crunchy numbers.

For future reference:

30 picnic guests=
4kg bone-in pork shoulder
5kg chicken wings
9kg beef brisket
2 kilos tomatoes
80 mini buns
4kg potato salad
2 cucumbers and 2 onions' worth of bread and butter pickles
1 head of cabbage worth of slaw
2 pork tenderloins

It was *all* eaten over the course of 4 hours or so.

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notational.

The recipe worked perfectly, apparently even defying the laws of physics and biology to allow me to cook 8 pounds of pork butt in 4 hours. And, for posterity, a 4kg shoulder yielded 1 liter of pulled pork, do NOT ask me how that metric shit works, I just look at the packaging and what my containers say they hold; science and math do/does the rest.

Our full contribution to the ghost-pepper-centric menu tomorrow is as follows, because I'm a senile old man and keep losing the scraps of paper where I keep writing it down:

Georgia-style BBQ pulled pork with raw sweet onion on squishy little white buns
red cabbage chipotle-buttermilk slaw
a nicely mustardy potato salad
bread and butter peach-cucumber pickle

chicken wings two ways:
1) brined for slightly too long (4 hours was just on the verge of too salty, I'd do two next time) and tossed in Momofuku's octo vinaigrette (soy, garlic, ginger, rice vinegar, sesame oil, scallions)
2) spice-rubbed and tossed in a lemon ghost brown butter (unsalted butter, whole dried ghost pepper, lemon zest, lemon juice, miniscule amounts of Frank's and Old Bay.

maybe a smoked ghost jerk tenderloin if i feel uppity

probably not:
ghost pepper oil (details undetermined)
ghost pepper-pickled mustard seeds (if I can make it work)

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pigpickin.

Someone please remind me that I put the pork in at 4:30pm, noon would be smarter but as we all know, etc. This is 8.3 lbs of pork, it should be done cooking by next month or so.

I can't emphasize enough how helpful these pages are if you're not a pork butt scholar.

tenderpoke.

This was something I made while the O'Neills were here, it worked out very comfortingly with a mango-lime salsa, roasted garlic mash and those runner beans. It looks/sounds a little bit fusion-y but I think at least the pork is very close to an actual Surinamese recipe, though the Dijon may be pushing it a little bit. This would also work pleasantly on seafood as well.

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pork tenderloin with soy, mustard, ginger, habanero.

1/4 cup brown sugar
1/8 cup Dijon mustard
1/8 cup soy sauce
1 medium scallion, chopped fine
1 tbsp grated fresh ginger
2 tbsp minced garlic
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1 to 2 tsp Surinamese piccalilly
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/8 tsp ground cloves
salt and pepper to taste

4 small pork tenderloins

Combine everything except pork in a saucepan and gently heat until sugar is melted. Pour over pork and marinate for at least 4 hours, or possibly overnight. At dinner time, pour marinade into a saucepan and gently simmer for at least 10 minutes while pork cooks. Bake/broil pork for 10-15 minutes and let rest for 5-10.

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i've got a lovely bún chả.

Even without the rice noodles and nước chấm, this is totally worth doing, but yes doing the whole thing as intended is probably pretty spectacular (stolen from here). Basically you make a quick Vietnamese caramel sauce for 8 minutes, cool it down, then add that plus shallot, fish sauce, etc to the ground pork and let it marinate for a couple hours. Then make small patties or balls out of the mixture and pan-fry or bake them and serve them with nuoc cham, lettuce leaves for wrapping and fresh herbs. Or also with rice noodles as originally intended (in fact, the noodles are the bún, so really my version without them is just...chả?).

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bun cha (vietnamese pork meatballs).

2 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp hot water
2 tbsp cold water

450g/1 pound ground pork or pork/beef mix
1 large shallot, or half a red onion, minced fine
3 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp cilantro, chopped fine
1 red Holland chile or jalapeño, seeded and minced (optional)
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 head iceberg or Bibb lettuce

fresh cilantro

fresh mint

sriracha
homemade quick cucumber pickle

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true, grits.

One gift leads to another. A certain giant man donated some uncooked pork belly leftover from a BBQ at his place. A certain tiny commanding presence had previously donated some real Carolina grits to our pantry.

Today the two met in a showdown of epic proportions (the pork belly and the grits).

