Stout Pork
Benjamin Franklin is known to have said, “Beer
is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” This is a sentiment
that Jacob surely would second, particularly when it comes to the beer named for
Mr. Franklin’s revolutionary compatriot, Samuel Adams. Outside our
kitchen door stand two great pillars built entirely of empty boxes of Samuel
Adams – a testament to Jacob’s patriotism to the beer and, by
extension, to the values of our forefathers. After all, if Samuel hadn’t
been plotting revolution with Paul (Revere) and John (Hancock) over some of his
very own home-brewed ale, we might still be saluting the Union Jack
today.
The Sam towers reach from ceiling
to floor, and boxes continue to accumulate in other corners of the apartment
until I draw the line and take a few out on recycling day. One can chart the
passage of time by the boxes of seasonal brews which appear every so often
between the Boston Lagers. I have just added a new one to the collection:
Cream Stout, which was a key ingredient in dinner last
night.
Being somewhat beer-ignorant, I
looked up stout on the website of the Boston Brewing Company. I also drank one.
My findings: Stouts are famous for being smooth, rich, intense and very very
dark. While there are many types of stout, including bitter, sweet, Imperial,
oatmeal, milk, and even oyster, the richest is cream stout, a lush brew made
with additional malt, fermented to impart a sweetness and creaminess in the
beer. Dense and full-bodied, with hints of coffee, it has a good balance of
roasted grain and hops. I would hazard that no other beer as closely matches
its reputation as liquid bread. Stout is as rich in medical history as it is in
flavor. Nursing mothers are fortified with stout in Irish hospitals to help
them produce milk. A popular Australian beer brewed in the 1800s was called
Nurse Stout, a health-promoting brew for invalids. In some parts of Asia,
bathing a newborn baby in stout is thought to have beneficial effects on the
complexion.
Last night it was not a baby
(thank God), but rather a pork shoulder that bathed in stout. Thus the title
of this article, “Stout Pork,” refers not to the girth of the piggy,
but the liquid he was braised in. I stopped home on my lunch hour to get
started since it would need to cook for several hours. I seasoned the meat with
salt and pepper and browned it well in a bit of olive oil. I sautéed
some garlic, onions, and celery, added a few chopped tomatoes, and deglazed the
pot with a splash of balsamic vinegar. Then the shoulder went back in and was
slowly enveloped in frothy, foamy, ebony stout. I shoved it in the oven and
went back to work.
When I got home, I
defatted both the pork and the braise, added some potatoes, carrots and red
cabbage to the pot and let it bubble away in the oven for another hour or so
until it was fork tender. (Fork tender is an expression that’s thrown
around a lot, but I didn’t know what it meant until recently. It means
that if you jab a fork into the meat and try to remove it, it will not come out
easily. When you try this with raw meat, the fork slips right out - a problem
that has caused me great aggravation in the
past.)
The fun part of this meal was
fishing out potatoes and carrots from the braising liquid and piling them around
and on top of the beautiful roast. In the future, however, I will omit the
veggies. They were uninteresting – bland actually. Roasted veggies and a
green salad with balsamic vinaigrette would have been a better option. Anything
fresh and acid would complement it well.
Despite this minor disappointment, I
must say that the beer-braise is a terrific way of preparing pork shoulder, and
it would probably work equally as well for other pork and beef roasts. The meat
was tender, moist, and quite flavorful, although Jacob and I were both
unsuccessful in pinpointing exactly what the flavor was. It didn’t taste
like beer, but it made perfect sense with the beer we were drinking. It had
depth and a fullness of flavor, an insinuation of dark maltiness. In fact I
hate to say it, but it was, quite fittingly, stout.
Posted: Fri - April 30, 2004 at 04:12 PM