Changing Flavors

Writing on Substack and braising pork

Writing on Substack is interesting. I love the ease of finding other writers (don’t forget to check out notes on your Substack writers’ homepage, up top next to the home button) but it’s easy to get intimidated. Lots of great writing, big thoughts, long posts, huge subscriber lists. I remember feeling the same way back in the heyday of blogs when I’d be following along with other sites in Google Reader. I think that’s part of the reason I never tried to monetize my blog back then. Intimidation and not feeling as though my writing would have any broad appeal. It’s a different world now and I’m trying hard not to compare myself to others so much, as lord only knows, that’s a slippery slope. I will just keep on processing my life here and hope that helps somebody else process theirs.

I like seeing some of my glass looking like little blue ghosts when we watch tv at night.

I find these kind of analytics fun to peruse. Do you see yourself in there?

I didn’t plan to post another recipe today but I couldn’t resist.

This is a typical Cynthia recipe, that is to say, it’s barely a recipe. It also happily fits into my beloved lazy cooking category.

We had a package of pork steaks. Not exactly a low fat cut of meat but every so often we buy them because they’re so damn good. I cooked a lot of pork shoulders in our house concert days because, let’s face it, you can feed a hell of a lot of people with a cheap cut of pork. Now that it’s just two of us we can’t do a whole pork shoulder but we can do pork steaks, which are just sliced pieces of the shoulder.

Braised Chipotle Pork

• 3 pounds pork steaks (you can of course scale this up or down)

• 1 can chipotles in adobo

• 1 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes

• 1 teaspoon ground cumin

• Salt and pepper to taste

• 1-2 limes for serving

Heat oven to 350 degrees (we started this on top of the stove but ended up popping in the oven so we didn’t have to keep checking it.

Layer the steaks in a dutch oven or braiser and sprinkle each with salt and pepper. Pour tomatoes and chipotles in adobo over them and sprinkle with cumin and another sprinkle of salt (depending on how salty your tomatoes are). Fill the tomato can a little over halfway with water (or stock or orange juice) and add to pan. Cover and place in oven for two hours, stirring, well, really just rearranging, about half way through.

Now, if you can have garlic and onion, go for it. Just sauté them before putting the pork in the pan. And sure you could do that and dice the chipotle and whirl it all up before you pour it over the pork but if you like the lazy aspect, this method worked just fine for me.

We checked it at two hours and the meat was falling off the bone. Perfect. I took a bowl and added several good handfuls of baby spinach to it and then ladled some of the sauce from the pan over it. I let that sit so that it just slightly wilted the spinach while Ernie made rice.

We served the rice in bowls, with spinach and then pork on top. I forgot that I’d planned to use a squeeze of lime but maybe you’re better at remembering things than I am.

The pork and sauce was somewhat spicy (obviously you can cut back the chipotles if you don’t like much spice but this was not overwhelming at all). We both oohed and ahhed as we ate. It’s been a long time since we made something with flavors like this. I tend to get stuck in ruts. This year it’s been all sumac all the time (which is wonderful) as well as my standbys of Penzey’s Sweet Curry powder (thank you, Nancy for the mailbox delivery) and garam masala. And as much as I love those, The sauce felt invigorating and exciting (if braised pork can be those things). It felt like tasting chipotle for the first time again, spicy and smoky and rich.

And that’s what I need to remind myself before I let myself get intimidated by others. I’m just a different flavor, but I’m still tasty.

Plans for the leftover pork include tacos and chipotle rice with vegetables.