This is Momofuku's Shrimp and Grits recipe. Yes that egg is big and weird-looking. But this was a total chompfest, another one of those underdog recipes from the book that doesn't seem like it can really be all that special, but in the end the mix of textures and flavors results in something potentially classic that just presses every single right button.

Quick notes to self: 4 to 1 liquid (1 part broth 3 parts water) to grits ratio (with these slow-cooking grits); grits needed 15-20 minutes after the first 5-minute starch thingie neurotic whisking frenzy; and they only needed half the amount of butter called for, though I can see how more would've been ok. Pork belly sugared, salted and slow cooked as if for steamed buns then dusted with smoked paprika: real bacon would've been quite different both in terms of salt and smoke. Just used vegetable bouillon instead of the ramen broth. The shrimp themselves were pure and great, involving a quick salt and oil marinade and some extra spatula pressure.

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404.

I'm in the ATL. Above: the standard welcoming antipasti at Tomanek Assisted Living & Bar and Grill. Below: it's Durians Weekend starting today, and I am the cook for the first night. I roasted yet another pork shoulder (Boston butt they call it here) and split it into poblano chile pork and ancho chile pork, to be served with corn tortillas, red onions, pico de gallo, maybe pineapple-serrano salsa, etc etc etc. The pork took about 5 hours at 325F, longer than I'd planned, so Dennis and I were smashing garlic and squeezing limes from 22:30 to 23:30 last night.

They're both super-simple recipes, the red is just six or eight whole pureed anchos plus guajillo and chipotle powders; the green is four fire-roasted poblanos, a can of tomatillos, and a handful of chopped pickled jalapenos. Plus an onion and half a head of garlic each. They both use the same seasoning from the shoulder I did in Phoenix (cumin, oregano, cinnamon, clove, black pepper). The red has an extra pinch of cinnamon; the green has a touch of honey and lime.

labor day.

Flexeril still working wonders on my sleep, I feel like a new man, or at least the man I was a few weeks ago.

Today is Labor Day in America, a holiday which for many people involves grilling large pieces of meat outdoors and highly social get-togethers with ze family and friends. And obviously drinking copious amounts of low-impact beer. I will only be doing the family social option b/c it is way too hot outside to grill during the day here. And because, well, this is a wine household.

AND, because some voracious-type meat-eaters are coming over today, I slow-cooked a giant pork shoulder last night (pictured below, vegetarians and temporarily vegan dad avert your eyes) and this morning I am metamorphosizin' it into green chile pork using those fresh-roasted Bueno New Mexican chiles from a few posts ago. I flat-out done stole some recipe ideas from a lot of places and what's happening seems pretty good so far, so I'm going to make a note or two below.

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green chile pork.

2 tbsp ground cumin
1 tbsp oregano
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp chipotle chile powder
1 tbsp ancho chile powder
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp black pepper


one 3.5lb boneless pork shoulder


juice of 3 limes
1 dark beer
1 cup chicken broth
3 large onions, chopped

two thingies green chiles
smoked sea salt
ground black pepper
whole cumin seeds, toasted and ground, to taste
3 to 6 cloves garlic, pressed


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Make a rub from the first six ingredients and rub it into the pork. Brown pork on all sides, I did mine on the grill. Put pork and limes, beer, broth, and onions in a crock pot, cover, and cook in a 325F oven for 3.5 or 4 hours. I let mine cool overnight in the fridge.

Next morning, shred your pork, a little or a lot. Return pork to pan/pot, taste to correct seasoning and then add garlic and reduce over low heat for as long as it takes to taste right.

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porkpuller.

Above: you may remember me complaining about my mess of equipment onstage a couple weeks ago. I have nothing to complain about: this is what my comrade Raphael brought to a solo gig at the Muziekgebouw last week, along with eight (8) amplifiers.

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Below: We are having a party. Our first party in a long, long time (ok, thirteen months). And so, as you might expect, we're cooking. Yesterday I tried our Georgia pulled pork recipe for the first time in here in Amsterdam and....it worked pretty well. Some notable things.

1) the piece of pork I bought was a "schouder rollade" (allow me to translate for you: a "shoulder roulade"), and it was much much leaner than the the pork shoulders we buy in Georgia. So lean that even though I got the core temperature up to 90C, this pork was pretty impossible to shred. Too lean. So I chopped it. Crisis averted. 

