In my excitement to braise something, anything over the past freezing weekend, I got a little carried away and bought an 8-pound boneless pork shoulder...

...for four people, one of whom (Nathan) is hardly ever home and one of whom (my mom) has barely an appetite.

But guess what? It's almost gone! I cut the roast in two, braised half, and grilled the other half long and slow. I served the braised half to our friend Marty, as well as Stacey and Cooper, for family dinner on Sunday night. I sliced the other half and gave some to Stacey, and made sandwiches for Mom and Nathan, and then nachos for Nathan, and about 50 snacks for myself...

And just like that, we'll finish off the last bit in some sort of hash tonight.

What am I trying to say? That I'm excessive in oh so many ways? No, although of course that's true. My point is that the versatility of braised meat is just endless! Braise on Sunday, with very little effort, and have several easy meals all week. It's cheap, delicious, and damn good fun.

The pic up top is the braised version, on polenta, with tomato jam, and finished with bits of crispy guanciale (cured pork jowl) gifted to me by my friend Joy Summers. She visited Mom and me last week and brought me the guanciale plus a pound of Hope Creamery butter. There is love.

Anyhow, the pork-polenta dish, inspired by my friend Molly Herrmann's stunning dish at the Tour de Farm Chicknic in July, blew minds all over this house.

Round II goes to the tacos. Crisp pork in a skillet, in its own fat (not exactly carnitas, but same effect, as in kill-me good), wrap in warm corn tortillas with your favorite taco garnishes. Yah.

Recipe for Braised Pork Shoulder with Chiles & Cinnamon at Dara & Co./Minnesota Monthly Magazine.

Transform green beans into a spicy, salty meal. A little pork, a little black bean-garlic sauce...a lot of sticky-savory deliciousness. Recipe for Green Beans with Pork & Black Bean-Garlic Sauce at Dara & Co./Minnesota Monthly Magazine.

Check out Jason Hicks' - executive chef at The Local - recipe for Fried (Green) Tomato BLTs at Dara & Co./Minnesota Monthly Magazine.  Since green tomatoes aren't yet available in Minnesota, I substituted local hothouse tomatoes for a delicious result.

In fact, I fried up a batch of tomatoes again last night for din and topped them with the watercress tossed in bacon-maple vinaigrette from the Poached Egg, Crispy Pork Belly, & Watercress on Rice-Flour Potato Pancake with Maple Vinaigrette recipe from a couple of weeks ago.

Food blogger recipe incest.  I like it.

I worked out this decadent, completely over-the-top (gluten-free!) dish with the help of friends Andrew Zimmern, Scott Pampuch, and Ken Okumura.  A delicious, collaborative blast.

Recipe for Poached Egg, Crispy Pork Belly, & Watercress on Rice Flour-Potato Pancake with Bacon-Maple Vinagrette (whew!) at Dara & Co./Minnesota Monthly Magazine.  Have at it!

PS I realize that's two poached egg posts in a row.  I'll give it a rest for awhile, I promise.

I posted this recipe a few weeks ago at Dara & Co./Minnesota Monthly magazine.  I've probably said this about too many things to be credible (I'm aware that I lean a bit heavily on the superlative), but this is one of my absolute favorite dishes.  I crave it.  I devour it.  And now you will too, in less than 20 minutes.  Be warned, it's massively addictive...  I use the breakfast sausage I buy from Blue Gentian Farm at the Minneapolis Farmers Market if I don't have chorizo; it works beautifully. (In fact, I could pretty much eat it on everything.)

I've been sauteeing pans of crispy pork with beans and greens for years.  I start with a little bacon, ham, or sausage.  When the pork is nicely browned, I stir in minced garlic, sometimes something spicy, and then the cooked (likely canned navy) beans and saute until they're a bit crisp on the edges.  I finish with a handful of chopped cabbage or chard or spinach, whatever I have in the cooler, tossing things around a bit until the greens wilt.  I might have made it for you.  I always put half away before I dig in, because otherwise I'd eat the whole pan.

