin D deficiency, including douleurs musculaires and fatigue. And here I was thinking it was just old age...

They also say we might get a few snowflakes today or tomorrow. Paris and areas north of there are supposed to get some actual snow. The temperature here in Saint-Aignan is below freezing this morning, for the first time in a long time.

There was a big demonstration in Paris yesterday organized by people who are opponents of what is being called « le mariage pour tous », or "marriage equality." According to the news, it wasn't big enough to change the Hollande government's plan to introduce the bill in parliament this year. They have the votes to pass it. If there had been a million demonstrators in the streets yesterday, it could have been a turning point. It was half a million. That's what they are saying.

The pictures here show some trees around the vineyard.

Silent Sunday

La tablette

S0 I got a tablet computer. I'm not quite what to say about it. It's another gadget. A nice one, I think. For me, it's more a reader than anything else. I can sit on the sofa or in a comfortable chair and read articles or blogs on it, holding it in my hand or on my lap.

I can put my recipe collection on it and use it as a cookbook when I'm working in the kitchen. I need to get a stand (docking station) for it, I think. Or just a book stand of some kind.

Reading material

I'll be using the tablet at home much more than when I'm out and about. It replaces printers, toner or ink cartridges, and paper. That represents a certain savings. I could go through a lot of paper in a year's time. It didn't get wasted — I could print on both sides, and then we could burn the used paper in the wood stove to get fires going. But still.

A photo viewer

The tablet will be handy when I'm traveling too, but that's not very often these days. I do plan a trip to the U.S. soon, and that will be the first test. I won't be able to compose blog posts on the tablet, or at least not easily, but I will be able to read blogs, and read and send e-mails. The tablet will be a lot easier to carry around than a laptop computer.

A tablet the size of a book, but a lot thinner

Because of the heft of the thing, both for holding as a reading device and for traveling, I decided to go for a tablet with a 7-inch screen. I decided it was more important to have a lot of internal storage space rather than a larger display. This one has 32 GB of storage. The screen is bright and sharp, and it's covered with a sheet of Corning glass that protects it.

Look what I just found: a picture-frame stand that can hold the tablet computer upright.

It's a wifi-only tablet, with no cellular phone access to the Internet. I'm not connected enough to need cell phone features — I don't use a cell phone. Alors — what tablet is it? It's a Google Nexus 7, produced by Asus (AsusTek Computers Inc.). After reading a lot of reviews, I chose this one. That was partly for price.

On my "fixed" income, I couldn't afford many of the competing models. I paid 249 € on Darty.com, with free shipping. That price includes the 19.6% sales tax (TVA). I ordered the Nexus on Tuesday and it arrived on Thursday at noon, with the day's mail delivery. Once I decided to buy the tablet in France, so that it would have a legal (French) guarantee, I couldn't wait any longer.

Flashback to another life

It's strange to find a piece of your private life displayed on the internet. I say that, and here I am doing it again.

Nearly every Sunday, I look at the real estate section of the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper to see if the house we sold there before we moved to Saint-Aignan might be for sale again. A couple of weeks ago, I found this site. It shows the photos taken by a real estate agent to advertise our San Francisco house for sale.

The house on Congo Street didn't look like much from the street,
but it felt spacious inside. We transformed the place over the years
we lived there, including having a new kitchen put in.
We and the dog enjoyed the little back garden.

We had bought the house in 1995 and lived there for 7½ years out of the total of 17½ years that we lived in California. In March 2003, we handed over the keys to the new owners and took a long driving trip across the U.S., through Southern California and Illinois (and a lot of other states) to my mother's house in North Carolina. We spent a month there before being granted long-stay visas by the French consulate and flying off to begin this life in Saint-Aignan.

We had three bedrooms and two bathrooms. That was comfortable.
The house was built of wood, inside and out.

When we came to France in December 2002 to assess the possibility of buying a house here, we didn't know that we would soon be leaving California and relocating to France. We hadn't yet talked about selling our house. We were just exploring, or dreaming. We thought we might buy a small house in France as a holiday and retirement home, but continue living and working California for a few more years.

We also had two living rooms, effectively, and that was a luxury.
This was the "family room" where I had my office.

