www.trugfullofpoo.com

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It's been a long few days at work. We've finally launched a new version of our website, representing thousands of man hours of effort, creating a whole new site full of scientific content, protocols and products to help molecular biologists find the reagents necessary to snip DNA up into little bitty pieces, study it, put it back together again, and sequence it into long, complicated genome structures that tell us more about who we are. Plus: hey! a cool shopping cart!

We're also in the middle of selecting a brand new ERP platform, which - if you're anywhere close to a manufacturing or other large organization - is a Big Hairy Project.  We're working with a set of research labs to create a new automated workflow to take data from several instruments and turn it into analyzable data on amplified DNA purity & concentration. And we're taking our commercial software and interfacing it with a new kind of freezer that acts like a combination mini-bar & coke machine, except instead of Dr. Pepper, you can get yourself your favorite flavor of polymerase on demand. 

It's all pretty wild stuff, and an exciting time for me and the team trying to connect and coordinate all these pieces together, and make it look easy like a good IT group can do. 

I've been getting into the office pretty early, and getting home well after the sun goes away, but you know, this is the kind of thing that gets you excited about your contribution, and makes you feel pretty special. 

When I got home this evening, my ten year old daughter (still lovingly referred to as 'Critter' around here), asked me if I could help her finish her chore. 

I should back up. 

When the Critter irritates us or looks a trifle bored, we reach into our standard parenting bag of tricks to keep her productively occupied. Sometimes she moves cinderblocks around (we had a few left out from the autumn pig roast). Sometimes, she gets to clean out the nesting boxes in the chicken coop. If all other inspiration fails, she is sent to pick up the dog's poop from the yard, which both cleans up the lawn, and gives us some pretty good deer deterrent to spread around the garden. 

 

 

Our dog is pretty big. She poops a lot. 

So this evening after dinner, the Critter asked me if I could help her with her chore. She explained that she had filled up the bucket with so much St. Bernard poop that she was no longer able to lift it by herself. And it's probably going to snow tomorrow.

So, after a longer than normal day (weeks) launching a new website that will process literally millions of dollars of transactions, enabling the breath-taking discovery of the fundamental building blocks of life, and mounting a touchscreen onto your average stand-alone Kenmore appliance in order to transform it into a freezer-sized iTunes eCommerce app, I get to stumble around my yard in the dark with a flashlight looking for a rubber bucket full of frozen dog shit, so I can find a place to dump in the woods. 

Big picture, it's all probably good for my pride.  But it sure as hell is hard to soar with the eagles when there's a trug full of frozen St. Bernard crap waiting in the dark with your name on it. 

Need to keep yourself grounded? I have a ten year old you can borrow...

Cochinita pibil

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My Bride turns 41 tomorrow. As I'm still in my thirties, I have a hard time imagining what it must be like to have reached such a venerable age. (and I will keep rubbing it in until later this year, when I hit forty myself). But because I was taught to value and respect the wisdom that our elders bring to us, I thought I'd make up a special dinner this weekend. 

I've just finished reading a fabulous book - all about one man's quest for the perfect slice of ham, and I was feeling inspired.  

 

The author, Peter Kaminisky, writes professionally for Field & Stream and Food & Wine. He also used to be the managing editor of National Lampoon, which explains a lot about why I was laughing out loud so often at this truly pleasurable book. 

This says "A brief history of pigkind" if you can't read it. This is my kind of book.

 

One of his journeys to define the best pork known to the Western Hemisphere took him to Mexico. And he described a dish so perfect that I had to try making it.

Cochinita Pibil is a pork dish traditional to the Yucatan area that combines citric juices and slow, slow roasting of the meat. Traditionaly, it was buried ('pibil'), which isn't exactly practical in New England in January. 

Here's the recipe I used from the book above - with a few modifications of my own to keep it on the simpler side. 

Cochinita Pibil

  • 2-3 lb pork shoulder or butt. I prefer bone-in, but hey. Use what you have. 
  • 1 medium onion, sliced
  • 1.5 cup pork or chicken stock 

Marinade:  

  • 2 tbs achiote seeds or annato powder 
  • 1.5 tsp allspice
  • 1 tsp black pepper
  • 1 tsp cumin
  • 0.5 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 tbsp dried oregano. Mexican oregano if you can get it. 
  • 3 tbsp white/cider vinegar
  • 6 garlic cloves, peeled & diced fine
  • 1 tbsp salt
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • 1/4 cup grapefruit juice
  • juice of 1 fresh orange

Directions: 

  • Combine all ingredients of the marinade except the citrus juice. Achiote seeds or annato powder can be found in a reasonably well stocked Mexican aisle (or in a Filipino grocer). It adds both color and some aroma, and is useful for several Spanish dishes. So go ahead - buy a whole pack.  You want the marinade to end up as a paste - you can run it through a food processor, or just grind it up in your mortar & pestle. I did the latter, because I didn't feel like cleaning up the processor afterwards. Besudes, it's fun to mash the hell out of everything.  Now go ahead and add it all to a bowl and add the citrus juice. Traditionally, this is made with bitter orange juice, which can be a little hard to find. So grapefruit juice (which seems to be available anywhere that white people live) and orange juice will do you just fine. 
  • Rub this onto the shoulder - flip and rub the other side. Now put it in the fridge and walk away until the next day. 

 

 

  • This will smell like heaven and you will thank me.
  • The next day, pre-heat your oven to 325F. Find your handy dutch oven (le creuset, or other) and heat it up on the stove top. Scrape the marinade out onto a plate (save it!) and sear the pork on the outside in a little oil.  Once browned on all sides, add your marinade scrapings and juice back into the pot, along with a cup and a half of stock, and top with fresh sliced onions.  It should come most of the way up your pork. 

Note: In traditional Mexican cooking, the pot would've been lined with banana leaves, and wrapped around the pork. This retains the juices and allows it to steam itself tender when put into a charcoal lined pit. The dutch oven is doing similar goodness for us here. But if you ever get the chance to cook or eat this the traditional way, you should. 

  • Bring the pot to a boil on the stove, and then pop it, covered, into your pre-heated oven. Come back 3.5 - 4 hours later. Don't bother checking on it in the meantime. Do what we did and go have a birthday eve nap, if you can.  

 

 

  • When you pull it out, it should be ready to fall off the bone. Pull the meat out of the liquid and shred it with a couple of forks.  I piled it back into the enamel pan I used to marinade it (cleaned, of course), and squeezed the juice of another orange on top and put it into the oven on a low broil, to crispy-caramelize just a bit while I finished the rest.  
  • Put the liquid from the pot back on the stove and bring to a fast simmer. This reduced sauce becomes a fantastic topping for your tacos. 
  • Top as desired - with a spoonful of the reduced sauce to finish - and serve! 

 

 

I served it with a fresh cucumber-pineapple-habenero salsa, roast sweet peppers, slices of avacado and warm tortillas. Accompanied with a grilled corn/tomato/cilantro salad and a squeeze of fresh lime.  The flavor of the pork is nuanced with citrus, garlic and spices. It's an amazing meal. 

This won eye-closed blissful approval from everyone in the house.  Definitely a keeper - and because the shoulder is so big, it's a great entertaining meal as well. It's as easy to cook for 8 as it is for 4. 

I will note that my Bride went a little lighter on the habenero.

But she is over forty now, so we must make allowances, I suppose.