Of beans.

Which hurts.

Mark Bittman/New York Times posted this version, Fried Chickpeas with Chorizo & Spinach, earlier in the year and of course it caught my attention.  It's everything I love, with two fabulous additions - a splash of sherry and breadcrumbs to finish, drizzled with olive oil and run under the broiler until golden brown.  Yes.

Fried chickpeas are a revelation, by the way, slightly crunchy outside, creamy inside.  The chorizo adds beautiful color, heat, and the necessary garlic kick.  The breadcrumbs are...sublime.

I warned you.

Fried Chickpeas with Chorizo & Spinach
Mark Bittman for The New York Times
Serves 4

Note: if you can't find stick chorizo, you can substitute spicy, garlicky ground sausage (don't tell Mark).  In that case, brown the sausage first (without oil), breaking into small pieces, then add the beans, and brown as in Step 3 below.  Smoked paprika, added with the beans, adds a lovely flavor and red color.

Greek food and I had a shaky start, which is hard to imagine given how much I love it now.  My first exposure to a fully-loaded gyro - hours into my freshman year, University of Wisconsin-Madison, with my just-met roommate -  completely freaked me out.  So much garlic, with yogurt on meat (wha?), and juices running everywhere...my inner North Dakotan fainted a little bit.  Where are my parents?  Who is this girl I'm living with?  Why doesn't she shave her legs?  What am I doing?  I wasn't ready for feta cheese, not yet.

But after a couple of months of cardboard dorm food, and far too many pizzas, I started to crave food with...flavor.  I fantasized about going home for Thanksgiving dinner when it had never meant anything to me before.  I started exploring flavors outside of the Americanized Mexican-Italian-Chinese food I'd grown up with.  On a whim, I succumbed one hungry afternoon to the intoxicating smells from the falafel cart outside the UW Bookstore and ate the best sandwich I'd ever tasted.  Emboldened, I hiked back to the gyro place and got hooked on Greek salads and that damn sandwich, tender and spicy and dripping with yogurt, yeah.

And then...then I met Mary Pappas, almost 20 years ago, and my love of Greek food was cemented.  Mary would bring Greek treats - made by her mother-in-law and Yaya (grandmother) - into our office to share.  We would shamelessy attack and devour them.  Our staff birthday lunches often took place at It's Greek to Me, or Christo's, or Gardens of Salonica, and as a group we would eat obscene amounts of our favorite mezze, namely warm pita slathered with taramosalata, melitzanosalata, skordalia, and htipiti.  When I was pregnant with Nathan, Mary threw me a baby shower and had her mother-in-law and Yaya prepare all the food (I'll never forget that party, The Best, sigh)...spanikopita, pastitsio, meatballs, salad, baklava, on and on...

So many happy memories.  Which now include my son!  Was it the amount of Greek food I ate at the end of my pregnancy, including that shower?  Whatever the reason, he loves it, and I'm thrilled.  Sharing a favorite dish with a child is an incredible experience.  Overall, we have many more misses than hits, but Greek food in general, and souvlaki (below) in particular, are now among his favorites.  Garlicky grilled pork, wrapped in warm pita bread and topped with tzatziki, the yogurt sauce that scared the crap out of me way back when.

The marinade is delicious with chicken too.  Serve with rice instead of bread to change things up.  Make extra marinade and toss with tomatoes, zucchini, and red onion - skewer and grill alongside the meat.  Use leftover sauce to make this tomato-feta sandwich for lunch the next day - also fabulous.  Lots of variations - have at it!

For more pork grilling ideas, and a whole menu for a Memorial Day barbecue (pork ribs, crunchy-creamy coleslaw, & strawberry shortcakes), check out my post this week for Dara & Co./Minnesota Monthly magazine.  I've got grilling pork on the brain - but only because the options are deliciously endless.