2) it was impossible to find a shoulder as big as the ones we're used to in Georgia, the biggest one I found was roughly half the size, so, utilizing my formidable math skills, I was able to determine that we needed to buy two of them. 

3) We froze the results so we could reheat them the day of the party, and our research revealed that the best technique is to sauce the cooked and pulled pork, then freeze in roughly 1kg portions. 

That's pretty much it for now. 

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hog time.

In Europe, there's no such thing as "Boston butt roast" or even "pork butt", rendering even the first steps down the road to international barbecuing vague and perilous. Heck, even the word "barbecue" itself means something totally different.

In addition to describing exactly what cut of meat "pork butt" is (not the ass of a pig), I found this page from The Virtual Weber Bullet's site to be a critical resource for the nitty-gritty of cooking this cut of meat, as well as for the adaptation of the original recipe.

Just one example: the original recipe has you cook the meat up to an internal temperature of 170F. According to TVWB (and Harold McGee), this isn't quite hot enough to break down the collagen properly for pulled pork and you might end up with a tough, unshreddable piece of meat, bad news indeed after cooking something for 3 or 4 hours (you really want an internal temperature of 195F-205F). Stuff like that.

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This here's the recipe. I can't imagine we'll need to look any further for a foolproof, doable-in-Europe BBQ oven-pulled pork recipe. I'm in the process of adapting it from here. Though it says Carolina in the original, this is largely what Georgia BBQ tastes like to me, with a couple of tweaks (celery seed and black pepper). Next tweak we'll be doing is adding smoke, if not via actual grill or smoker then via pimenton or liquid smoke or some other smoked something or other. But for now, this is it.

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Below, examples of our differing food styling sensibilities. The first one is Mara's preference. I liked the second one because it reminds me of how I feel about barbecue: savage and uncontrolled.

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pulled pork.

sauce
4 tbsp butter
1 1/2 cups chopped onion
3 cloves garlic, chopped fine
1 tbsp prepared yellow mustard
1 tbsp paprika
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp or more celery seed
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp ground chipotle chile or chipotle puree
2 cups Heinz tomato ketchup (other ketchups will not yield same result)
1/4 cup raw sugar
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
2 cups water

1 tsp salt
2 tsp freshly ground black pepper (important! this is the most essential ingredient)

pork
1 tbsp vegetable oil
one 5.0 lbs. (2.3kg) pork butt (Boston pork butt is what they call this in America)

Cook onion and garlic in butter until soft. Add mustard, paprika, cumin and cayenne, cook 1 minute. Add ketchup, sugar, vinegar and water and simmer, covered, 30 minutes. Uncover; simmer 30 minutes. Add salt and pepper.

Heat oven to 350F. Heat oil in large ovenproof Dutch oven or roasting pan; add pork; brown, 10 minutes. Bake, uncovered, in 350F oven 30 minutes. Pour 1 cup of barbecue sauce over pork. Cover pot. Lower to 250F.

Now, according to some BBQ experts, you should bake it for 1.5 to 2 hours per pound, but you're really shooting for this internal temperature of 190F.

In our case, we don't know why, but we were able to bake it for 3-1/2 hours, basting it occasionally, until an instant-read thermometer inserted in middle of roast registered 190F. Under most circumstances, this amount of meat should take at least 5 hours, more like 7.5, but as you can see, ovens are different, so it can't hurt to start using your thermometer after 4 hours or so.

When your internal temperature is where you want it, remove from oven, let rest for 30 minutes. Trim off excess fat. Pull meat apart using two forks. Mix pulled meat with rest of barbecue sauce in a large bowl. Serve on buns with coleslaw.

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hup me.

You know what? There's a reason that the streets aren't overflowing with pickled watermelon rind. I sat down in front of the TV before bed last night, not because this is a normal ritual or anything but because I'm sleeping on the couch for hotness reasons, and I thought maybe I'd take on a nice relaxing mindless task to subdue my normally restless bedtime mind.

The "unprocessed" watermelon rinds in my fridge were taking up a lot of room, so I said, even possibly out loud (I guess maybe addressing the cats? Not good.), "Hey, let's get those dang ol'-timey pickles started," or something similar, and then assembled a bowl, two vegetable peelers, a sharp knife, and my rinds.

