Slow-roasting a pork shoulder

I went across the river to Intermarché and bought a big piece of a hog yesterday. C'est une épaule de porc — the whole shoulder, bone-in, skin-on, and it weighs 15 lbs., or nearly 7 kilograms. I'm going to roast it today, and when I say today I mean all day long. It just barely fits in the oven.

 Here's the 15 lb. pork shoulder with a coffee mug in the picture for scale.

The price was good — at €1.95/kg, that makes it about US$1.18/lb at the current exchange rate. In other words, pork shoulder cost €13.38, the equivalent of US$17.82. The butcher at Intermarché told me I got the last one he had. I was happy, because so often he has sold out of the advertised specials by the time I get there.

I sprinkled both sides of the shoulder liberally with salt, black pepper,

smoked paprika, and piment pour harissa (hot red chilli powder).

What will I do with all that pork? I'll "pull" it to make "pulled-pork barbecue." After it cooks for 10 hours or so in a slow oven — just over 100ºC or at most 220ºF — I'll turn the oven up to high and let the roast brown a little, to give it good color and crispiness on the outside. Then I'll let it cool down before shredding the meat by pulling it apart with a couple of forks or my fingers. Finally, I'll season it with a vinegar-based sauce.

The pork shoulder just barely fit in our oven, where it will cook slowly for 10 hours.

I've never done this before. I've made pulled pork, pulled turkey, and even pulled lamb, but never on this scale. I'll be interested to see how many pounds of actual "barbecue" or meat the shoulder will yield. Luckily, pork barbecued this way freezes well and takes up minimal space in the freezer.

Wordless Wednesday

Pain de campagne in a bag

We decided to try something new. I was at the supermarket looking for rye flour (farine de seigle) but I couldn't find any. I read on a French web site that farine de seigle is not easy to find unless you go to a health food or organic grocery store. There's one in Montrichard, but I haven't driven over there yet. The Montrichard organic grocery always seems to be closed for one reason or another when I get there.

Anyway, there at Dia, on the shelves with the flour, were bags of pre-mixed bread preparations, mostly for use with une MAP (une machine à pain, or bread machine). They contain levure (yeast) and/or levain de seigle (leavening or rye-flour sourdough), salt, and different flours, depending on whether you want to make pain blanc (white bread for a regular baguette), pain complet (whole-wheat bread), or pain de campagne (country-style bread, which is mostly white flour but with 10% to 20% rye flour mixed in). That's what I bought.

I figured for a kilogram bag at one euro, I couldn't really go wrong. That much mixture will make two loaves, baguettes, or boules. Sure, the ingredient list included an emulsifier and a couple of other doubtful chemicals, but mostly it was just flour and yeast. We'd see what the result would be. We wanted to make sandwiches, and I thought the MAP mix would give us better bread than the ready-made loaves of pain de mie (American-style sandwich bread) available at the supermarket.

The result was really good, actually. I mixed the MAP preparation with water in the stand mixer and let the machine knead it for 10 minutes. I added in a tablespoon of olive oil (which wasn't an ingredient on the list on the package) because I thought it might make the bread less dry. Then Walt kneaded the dough by hand for a few minutes before putting it in a bowl in a warm place for a short first rising.

Thirty minutes later, Walt punched the dough down and shaped it into a loaf that we could cook in a loaf pan. It sat again for an hour or so until it had risen enough to nearly double in volume, covered by a kitchen towel. Finally, it went into a 230º oven for 10 minutes. To humidify the oven — make some steam — I poured a cup of hot water into the oven pan under the rack that the loaf pan sat on.

After 10 minutes, I turned the heat down to 200ºC and poured in another cup of water, since the first cupful had evaporated. Thirty minutes later, the bread was done. We had to let it cool for half an hour before we could slice it. The sandwiches were pretty good.

This kind of bread preparation is a good thing to have on hand in case the weather doesn't allow for driving to the bakery or the supermarket to buy bread one day. Or if snow and ice keep the bread lady from coming up the hill to our house, for example, and we don't have any bread stashed away in the freezer. I think I'll try some of the preparations for other kinds of bread — maybe whole wheat (pain complet) or pain aux céréales (whole-grain bread).

Four snow pictures

I think the snow is melting already, but we are supposed to get more of the stuff today. That, or maybe a mix of snow, sleet, and rain. So it's going to be a slushy mess, as the half-melted mush re-freezes and more falls on top of it. I'm not sure when the real thaw is supposed to set in.

This looks like a sepia-tone photo, but it's actually in color. It's the kitchen window view.

This is the time to enjoy how pretty the snow was yesterday, and to be happy if you don't have to go to work somewhere. The lead story on the news is what a hassle getting to work in the Paris region will be for commuters this morning. Paris had as much as four inches of snow in places, and it stuck. That's pretty rare, they said on last night's news report.

Bare grape stems in the snow

The snow ended yesterday, early in the afternoon. At that point, only one car had driven by our house, and it was headed down the hill, not up it. The car had come in by way of the gravel road through the vineyard, which doesn't involve climbing a slippery slope. Later in the day, the village sent a little snow plow through, making our road slightly more passable (I guess).

That's Walt in the back window, watching me and Callie come back from the morning walk.

We called the friends in Saint-Aignan who had invited us to dinner and expressed our regrets. It was still snowing at that point, and it looked like getting the car out would be difficult if not impossible. The problem is that just getting the car onto the little road means getting up a slippery little slope. In past winters, we've had a lot of trouble getting the Peugeot out through the front gate. Once we went sliding sideways and nearly rammed into a fence post.

The back yard yesterday morning, 20 January 2013

We're going to survey the situation and see about going out tonight. However, the weather report on TéléMatin just said that we are still in the winter weather warning zone for more snow or sleet and icy conditions. My guess is that it will be better to stay in unless we absolutely have to venture out, or the temperature suddenly rises and the ice and snow melt away.