Souvlaki
Serves 4

Note: you can marinate the pork for up to 24 hours before griling.

2 lbs. pork tenderloin or pork loin, cut into 1-inch cubes
3 Tbsp. olive oil, plus more for the bread
3 Tbsp. red wine
1 Tbsp. dried oregano
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. coarse or Kosher salt, plus more for the bread
several grinds of freshly ground black pepper
2-4 loaves of pita bread (I like the flatbread loaves, not the pocket bread; I actually use the 365 brand of naan at Whole Foods)
Tzatziki (recipe below)

Put pork into a large Ziploc bag.  In a small bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients and pour over pork.  Seal bag, massage the marinade into the pork a bit, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour and up to 24 hours.  Heat grill.  Lightly brush or rub olive oil onto both sides of the pita bread.  Sprinkle one side lightly with salt.  Skewer pork loosely on metal or soaked bamboo skewers (discard Ziploc and marinade).  Grill pork for 5 minutes on each side, or until pork is cooked through (do not overcook for optimum tenderness).  Transfer skewers to a cutting board and let rest while you grill the bread.  On the still-hot grill, lay bread on the grate.  Grill for a couple of minutes on each side, just long enough to leave grill marks and soften/heat the bread.  Remove pork from skewers and serve with the warm bread and tzatziki.

Tzatziki
Makes about 1 cup

1/3 c. grated peeled cucumber
1 Tbsp. grated onion
1 Tbsp. minced fresh dill
2/3 c. Greek-style yogurt (Fage is an excellent brand)
salt and pepper to taste

Stir all ingredients together in a small bowl and chill.  Keeps for up to one week in the refrigerator.

It's going to be 90 sultry degrees here in Minneapolis on Sunday.  Ugh.  I'm not going to complain (is "ugh" a complaint?), but I'm not quite prepared for that level of heat and humidity.  Guess I'll just have to grab a cold beverage and head out to the grill...tough, I know.

If you're looking for something to sear, I suggest:

The whole barbecued chicken I posted below.
Any of the multiple burgers I posted a year ago (including several vegetarian ideas).
My tips for great hamburgers.
The miso-glazed salmon I posted at Dara & Co./Minnesota Monthly a couple of weeks ago.
These delicious grilled lemon shrimps on toasts.
The Korean-style grilled beef I posted last week.
Tandoori chicken skewers, so good with grilled naan.
My favorite way to grill vegetables - chapa-style.

Or...apparently I've had grilling on the brain these last few weeks...these pork tenderloin tacos, first posted at Dara & Co/Minnesota Monthly.  If you missed 'em, here's what I said:

I crave spicy pork—especially carnitas, or slow-braised pork shoulder, pulled apart, then roasted until crispy at the edges. Rolled into a soft corn tortilla... It's beyond. While not difficult to make, a three-hour braise is too long for a weeknight dinner, so when a craving hits on a Monday-to-Friday, I pull off a cheat of sorts.

Also delicious, yet ready in 30 minutes: Thin slices of spicy pork tenderloin make a similarly porktacular (yes, I did just say porktacular) tortilla filling. Add your favorite carnitas garnishes. I like the contrast of creamy avocado slices with the crunch and heat of diced jalapeno and red onion. Add crumbled queso fresco (or feta), chopped cilantro, and a squeeze of lime to finish it all off. Flavor explosion, that’s the goal. Serve with corn or flour tortillas—your choice, just make sure they're fresh and warm.

I grilled the pork on a Superior Planks cedar plank, which I wrote about for the printed magazine.  As you can see from the pic, I didn't follow the instructions and lit the plank on fire.  A little pork-n-cedar inferno, right there on my deck.  Despite the fire - which I easily put out with a bottle of water, it really wasn't a big deal -  the pork was delicious (you can see that it was unharmed, just nicely crusty).  Grill your pork on a plank (perhaps without lighting it on fire), or directly on the grill, or on a grill pan inside the house.  All fabulous.

