easter dinner for mama d

Recipes:
Sweet Potato and Apricot Puree with Pecan Streusel
Red Beans and Rice

I'm going to be updating these build notes as I, uh, build, so if you're at all interested please do check back.

This menu -- which includes a version of the Haitian pork dish called griot and greens as well as the above recipes -- was conceived as an homage to Erzulie Dantor, Vodou spirit and met tet of yours truly. This is neither the time nor the place for a Vodou seminar, but if you Google any of the above terms you are sure to find dozens of Vodouisants squabbling about what they mean.

Anyway, Erzulie Dantor likes food, just like anybody really, and her favorite things to eat are griot and yams. I did a lot of hunting for the ultimate griot recipe, and found many recipes featuring radically divergent techniques. All I could establish definitively is that griot is spicy, is made of pork, is fried, and usually involves sour orange juice. OK! I decided to make my griot after my mother's rule for carnitas, which entails cooking the pork twice -- pot-roasting it until it falls apart and then either roasting it in a quick oven or frying it. My recipes say to fry, so I shall fry.

I am quite optimistic about this menu. First of all, it is cheap. Very, very cheap. Kreyol food usually is; this is because it was developed by extremely poor people. It cost me under ten dollars for the whole shebang, and it would have been cheaper if I hadn't sprung for the fancy Berkshire pork butt. I am also pleased because the weather this weekend is and will continue to be odious in the extreme -- about 40 degrees and alternating between rain and hail. Perfect for baking things and pot roasting. Onward!

day 1

Went to Fiesta to buy yams, beans and oranges. Note to self: next year, remember to avoid Fiesta on the day before Easter. Encountered a conundrum in the canned-bean aisle: I thought kidney beans and red beans were the same thing, but Sylvia's red beans are right next to the kidney beans, and, per the illustration on the Sylvia's can, they are not the same thing at all. After a brief struggle, I bought one can of each.

I got home and got the oven cranking for the potatoes. My plan is to finish the potato puree completely today, assemble it and have it on deck for a quick reheat tomorrow. I am also cooking the rice -- that recipe does not seem authentic in the slightest to me, but I am phobic of cooking rice in anything but the rice cooker, and figured I might as well let Mr. Zojirushi handle things -- and doing the pot-roasting part of the meat. That leaves just the greens, the red bean and rice assembly, and a quick fry tomorrow.

I seared the meat (probably an unnecessary step, but a hard habit to break), covered it with heavily salted water, and put it over low heat with a whole lot of garlic, a bay leaf, a mashed Scotch bonnet pepper, and a long curl of orange peel. Now, after an hour of me adjusting the heat under it (my range does not know what "simmer" means) and cursing colorfully, it is looking very gray, flabby and unprepossessing, but it smells heavenly. It smells like the Caribbean in here, actually, a nice contrast with the awful pewtery gray day. I was unable to find sour oranges to marinate the cooked pork in pre-fry, so am cheating with a mixture of orange and lime juice. I fear it may not be sour enough; I may spike it with vinegar.

Assisting the smell are the apricots, which I decided to spruce up by including some ginger in their cooking water. Dried apricots sure can absorb a whole lot of water, and they really want to burn. But they're done now, and now I shall puree them and add them to the potatoes, which have attained a state of total collapse. Onward!

1.1

My kitchen, my clothing, and every cooking implement in the house are now bedaubed with beautiful dark-orange potato-apricot puree. It looks like the aftermath of a UT Longhorns victory in here. My poor, feeble old yard-sale hand mixer took one look at the sweet potatoes and fainted dead away, so I had to run the potatoes through the food processor in batches. This worked out anyway, because one wants the potatoes to be quite suave and sophisticated next to the rustic dinner menu, and the Queez got them very suave. I added a smidge of vanilla to the puree to render it more dessert-y. It is very good. It's also fun to play with -- malleable, and there's that awesome color. I admit I did a fair amount of smooshing it into decorative shapes in its pan before I put it away. I kind of want to take some to a baby I know and see what she does with it.

The meat is still ugly and sullen-looking, but it's quite done, so I put it in a bowl with the fake sour orange juice and let it cool down. It will marinate in the fridge overnight. I didn't taste it for spicy; I wonder if one habanero was enough? We will see.

day 2

Home after a long, arduous, cold day at work, and I'm so hungry I feel like gnawing off my own arm. The thought of a good deal of pork fat, soon, is a fine one indeed.

I decided to do exactly what the more vehement Epicurious comments expressly forbid, and added tomatoes to the red beans and rice. They are simmering happily away in there, smelling great. The meat shrank quite a bit in cooking, so after shredding it into little bits I reserved some of the fat and dumped it in with the beans and the greens both. The greens, mustard and collard, have been augmented with vinegar and a couple of ladlefuls of pot liquor. (I made pot liquor! Imagine!) They have to think about what they've done for awhile, and then I will fry the meat. It really is a token amount, that meat; I should have bought more. Oh well, maybe it will be OK if I view it as a flavor element instead of a course on its own.

2.1

That was one of the best things I've ever cooked. The beans were just fine with tomatoes, thank you very much. The greens were fine and sharp. The griot, however, was the "piece of resistance", as my mother says. I am now very glad that I didn't make more; it is incredibly rich. It would have been even more so if I had fried it in lard instead of peanut oil, like you're supposed to. My griot turned into delicious, crunchy and indigestible frizzles of gloriousness, brown and sweet and crispy and melting. Next time I think I will try cubing it instead of pulling it, just for a change, but for right now it is lovely. And there is just enough for Ceej, Mama D and me.



Happy Easter!