 It was only when we got back from the trip, having found the house we live in now, that it all became clear. We called in some real estate agents to help us figure out if it was realistic to think about moving. It turned out that our house, emptied out and more or less "staged" by the realtors, sold so fast that our heads were spinning. And then the buyers gave us just 30 days to clear out. We did it.

We had a sort of semi-obstructed view of San Francisco Bay from the living room windows.

Those people have now been living in "our" house for nearly ten years, and we've been living here. It's hard to believe ten years have gone by so fast. Sometimes I think I might wake up and realize this has all been a dream. I'll have to go down to the garage, back the VW out onto Congo Street, and drive for an hour or two (or even three) to an office in Silicon Valley. And do it over and over again, day after day, year after year...

Please don't wake me up.

Haircuts, car inspections, and cooking implements

I went to see Mme Barbier down in the village center (le bourg) yesterday to get my quarterly shearing — ma tonte trimestrielle. When I called her the day before to ask for a rendez-vous, if she wasn't too busy to take me on such short notice, she said no, things are very calmes right now. In fact, I was her only customer, and nobody so much as rang the telephone during the 45 minutes I spent in the chair. I hope her business isn't falling off. I got a good haircut, as usual.

Friends of ours in front of Mme Barbier's salon de coiffure a few years ago

After the haircut, I drove like a maniac in second and third gears up the hill out of the river valley and onto the heights where there's nothing but fields, vineyard plots, and a few farmhouses scattered around. I was on my way to have my car re-inspected, and I wanted to give the engine one more workout before I took it in. I wanted the engine to be good and hot, so I kept it revving at 3500 to 4000 RPMs all the way over there.

And it seemed to work. When I arrived at the DEKRA centre de contrôle technique, there were no other cars or customers in sight. I had all the paperwork with me, and I found a lonely technician in the facility's one heated room, the office, busy working on a computer. I noticed that he had a D-Link modem/router and also some kind of Netgear box by the computer printer, and all the devices were covered in a thick layer of brown, greasy-looking dust. There were cobwebs too.

A DEKRA centre de contrôle technique automobile (vehicle inspection station)

I told the man that I had come in for a required contre-visite after a failed inspection in December, and that I'd be glad whether he could do the job immediately or whether he wanted to set up a rendez-vous for later in the week or month. He said he could perform the pollution test on the car immediately. Tant mieux. I told him my mechanic had said the contre-visite, or follow-up appointment, was already paid for. He didn't know anything about that, he said, but he called the mechanic and then didn't say anything else about a need for me to pay anything.

The technician, all smiles and good cheer (« Bonne année, monsieur, et meilleurs vœux. Bonne santé surtout... ») asked me for the vehicle's carte grise (the official registration document) and proceeded to enter a bunch of numbers and letters into a little tablet computer, which was also pretty grimy but seemed to be in good working order. Then he took my car key and went out to pull the Peugeot into the garage, where he hooked it up to a couple of machines.

This is a silicone financiers mold. See below.

He put a sonde or probe of some kind into the oil filler tube where the dipstick goes. It was hooked up to a computer. Then he put some kind of apparatus on the floor of the garage, behind the car, and attach a hose to the exhaust pipe. He turned on the computer, got behind the wheel of the Peugeot, and then followed the on-screen instructions. ACCÉLÉREZ, the computer screen read. He did. He had the engine revving as fast as I had revved it a few minutes earlier, and for about as long.

LÂCHEZ, the computer screen said, and he took his foot off the champignon (the accelerator — do you remember cars with an accelerator that looked like a mushroom? I do.). The computer screen displayed some numbers and symbols that were too small for me to read from a distance. Then it flashed ACCÉLÉREZ in big letters again, and the man did. This went on for several minutes. ACCÉLÉREZ. LÂCHEZ. I noticed some white smoke coming out of the car's tailpipe, but not too much. Diesel engines do tend to produce a certain amount of smoke.