Pork Tenderloin Tacos
Serves 3-4

1 pork tenderloin
1 tsp. each minced garlic, ancho chili powder, cumin, oregano, and coarse salt, mixed together in a small bowl with enough olive oil to make a loose paste
warm corn or flour tortillas

Suggested Garnishes:
avocado slices
chopped cilantro
chopped red onion
chopped jalapeno pepper
sour cream (thinned with a bit of cream for drizzling)
crumbled queso fresco (or feta) cheese

Preheat grill.  Smear herb-paste all over the pork tenderloin.  Grill pork over high heat for approximately 10 minutes or until desired doneness.  Let pork rest on a cutting board for at least 5 minutes (keep in mind that the pork will continue to cook a bit more as it sits).  Slice thinly and serve in warm tortillas with garnishes.  (Note: while pork cooks, prepare garnishes.  While it rests, warm tortillas, wrapped in foil, on the still-hot grill for a few minutes.)

I don't each much pork, or meat for that matter, but I have to admit that there is nothing - nothing! - like the power of a bit of cured pork to completely transform a dish.  This is not a culinary secret, of course, but perhaps these days it isn't said often enough.  And it should be, because if you're cooking on a budget, or even cooking for health, with a very small input you can reap a big, big flavor payoff.  I'm thinking in particular of bacon, pancetta, and prosciutto.  Like, start a whatever-is-in-the-cooler vegetable soup with a couple of slices of chopped bacon, saute until crisp, stir in the aromatics, then the substance and broth, simmer until tender and voila, you've elevated veggies to something rather sublime. Finish with a grating of good Parmesan and a grind of freshly ground black pepper, perhaps a toasted crouton, and you will be both charmed and full.  (And how about that asparagus soup I had at Trattoria Tosca last week?  All about the pancetta...)

I know the fabulousness of crispy prosciutto, aka God's Gift to Salads, from a little cooking project I did with Andrew Zimmern a few years back.  We made up a chopped salad for a local restaurant filled with all the good stuff - crisp greens, avocado, sweet onion, crumbled blue cheese, chicken breast, sweet corn, tomato, cucumber, (freshly flash-fried) potato crunchies, and yes, crispy proscuitto.  This via Andrew: to make prosciutto, lay paper-thin slices of prosciutto on a baking sheet (do not overlap).  Bake at 375 degrees F until crisp and browned, about 7-8 minutes.  Let cool, crumble.  Paper thin and shatteringly crisp, it delivers porky saltiness to a salad like no other bacon could - for much less fat.  Must.  Try.

And then, there's pancetta, aka Italian bacon.  Buy it paper-thin, wrap it around shrimps and fresh sage, and grill until crisp for Stu The Wine Genius' famous appetizer (or, saute the whole dish for my adaptation, Shrimp Saltimbocca).  Or for the holidays, or anytime you're craving brussels sprouts, try the Brussels with Pancetta and Dried Cranberries I made this past holiday and is now going to be my new Thanksgiving standard.

And then, and then, there's the dish I made for dinner tonight, which I'll call Springtime Fava Bean Salad with Poached Egg because it's the recipe I loosely followed (from the cookbook I mentioned last week, which I now posess - gorgeous and incredible, Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way by Francis Mallmann; pic above).  I say loosely because I didn't include favas (John doesn't like them) and because I didn't poach the eggs (I just sauteed them over-easy right before we ate).  Also, I filled out the veggies with sauteed swiss chard (I knew it would be delectable with the pancetta, tomatoes, and freshly shelled peas), I used no extra oil (and drained off most of the pancetta drippings), and I skipped the toast.  Not what I would usually recommend - to change a recipe before ever making it.  But in this case, it was a do-with-what-I-had, as well as a keep-it-healthy sort of effort, and the result was truly sublime. The star was the three ounces of thick-cut, cubed pancetta, mmm hmmm. Recipe (and my adaptations, if you're interested) here.