Right, and Jade. In the last couple of evenings before bed I've been trying to watch it on Hulu, primarily because it's free, but also because it seems to be doing a wonderful job of putting me to sleep. I really haven't been able to watch more than 15 minutes at a time, which is an unusual distinction for a non-subtitled film.

There's only one issue so far, which is some kind of (hopefully) horrific scene near the end of the film that involves lots of bloodcurdling screams and screechy violins. This tends to wake me up, but after the first time it happened (during which I assumed that the screams were coming from one of the inhabitants of my apartment), I seem to have learned that "It's just Jade", and then I roll over and go back to sleep.

It's not a good movie in the traditional sense of the word "good", but of course this is why I'm watching it. It's not just a bad movie, but a bad movie made by experts in bad moviemaking such as Joe Eszterhas (Showgirls, Basic Instinct), Chazz Palminteri, and the amazing David Caruso. Plus it's a noir, and well I love to see good ones or bad ones. But also: a then-35-year-old Linda Fiorentino is in it, and I defy you to find a man my age who wouldn't think that's a good thing.

Watermelon rind. My point. I sat down expecting some mind-numbing but productive task a la cleaning green beans, shelling peas, husking corn, pitting cherries, etc. What I got instead was something far more epic, a fight to the death between human and fruit. I lost. After fifteen minutes of increasingly agitated attacks by me, all ending with the watermelon remaining totally unscathed, I said "fuck that", viciously stabbed the watermelon one more time and then painfully stepped on a vegetable peeler that had fallen by the wayside. Mindless? Yes. Relaxing? Less so.

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I could whine some more about the heat, but really, who wants to hear it. I will say that I went for a two-hour bike ride to cool off today, and yes, that was a great idea by me, much better with a manufactured breeze. And now there are just the faintest stirrings of a real breeze coming through my windows so I imagine general relief is on the horizon.

Got a manly dinner/Scrabble/World Cup date tomorrow. Will probably do catfish in Ethiopian butter with a tart cayenne-mango salsa, and a yellow zucchini thing with a little shoarmaspice, feta, mint and that tahini-sriracha-buttermilk stuff. I also have a little pork belly sitting around, now what should I do with that, some kind of little appetizery thing. Tell me. Teach me.*

I was thinking about this, minus the quinces.

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* Back when we had our record store (ha moop), we used to get the cutest handwritten faxes from a very sweet old Japanese man named Tomonori. His manner of asking us about our new releases was, "Teach me about any new releases! Teach me!!!"

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pork belly rub.

2 tsp cumin seeds
2 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp whole black peppercorns
1/2 tsp powdered bay leaf
finely grated zest of a large orange

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hello pork pie.

Did some interesting research this morning to try and figure out what are generally considered the worst London neighbourhoods in terms of violent crime. It didn't really start out as "research", I was just wondering about some of the unscheduled areas of town we were going to visit, and then one thing led to another.

Anyway, the winners are: Peckham/Deptford/New Cross in the southeast; Harlesden and much of Brent in the northwest; Chelsea around King St, and further out, Hounslow in the southwest; and Green Lanes/Seven Sisters/Hackney in the northeast, not so terribly far from Finsbury Park. Brixton showed up quite a bit, but having been there a couple times myself, I think that if you used common sense and avoided places like Angell Town Estate, you'd be alright.

Obviously, this is all totally broad-brush. I'm sure actual Londoners would disagree with some of this list, and of course, plenty of places have their own legendarily dangerous estates, especially after dark. I myself haven't seen anything remotely unsettling yet. I didn't use this site for my research but it provided an interestingly detailed view of the sitch.

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Of probably more interest to the plural you is the other research I've been doing: unusual (for me) British grocery store finds. Among the booty so far: cute and tiny pork pies; freakishly large duck eggs; extremely unnatural potato chip flavors; horrifically black pickled walnuts; and a canned steak & kidney pie.

Today's exploration: the Pork & Pickle Pie from Pork Farms. Very cute, very dainty, very porky. With cheeky packaging.

Some more background here, but not too much. I can imagine that the pork pie was originally designed as a workman's lunch, portable and requiring no preparation, it seems to be intended to be eaten slightly cooler than room temperature, usually with some sort of pickle. As you can see, with this version of their pie, Pork Farms has gone the extra mile for you the consumer by building the pickle into the pie. Let's cut a mother open.