Finally it was over, and the car passed muster. Whew! I wondered what I was going to have to do if it failed again. I guess the additive the mechanic sold me to put into the fuel tank was efficace. I only ran about half of it through the engine, though, because we put it in the tank back in December and then filled the tank with diesel fuel, as per the mode d'emploi on the container. The fuel gauge was still on about one-half full yesterday morning. Whatever, because it worked.

Six-hole and twelve-hole plats à escargots for cooking snails and snail butter

Afterward, I went over to the Facile housewares and hardware store just around the corner to look around. I was looking for the special dishes that you cook escargots in, like the ones above, but I couldn't find any. Maybe they had them in stock before the holidays and sold out. But I did find a silicone moule à financiers (a special pan for cooking the little loaf-shaped almond cakes called financiers — gold bars). Now I'll have to make some of those. Today and maybe tomorrow, though, we'll still be "working on" (that means "enjoying" in U.S. restaurant parlance) that American-style apple pie that Walt made day before yesterday.

The Archos wireless internet radio doubles as a small-screen tablet computer.

On another subject: I'm optimistic that my new tablet computer might be delivered today. The Darty web site says it was shipped day before yesterday, and mail usually doesn't take more than two days to get from one place to another in France. I'm pretty excited about the tablet. For a few weeks now, I've been doing most of my reading and a lot of my web surfing on the little 3½-inch screen of the Archos 35 Home Connect tablet/radio that I bought last September. The new tablet's screen will be twice as big. I'll go back to using the Archos as a radio, which was the original plan.

Shades of gray

Skies around Saint-Aignan have stayed very gray for days and days now. The weather is about to change, but not necessarily in a good way. Today our low gray clouds are supposed to turn into... dreary rain, which is moving in from Brittany and the Atlantic Ocean.

Then it's supposed to turn cold. You really have to find ways to entertain yourself over the winter in this part of the world. Cooking, of course, is one of my preferred pastimes. Not to mention eating. And walking the dog.

These are pictures I've taken recently around the neighorhood. Here's our back yard in winter.

Another activity that helps make the time pass is surfing the web. Learning something new. Reading blogs and newspaper articles on the computer. Writing a blog. Taking and processing photos.

So I bought myself a new computer yesterday. It's a tablet. I'm supposed to get it on Friday, delivered to the front door. I found the model I wanted at a reasonable price chez Darty, which is a chain of stores selling computers, home electronics, and appliances of all kinds. There's a bricks-and-mortar Darty store up in Blois.

A linden (or "lime") tree in the back yard, with our grape vines and apple and hazelnut trees.

I decided to buy the computer here in France rather than in the U.S. on my upcoming trip. Computers cost more here. The sales tax is 20%, for example, while in the U.S. I can buy a computer tax-free. And then the dollar is low against the euro, so prices seem higher here.

Neighbors' houses

At the same time, if I'm not satisfied with the new computer for any reason, I will be able to (try to) get it exchanged or replaced by the local merchant. Having to send something like a tablet computer back to the U.S. for repair, replacement, or exchange would be a nightmare.

The weed-filled pond out back, and our hedge and house

Another factor in buying a computer is the keyboard. Did you know that every country has its own peculiar keyboard layout? There are French French, Belgian French, Swiss French, and Canadian French keyboards, for example, and they are all at least slightly different. Certain keys are in unexpected places when you are used to your own country's — the U.S., in my case — keyboard layout.

On the French French keyboard, for example, the A and Q keys are swapped (Q is a character that is much used in French, with words like que, qui, quoi, quel, quand, and on and on). The Z and W keys are swapped too. The comma is in the wrong place, and the period is a shifted character. All the numbers are shifted characters too. If you are used to typing by touch, without looking at the keyboard much, you are in trouble.

Another view of the back yard

Even the British English keyboard is different from the American English keyboard (but only slightly — the @ key is in a different place, for example). I have a laptop computer with a British keyboard — I ordered it from Amazon in the United Kingdom. Walt and I both have British keyboards on our desktop computers. I had to order mine separately, from England, because the French computer I bought (a Dell) came with a French keyboard.

An apple tree reflected in the weedy waters of the pond

The nice thing about the tablet computer is that it doesn't have a physical, hardware keyboard. It has a virtual keyboard that pops up on the screen when you need it. You don't really type on it; you just "hunt and peck" — or hunt and tap, actually. That means I can buy the computer here in France without worrying about such details as keyboard layouts.

