This Is Not A World Series Post.

It's also not a sandwich. Yet.

This past week, I had a craving for a Philadelphia style hoagie – in particular one I’d had years ago that was a little outside the familiar cured meats and cheese formula. That sent me down a rabbit hole of bread recipes purporting to be authentic copies (what’s an authentic copy anyway?) of the sandwich rolls prepared by some of Philly’s more famous bakeries.

Also I misspelled Philadelphia no fewer than 30 times while doing this … we’ll call it research.  I also realized after I wrote most of this newsletter than some people would take this a partisan - in a sporting sense. It’s not. I only care about baseball if it’s Boston.

In the end I sort of gave up - on the sandwich. I gave up on the Red Sox sometime in late spring.  

I gave up on the sandwich not because making the bread was going to be that difficult, but mostly because I wasn’t sure I could turn a single sandwich into a newsletter.  I mean again.  I’ve now done that a few times, including just a few weeks ago, and it seemed a little unfair to do it again so soon.

But that didn’t stop me from thinking about the sandwich that had started my though process.  So I sort of took that as an inspiration – and I think (if I get my act together) paid supporters will get that sandwich recipe – and my recipe for rolls that are probably nothing like those from those famous bakeries but are none-the-less still pretty tasty – in this week’s Addendum.  Remember, The Weekly Menu is always free, but paid supporter/subscribers get occasional additional recipes and commentary – and help support my work here.  Which is good because I end up buying an awful lot of food.

I’ve buried the lead a bit. The sandwich in question was simple: A few slices of crisp at the edges roast pork, some jus, melted sharp provolone cheese, and a few pieces of bracingly bitter grilled or roasted rabe – sometimes called broccoli rabe – all on soft but still crusty sesame seed studded roll. I honestly don’t remember where it was.  I do of course remember the sandwich, or I wouldn’t be talking about it here. I think it was just so different than what I expected that it was eye opening.

A few years later, I had a similar – or knock off – version at a DC sandwich shop that was shipping rolls and other ingredients down from Philly.  It was good. It wasn’t the same. 

This week’s menu clearly isn’t the same.  But it’s inspired by those flavors.  All, mostly, sort of, a little bit because I got thinking about a sandwich a couple weeks ago.

Garlic Rosemary Rolls

This fairly simple recipe produces a soft, tightly crumbed roll that’s a great dinner roll.  Warm rolls, a little butter, maybe some olive oil on the table – it’s a great way to fill up before you even get to the main course. 

But, as I discovered last week, these rolls also have a second life.  Slices in half and griddled with a little butter – the leftovers make amazing breakfast sandwich rolls.  If you make them a little larger, they probably make great regular old sandwich rolls as well, but I divided them into 10 rolls – and along with some crisp bacon and a slice of gooey melted (not the plastic wrapped kind) American cheese,  they made perfect one egg omelet breakfast sandwich.

Apparently I’m just completely sandwich obsessed right now.

500 g AP flour
325 g cool water
7 g instant dry yeast
10 g kosher salt
20 g olive oil
4 cloves garlic
1 tbsp minced fresh rosemary leaves
Additional bench flour for dusting.

Peel, trim, and crush or microplane the garlic.

Add the oil to a small pan over low heat.

Add the garlic and rosemary leaves to the pan and cook on low, stirring occasionally, until the raw garlic smell has dissipated, usually 3-5 minutes.

Remove from heat and allow to cool completely.

Add the water and yeast to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook.

Allow to rest ten minutes for the yeast to dissolve.

Add the flour and salt and process on low speed until a smooth dough has formed.

Increase the speed, and slowly add the garlic, oil, and rosemary mixture, letting the mixer incorporate each addition before proceeding.

Once all the oil is added, continue to process on medium speed until the dough is smooth, shiny, and has pulled away from the sides of the bowl.

Cover with a damp towel and allow to rise in a warm place until doubled in size – about 1 hr in my 72°F kitchen.

Divide into 8-10 pieces and shape into balls.

Dust generously with flour and arrange on a sheet pan greased with oilive oil or cooking spray.

Preheat your oven to 375°F.

Loosely cover with a towel and allow to proof until puffy – about 35 minutes.

Bake at 375°F until golden – about 30-40 minutes.

Serve warm.