It reminded me of an especially lardy empanada (moist, flaky, dense) filled with a pork terrine. The pickle component was underpronounced, I probably would've added still more pickle to this if I hadn't been so hungry. I realize that it's hard to appreciate the size of these things from the photos thus far, so:

Look at how wrinkly my hand is! Please send moisturizer.

Anyway...repeatable? Taste-wise, yes, good, but not a knockout or anything, a bit safe on the seasoning, understandably. Dietarily? Ehh...maybe not. Each tiny pie is 330 calories of lardy goodness, with plenty of sat fat. An occasional treat, thus.

蘿蔔燉肉.

That Chinese up there says something like "turnip stew". But the recipe that this title preceded contained no turnip, only daikon. Explain that.

Whatever, it's what I'm making, forget hot dogs. I'm doing this because daikon was on sale at the Turk/Maroc the other day and I bought one the size of a baseball bat. It's supposed to be good for you! Cleansing, they say. If only I could club that lazy, embarrassing drummer from last night with it a few times, now that would be cleansing.

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i can explain.

Serious diet begins tomorrow. Today...I had to say some goodbyes. Pork belly and hoisin? It was great to see you both this morning, thanks for stopping by. Catch you later, guys.
















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maple bacon jam.

I felt like a total trendwhore, but nonetheless I made Kevin Gillespie's bacon jam recipe last night, because I thought maybe I wanted to put a dot of it on these onion frittata bites I'm making tomorrow for Baby Bird's First Show (!!!). Two observations: 1) as written on the Bravo site, it's not an especially helpful recipe, but 2) nothing can stop bacon jam. It basically made itself. And it's good, very good. Here's my rewrite of the original recipe:

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bacon and maple jam.

125 grams bacon
1 yellow onion, julienned
3 tablespoons dark brown sugar
3 cups chicken stock

1 tablespoon maple syrup

1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon unsalted butter

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Basically: cook bacon until crisp and set aside, leaving the bacon fat in the pan. Add onion to pan and cook until golden brown. Add sugar and stir to coat. Add one cup of broth and reduce until thick. Add another cup of broth and do the same. Add the third cup of broth then transfer contents of pan to a food processor, along with the reserved bacon. Process until fairly smooth but not totally boring. Return the mixture to the pan and add maple syrup, black pepper, and butter. Cook over medium heat 10 minutes or so, stirring every once in a while, to further reduce the jam and darken the color. Makes about 3/4 cup.

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My next attempt at this will involve chiles and a fruit, maybe cherries or peaches. Here's the caramelized onion frittata bite with a little bacon jam, crème fraîche, and chive. The frittata also has a little medium-aged Gouda in it. Basically Marcella's onion frittata recipe with Gouda instead of Parmesan.

k? k.

More about these photos soon.

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We brought back some Georgia-style BBQ sauce for KK, and she wisely asked me, "What's the best thing to do with it?"

The answer to this is compromised a bit by our lack of proper grilling equipment.

For me, BBQ means pork, this should surprise no one. Here's a pretty typical recipe for BBQ pork ribs, where the BBQ sauce is used to baste the ribs as they cook.

Here's a North Carolina-style recipe that does a good job of describing what to do when the pork is finished, but the cooking instructions assume you have a grill. This one has good instructions for using your stove instead, but the recipe itself looks way too vinegary. So I'm still looking. In any case, the BBQ sauce is used afterwards as a condiment on your pulled pork sandwich.

For a quicker fix, I also think that BBQ sauce is pretty great on a bacon-Swiss burger, or something like this maybe.

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cosa nostra.

If this is supposed to be some kind of summer break, I'm failing miserably. Could we please bring on the quiet time?

I'm quite far behind on posting pictures, but please bear with me: I just got back from a Weekend With The Boys, and you probably know what those are like.

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So, skip ahead to tonight: pictured above is a relatively imposing-looking posse that I am somehow related to. We have a Big Adventure planned for this coming weekend in which we are all going to get dressed up and wreak havoc upon yet another cousin who is the bar manager of a "hot" "club" downtown. I imagine that once all of us sizable dudes are all dolled up we will look like not much more than Mara's security team.