Rouelle de jambon de porc

The pork roast that I cooked a few days ago, and that we buy regularly at the supermarket for roasting, braising, or stewing, is usually called a rouelle de porc, or pork round (steak). It's a lean cut — a thick slice of lean pork with a round bone in the middle.

French supermarket advertising showing a "fresh ham" (jambon frais) and a

"fresh ham steak" (rouelle de jambon de porc) — both are economical cuts.

Sometimes you see the rouelle called a rouelle de jambon, and that does confuse the matter. Most people think the terms "ham" or,  in French, « jambon » are applied only cuts of cured pork. The fact is, the ham, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, is simply:

1. The thigh of the hind leg of certain animals, especially a hog.
2. A cut of meat from the thigh of a hog.

The definition doesn't say anything about whether or not the ham has been "cured" by brining, salting, or smoking. You can buy and cook "fresh ham" or "cured ham." Fresh ham is a "leg of pig" (on the model of "leg of lamb") that has not been cured or cooked in any way. It's a pork roast from the hind leg of the hog.

Here's the Google image page for "fresh ham" and the Google French image page for « rouelle de jambon ».

The presentable side of the rouelle de porc I cooked the other day...

...and the less presentable side

Since the fresh ham has not been salted, brined, or smoked in any way — it's fresh, un-cured, un-cooked meat — it doesn't require soaking in fresh water before cooking. When I was growing up in North Carolina, I believe that my mother often cooked fresh ham, so it's certainly not unknown in the U.S. (or Canada too, according to what I see on the web). Maybe we had fresh ham because a lot of hogs are raised in the region, and not all of them end up as salt- or smoke-cured meat.

Some people might call the cut I'm describing "raw ham," but that can get complicated when you translate it into French. We all think that pork has to be cooked before being consumed, and is never eated raw. However, the word for word translation of "raw ham" into French is « jambon cru », but jambon cru is a salt-cured ham, sometimes lightly smoked, that can be eaten "raw." What we call "prosciutto" in the U.S. is Italian "raw" ham — in France, it's called jambon de Parme (produced in Parma, Italy). It's dry-cured with salt and eaten, uncooked, in thin slices. The curing makes it safe to eat.

 A slow-roasted slice of fresh ham might be called a rouelle de porc confite in French.

The best-known French version of cured ham is jambon de Bayonne, from southwest France, but there's also jambon de Vendée (a province on the Atlantic coast), jambon de Savoie (from the Alps) and so on. All are jambon cru, sometimes called jambon sec ("dried" ham) or jambon de pays (local or "country" ham). Some are salt-cured and then just dried; others are smoked. The kind of ham you put on a regular ham sandwich is called jambon de Paris or jambon blanc ("white ham"), which is cooked and only lightly brined and smoked. We might call it Danish ham.

In France, you can also buy cuts of pork that are called « porc demi-sel » — think "salt pork" in the U.S., but here the pork is much more lightly salted. I've come to the conclusion that it is brined rather than salted, and it's called pork (or other meats or poultry) « traité en salaison », or brine-cured. (The smoked chickens that I buy at the supermarket are labeled as traité en salaison. In other words, they are brined and then hot-smoked — they are actually cooked during the smoking, so you can eat them cold right out of the package or you can re-heat them.)

Here's an illustration from www.universboucherie.com showing a fresh ham
either whole or cut into slices like rouelles or escalopes.

"Salted" meats need to be soaked in fresh water for a while, or even in several changes of fresh water over a period of many hours, before they are cooked and served. Otherwise they can be too salty. Salt cod is treated that way, as are cured hams in the U.S. — Smithfield hams or country ham, for example. Salt-cured ham in Europe is safe to eat "raw" and when you eat cold meats, you eat very thin slices with bread so the saltiness isn't so exaggerated. Meats like ham and pâtés that are served cold need to be over-salted, in fact, so that they won't taste bland.

Demi-sel cuts of pork, which are brined the way you might brine your Thanksgiving turkey before roasting it, don't need soaking before cooking. It's optional.