Beans and Greens

This recipe is a variation on a number of slow cooked white bean recipes I’ve made shared compiled stored written - you get the point -  over the past few years.  It sounds sort of strange to say that slow cooked bean dishes are something I get excited about, but the truth is I do.  At some point more than a decade ago I first made baked beans “from scratch” – meaning I stared with dry beans and raw ingredients instead of doctoring what came from the can.  It was a revelation – because somehow it was both entirely comfortingly familiar and entirely completely different at the same time.  It’s extra effort to start with dry beans, but the flavors, the textures,  they’re worth that extra effort.

Anyway, since then I’ve experimented with a lot of bean dishes somewhere on the soup/stew/bowl-of-beans/hobo joke spectrum – and more than a few, especially with the onset of coldfallwintercoldspring are similar to this:  white beans, a flavorful pile of sauteed aromatics, hardy braising greens, and some delicious salty fatty meat to make it all come together. 

This one uses  smoked pork jowl from our friends at WIT Farm – and it’s the perfect smokey fatty rich balance to the tender beans and assertive bitter greens.

4 cups chicken stock
1 cup dry white wine
1 cup dry white navy beans
½ lb smoked pork jowl
1 bunch dandelion or other hardy bitter green
4 cloves garlic
1 small carrot
1 medium onion
1 stalk celery
2 bay leaves
1 sprig thyme
1  tsp kosher salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
Additional salt to taste

The night before preparing, add the beans to 4 cups of cool water and allow to soak over night.

The next day, drain the beans.

Peel, trim, and finely dice the onion.

Peel, and finely dice the carrot.

Trim and finely dice the celery.

Peel, trim, and mince the garlic.

Wash and chop the greens

Chop the pork jowl into ½ cubes.

Add the pork cubes to a thick bottomed pot or dutch oven over medium heat. 

Cook, stirring occasionally, until the meat is browned and crisp – and a decent amount of fat has rendered.

Add the onions, celery, and carrot to the pan.

Cook until the onions are translucent.

Add the salt, garlic, the thyme sprig, two bay leaves, and the black pepper.

Cook, stirring frequently, for 2 minutes, or until the thyme and garlic are very fragrant.

Add the white wine, chicken stock, and soaked beans.

Bring to a simmer, cover, and cook until the beans are tender and the pork chunks are falling apart – about 2-3 hours.

Serve topped with fresh grated parmesan and a drizzle of oil.

Charred Rabe

“Oh look, Drew’s got another recipe for something weird green and bitter.”  Yeah, I know. I’ve got a thing for bitter greens, bitter cocktails, bitter … I might have a thing for bitterness in general.  It’s probably a GenX thing. Or whatever.

Regardless, I know this isn’t my first recipe for bitter Rabe or even my first recipe for charred rabe.  But I have two excuses.  First, you read the part above, about the sandwich, right?  Needs Rabe.    Secondly, this method is just a little slightly different than other ways I’ve prepared it in the past and I like the result.   Basically, seasoning and dressing the rabe before charring it in pan got me better, faster results than doing it afterwards.  So, here’s another bitter commentary on bitter vegetables from a bitter kid who came of age in the bitter 90s.  Deal.

1 bunch rabe
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp kosher salt
1 clove garlic
¼ cup loosely packed shaved parmesan cheese

Prepare a large pot of heavily salted water and an ice bath.

Trim the rabe, removing any yellowed leaves and the woody ends of the stems.

Blanch for 1 - 1 ½ minutes in boiling water, then shock in the ice bath.

Drain the rabe, and dry by rolling it in a clean towel.

Peel, trim, and crush or microplane the garlic.

Add the garlic and oil to a large bowl and stir to combine.

Add the rabe, season it with salt, and toss well to coat with the oil and garlic.

Set a large pan over very high heat.

Add the rabe to the pan, being careful not to crowd the pan.

Cook undisturbed until the rabe is lightly charred on one side, then stir and cook an additional 1-2 minutes – or until the rabe is tender throughout.

Add the shaved parmesan to the pan and toss to integrate it.

Serve hot, drizzled with additional olive oil.

Pan Roasted Rosemary Potatoes

Are these potatoes vastly different, new, revelatory, special-er, or whatever than other pan roasted seasoned potatoes I’ve shared here before?

Nope. They’re just delicious potatoes, cooked crisp, and seasoned up with tasty stuff. They’re mostly here because they go well with the other stuff in this week’s edition – and because my first instinct -  to serve the pork detailed below with polenta – both sounded like too much work, and something that would be better on the table in mid February than in an unseasonably warm week in mid-October.

