As usual, it’s two days ’till Thanksgiving, and I realize I need to cook something or else this holiday is going to be gastronomically boring. Not that I’m that great a cook, or anything. My parents think I am. My parents think I’m Ferran Adria. No, Bobby Flay. They wouldn’t know who Adria is, which I kind of like better, because Adria is a little too hip and so-niche-that-its-mainstream-name-droppy for me. Everyone knows what washes up in overexposure gets a second wind as the new ironic-iconic-cool.
Parents, right; they honestly thought I’d go to culinary school one day and be a big shot chef, or at least a kitchen manager at a Chili’s in town. I’m almost insulted they don’t know me better, after all the half-assed hobbies I’ve half-assed just to half-ass my attentions somewhere else. It was automobile repair before that, after jewelry making, which was before goldigging pretty rich girls with self-esteem issues, and all of these things were after a glamorous life digging up dinosaur bones and drinking champagne and buying all the lego kits my heart could desire.
Where was I? I was… I AM just a mediocre cook, really; an interesting one at best. I knew I wanted to be interesting this week, and not mediocre. Being mediocre is one thing, but people catching you being mediocre is the worst. I ruined a creative attempt at picatta using plum wine as an ingredient once, trying to impress a girlfriend. It was mediocre, and she caught me. I tried to stop her from tasting it, but it was too late: the look was all over her face. I lost her respect that night, and in short order I lost the relationship. Being zany and capriciously eccentric isn’t as easy as Zooey Deschanel makes it look, kiddos. Just be normal, it’s easier and life usually turns out better for you.
My last great thanksgiving triumph was the one before last, when I smoked a whole fucking duck for… wait, did I say I smoked it? I brought a duck to work, put it next to a couple briskets in the SMOKERATOR 9000 at work, and forgot about it for two days. So, really, work smoked it. Thanks work. When finally I remembered it, I found it had been been reduced to a tantalizing duck-mousse, much to my satisfaction. I had a whack-job idea to make some sort of pastry dough out of potato flour, rice flour, squash guts and an egg along with a healthy dose of allspice. It worked. The dough was essentially pancake batter. The duck, along with wilted greens and onions, went inside it, then I fried like a maniac. Duck-cakes. Served in the hollowed out acorn and butternut sqash. I felt like Journey playing at a Journey concert.
Of course last year I opted out of T-G-D altogether, the picatta and subsequent breakup still being fresh in my mind. That brings us to this year, and I had to go big or go home. I made a pretty good roast pork a couple months ago, but would that be teeday-taboo? Of course it would, I needed something snack-y, yet hearty. Maybe something that would taste good room temperature, or served on a cracker. The turkey’s the bride and this is her big day, so you can’t show her up.
Duck cake… duck cake. Too poor for duck. A cake? Was I brave enough to try that again? Some kind of Thanksgiving tamales?
Pork cake.
Did I just think that?
I think I did.
Is that a thing?
By God, if it’s not a thing, it WILL be a thing.
PORK-CAKE.
I kind of imagined it being like a fruit cake, except pig. I certainly hoped it would turn out that way, and figured I’d go back to the old stuffed tenderloin paradigm and go from there. Almost as soon as the concept was settling into it’s final form, I wondered if I had stumbled onto some great discovery, if they’d make a statue of me someday.
You bet your ass I googled me some pork-cake.
Turns out it’s already a thing. Damn.
Source:
http://guydtruc.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/misadventures-of-a-kitchen-hack-pork-cakes/