Another French supermarket ad image...

A "fresh ham" or « jambon frais » is just another fresh pork roast. You roast it the way you would any other cut of fresh pork, except that the ham can be gigantic — 15 to 30 pounds — so it needs long, slow cooking (poaching or roasting) to cook all the way through without burning on the outside. That's why in France the fresh ham is cut into thick steaks that you can buy in the supermarket. They cook much more quickly, and they benefit from stewing, braising, or slow-roasting because they are a very lean meat.

Fresh ham, sprouts, and a crown of potatoes

Recently I decided to make something in the kitchen that I had seen on Ivan's blog, A Normandy Kitchen. Ivan is a British man who has professional training as a cook, and he makes amazing dinners and takes beautiful photos of the food he cooks.

An oven-roasted slice of fresh ham with Brussels sprouts and a crown of potatoes

The dish that caught my eye this time was something Ivan calls a "potato crown." You can see it on his blog here. Mine didn't come out exactly the same as his, but it was good in its own way. A crown of potatoes is a layer of mashed potato studded with whole or halved small potatoes, as you'll see.

I used potatoes of the Charlotte variety. Charlottes are sort of all-purpose pommes de terre — they are waxy enough to stand up to boiling without falling apart, and they are mealy enough to be good as sauteed or French-fried potatoes. Or as mashed potaotes. They served my purpose.

Since the Charlottes weren't uniform in size, I picked through them and chose the ones that were long and skinny. I figured I could cook them until they were nearly done and then cut pieces of the same length (or height) to use "whole" (not mashed), and then I could make mashed potatoes out of the pieces and whole potatoes I had left.

What you do is to stand the cut (or whole small) potatoes up on their pointy end in a buttered or oiled dish, packed together so that they won't fall over. Then you make fairly stiff mashed potatoes and spread a layer of them over the top of the others. Put the dish in a medium oven and let it cook as long as an hour, until the top of the mashed potato has browned and all the potato has had time to cook through completely. To serve it, turn it out of the dish so that the whole potatoes form the "jewels" in the crown.

The texture combination of whole boiled and mashed potato is pretty good.

The rest of the meal was a pork roast — a so-called rouelle, which is a thick slice of fresh ham — and some Brussels sprouts that we had in the fridge. After browning the meat slightly, uncovered, in a hot oven, I turned down the heat and cooked the pork roast long (four hours) and slow (150ºC, 300ºF) in a covered pan in the oven, on a bed of sliced onions, celery stalks, and bay leaves. I poured in some white wine and sprinkled some olive oil and dried thyme over the top of the lean cut of pork.

When we make Brussels sprouts, we often blanch or parboil them first, then slice them in half and sauté them in olive oil or butter. You can see them in the first photo up above. A little flour sprinkled on during the sautéing gives them a nice golden-brown crust.

Living in a vineyard

I never imagined that I would one day live in a vineyard. Maybe I should have suspected that a vineyard would be a good place for me — a good fit. It's not just about the wine it produces. Having the vineyard out back is like having your own private park and hiking area right outside the back gate, and other people to take care of it and keep it beautiful.

When an individual plant dies, the vigneron plants a new one inside a 

cut-off mineral water bottle. The bottle must protect it from pests

that would otherwise damage the tender new plant.

The vineyard is a good place for walking, and an interesting environment to explore, in any season — even winter. It's emblematic of France, a country so orderly and manicured that it sometimes seems to be just one big park.

Callie the collie's view of the vineyard — she just has to choose a row.

The vineyard is an especially good place for walks with a dog. There are dog runs everywhere, and Callie enjoys running up and down the rows of vines just as our first dog, Collette, did. There are seldom any people out there, except the five or six workers who trim the vines and repair the support wires. We know all of them. And there are plenty of animals — deer, hares, small rodents, pheasants, woodpeckers, ravens, and even badgers — to keep the walks exciting.

The Renaudière vineyard on a recent clear day

Yesterday our neighbors D & A invited us over for apéros, reciprocating for our invitation to them before Christmas and wishing us a happy 2013. They showed us pictures of their house as it was back in the 1970s, when they bought it. What a transformation! Of course, they worked on it every summer for 30 years before finally retiring down here a few years ago.