Also I didn’t have any good polenta in the cupboard.

These are fast, satisfying, and tasty.  If you want to make them fancier, try swapping out the olive oil for another flavorful fat (bacon? Duck? Pork fat skimmed from the roasting pan?)

1 ½ lb. yellow potatoes
4 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic
¼ cup shredded parmesan cheese
1 tbsp plus 1 tsp kosher salt
½ tsp baking soda

Peel and trim the potatoes, then cut them into 1-2 inch chunks.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil.

Add the baking soda and 1 tbsp salt to the water.

Add the potatoes, return to a boil, and cook for 7 minutes.

Drain the potatoes.

Peel, trim, and very finely mince the garlic.

Add the oil to a large pan over medium high heat.

Add the potatoes. 

Cook, stirring or shaking occasionally, until the potatoes are browned and crisp on all sides.

Add the garlic and cheese and toss well to coat.

Cook an additional 1-2 minutes on medium high heat until the garlic is lightly toasted, and the cheese begins to brown slightly.

Season with the remaining 1 tsp of kosher salt.

Serve hot.

Twice Cooked Garlic Pork Loin with Garlic Rosemary Jus

This pork roast is unlike other pork roasts in … not very many ways.   I’ve sort of fallen in love with pork shoulder roasts – particularly a roast I cut myself from the center of the shoulder. Yes, I know I’m weird. Normal people don’t do this, but I buy whole shoulders and break them down myself – mostly into stew chunks that end up as carnitas, souvlaki, and numerous other tasty bits by which I mean vacuum sealed in bags in the freezer.  But one of those cuts is a roast I cut and tie from the center of the roast, the eye, or what BBQ nerds sometimes call “the money.”   It’s marbled, tender, and when cooled low and slow, the connective tissue within melts into a tender, luscious … let’s just say it’s good.  

You don’t have to cut your own, even your local grocery probably sells pork shoulder roasts – and you don’t have to use that specific cut to make this dish – you just want to make sure it’s boneless because the recipe calls for slicing steaks from the roast after the first cook.  Unless you’ve got a food safe bandsaw and a taste for the theatrical. If you do, you do you.

This is really more a technique than a recipe.  A simply seasoned tender roast is cooled low and slow, cooled, sliced into thick slices/steaks/chops (call’em what you will) then seared out.  The result is a crisp edged seared piece of meat that none the less has all that soft tender roasty texture and flavor.  Top it with a flavorful just and you’ve got the best of both  three worlds.

1 3-4 lbs pork shoulder roast
2 tbsp fresh rosemary leaves
2 cloves garlic
1 tbsp kosher salt
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp honey
2 tsp fresh ground black pepper

Preheat your oven to 300°F.

Season the pork roast on all sides with salt and pepper.

Peel, trim, and crush or microplane the garlic.

Add the garlic, honey, and vinegar to a bowl and mix well to combine – working until the honey is completely dissolved – and adding very small amounts of water if necessary.

Brush the roast with the honey, garlic, and vinegar mixture.

Place the roast on a sheet pan lined with a rack or in a roasting pan with a rack.

Roast at 300°F until the internal temperature of the meat reaches 145°F – up to 3 1/2 hours depending on the size of the roast.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool to room temperature.

Slice into 1-2 inch thick slices.

Heat a nonstick (coated or seasoned) pan or skillet over medium heat

Sear the pork slices on both sides, cooking until the edges are crisped and the meat is cooked through.

Serve with garlic rosemary jus.

Garlic Rosemary Jus

4 cups beef or pork stock
4 sprigs fresh rosemary
4 cloves garlic
1 bay leaf
1 sachet or 2 sheets gelatin
1 tsp ground black pepper
salt to taste

Peel and trim the garlic.

Add the garlic, rosemary, and stock to a pan over medium heat.

Bring to a low simmer.

Cook until reduced to 1 cup.

Strain through a fine mesh strainer, pushing down to force the garlic though the mesh.

Discard remaining solids and return the jus to the pan over low heat.

Bloom the gelatin in a few tablespoons of water, then add to the jus.

Cook, stirring frequently, until the gelatin is dissolved.

Add the pepper. 

Taste, and season with salt and additional pepper.

Serve over roasted pork or beef.