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Tonight, however, we were all about cooking. Chris (above left) is an actual chef, and he made seared scallops with a beurre blanc and a pomegranate reduction, served with a pretty perfect salad: arugula, bacon, cherry tomatoes, and a truffle vinaigrette. Mara and I made Chinese pork ribs, red food coloring and all, from this Saveur recipe, our only modification being a halving of the hoisin sauce, but in retrospect I think the original recipe may have been a better idea.

modern love.

Some observations and thanksgivings:

1) Letting someone else take pictures with your camera is like letting someone else play your guitar. It becomes painfully obvious that if you are plagued by technical shortcomings, your instrument is not the problem: you are the problem.

This of course has never happened to me on guitar, don't be silly, but Klary smoked my ass with my own camera last night (hurray for idiomatic speech!)...these photos are hers. Thanks Klary! And sorry again for forgetting about the sake.

2) Cooking a stock for 8 hours from butcher's bones does not always result in a more "authentic" stock...perhaps a bouillon cube would've sufficed. Then again, what did it really cost me? Four euros. And actually it wasn't even my money. Thanks Andy!

UPDATE: OK, I had a cup of this broth for lunch today, and it's definitely a league or two beyond bouillon. "Like pork tea" someone said, and it is.

3) If, two hours before dinner, your dessert is a massive, gross failure, it's perfectly OK to run to the store and get the ingredients to hack together the replacement which you probably should've been serving in the first place. Thanks, sceem! Nice save. Unfortch I don't have any great pictures of The Emergency Dessert, so you'll just have to imagine it: green tea ice cream with homemade coconut sugar cookies....highly chompable. Did I already say "Thanks, sceem"?

4) And Happy Birthday to my dear mother, who turns 40 years old today. XOXOXO! Thanks Pitts.

buttock broth.

This is just here for my reference, it's not an actual post. And that is not an actual hillbilly pictured below.

OK, but I do have some questions about this stock thing. There seems to be a certain amount of nebulosity around the issue of salting one's pork bone broth. I've added konbu (see photos below) and that didn't do it.

Southernoise Gluttony has a passionate set of posts about tonkotsu ramen and he seems to prefer his tonkotsu seasoned with salt.

The dog video posted earlier uses a dashi/konbu stock and a soy sauce infusion to get there.

I remain uncertain.

But here's my final decision on how to cook the yakibuta.

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pork bone stock.

9 liters water
3kg of pork bones
1 biggish piece of konbu
1 big carrot
3 onions
2 apples
1 bunch scallions
1 head of garlic
2 thumb-sized pieces of ginger, peeled

Boil bones for 10 minutes in enough water to cover, then drain bones and discard water.
Then, add ingredients above to a large pot and boil for 8 hours, removing konbu after the first 30 minutes.

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chashu marinade for pork.

1 cup of soy sauce
1 cup sake
1/2 cup raw sugar
1 cup dashi stock
a thumb sized piece of ginger, sliced

Here's another similar recipe...

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my rebuttal is a space shuttle ready for take off.

I have been skating on the proverbial thin ice for most of this summer, healthwise. Everything's OK, but yeah, there is a fine line being walked. Or skated, whatever... metaphor, shmetaphor. As the last couple of Augusts have been yawning black chasms of anti-health, our current status can still be considered "significant progress", but I'm going to have to go ahead and predict that my only hope for ending this summer with an overall smiley face on my report card is to have the Healthiest August Ever.

But: the Starship Healthy August needs fuel. And it ain't no m*therf**$kin' dilithium crystals neither. Naw. See, this here Spaceship of Sparkling Inner Cleanliness runs on....pork!

Dass right. In order to have a Healthy August, we gots to have us one last Poke Fish Celebrayshun. Or: chicken in the shape of a poke fish. Celebration.































Don't worry, I'm not talking about anything gluttonous. Just a little sausage tasting. A couple bites. Two. Three, tops.

The surprising thing was that this bloedworst was just about as good as what I had at Kwakoe. Maybe they all come from Milan. Cooking instructions are simple: heat a pot of water with a couple of cloves, 10 or so allspice berries, and a couple of bay leaves. Add the sausage and simmer on low for an hour or so. Don't let it boil. Then you're done.

The fa tjeong is for tomorrow night, some kind of stir-fry/sauté with green beans. Also with some kind of ancho shrimp quesadilla based on this idea.

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