B & W

I went out and took a lot of pictures yesterday morning to show what the Saint-Aignan area really looks like this winter. Here's one showing our house and the vineyard out back in black and white (slightly sepia).

It's less colorful most days than some of my recent pictures might have led you to believe. It's still picturesque, though — and atmospheric. There are bright days, and then there are a lot of gray days.

Yesterday afternoon we drove home from the village of Couffy, east of Saint-Aignan, after a long lunch with friends, passing through Châteauvieux and Beauval back to our house at La Renaudière. Most of the route took us through vineyards. A lot of cars (especially LWVs — "little white vans") were parked all along the roads, and a lot of men (des vignerons) were out pruning the vines (les vignes). The weather is damp but mild, and the work has to be done.

Ham hock? Pork shank?

I've been reading about shanks and hocks. They're the same thing, I gather. The term "hock" is applied mostly to pork shanks, and the full term is "ham hock." In French, that's either jarret de porc (shank) or jambonneau (hock).

The term shank applied to jarrets or jambonneaux seems to be more American than British. What we call veal "shank" in the U.S. might be called "shin" or "knuckle" of veal in Great Britain. I can't affirm that as truth or fact, but that's what I see in the Collins-Robert dictionary. It also translates jambonneau, which I'd call "ham hock," as "knuckle of  ham." Never mind that it's more accurately the ankle of the animal than an actual knuckle.

You might not recognize this as a way to cook and serve a ham hock.

Usually, what we call a "hock" is cured meat, as is the corresponding jambonneau in France. It can be smoked or salt-cured, and in France the cured hock is often boned out and reshaped into a familiar form. You see them in charcuteries covered in bread crumbs and ready to be sliced and served (here's a photo). In fact, there are hundreds of photos of ham hocks here.

The hock is the shank or lower end of the ham or pork shoulder — in other words, it can come from either the front or back leg of the hog. The term "hock," by the way derives from the old English word for "heel," according to the dictionary I looked at.

Poach the fresh ham hock with aromatic vegetables and spices.

At any rate, I bought a jarret de porc a few days ago and cooked it. It was a fresh, uncured cut. It seemed like the best way to cook it would be by poaching or simmering it with onions, garlic, carrots, and celery, with salt, black pepper, and some allspice berries. I also threw a couple of dried hot red chili peppers into the broth.

Leftovers

The shank or jarret, as I'm sure you know, is not an inherently tender morsel. It's not really fatty, even though it's covered with a layer of fat and skin that can be left on or removed before cooking. All that skin (called "rind" as in fried pork rinds) and fat, along with the bone and connective tissue holding the piece all together, produced a lot of gelatin and collagen when poached or simmered. The fresh hock needs long, slow simmering or braising. You end up with a lot of rich stock to use in making soups and sauces.

After the pork shank had cooked for a couple of hours in barely simmering water, I took it out and let it cool to the point where I could handle it without burning myself. I first cut off the layer of rind and fat. Then I pulled all the meat off the bones and trimmed away the cartilage and tendons (the dog is having a feast of all that as a supplement to her daily ration of kibble).

It's not the most beautiful piece of pork cooked this way, but it's delicious and inexpensive.

I left the meat in fairly large pieces and put it in a baking dish with some big chunks of  winter vegetables: Jerusalem artichokes (AKA "sunchokes" or topinambours), rutabagas, carrots, and parsnips. You could add potatoes or sweet potatoes. I put a little bit of the ham hock broth in the bottom of the pan to provide some steam to cook the vegetables and further tenderize the meat.

Then I brushed the meat with some barbecue sauce I had made using sweet and hot red chili sauces from China along with some soy sauce (dark and light), ginger, rice vinegar, and garlic. Any good barbecue sauce you like would work, or none at all — you could just brush the meat and vegetables with olive oil.

"Barbecued" poached pork shank with roasted root vegetables

Put the pan back in the oven at a medium temperature and let it cook until the vegetables are tender and have started to brown. Baste it all with the broth and sauce in the bottom of the pan. Serve it just like that.