(my apologies to anyone who tuned in for a Wordless Wednesday and is disappointed to see actual words; I needed to fit in as much Guinness as possible this week since it's themey!)
So this was one of the recipes that set me off on the "I need to make an entire Guinness-themed menu" tear. It's from Braise, a Daniel Boulud cookbook... and it's actually the first recipe I've made from Braise, since I usually can't see past All About Braising when I'm looking for something to cook low and slow.
Pork Shoulder With Dried Cherries, Guinness, and Sweet Potatoes.
I really went back and forth on the sweet potatoes. I thought they would make the whole business just too sweet. But I stuck with the published recipe and they're definitely a nice addition. Keep them in large chunks and add them two hours from the end, and they get soft but don't fall apart, and get nice and dark with the stout/molasses/balsamic sauce on the outside.
I used an 8.5 pound picnic shoulder where the recipe only calls for 5.5 since that was the smallest one they had on hand at Giunta's. An extra hour or so in the oven and it all turned out fine. Though I did have to switch my cookware partway through when the combination of 8.5 lbs of meat + 7 cups of liquid + 3 sliced onions proved too much for my Le Creuset in two respects: there literally wasn't enough room to add the two pounds of sweet potatoes, and the full pot was so heavy it was bending my oven rack. Yeesh.
(before cooking, and after an hour) So I swapped it into the Great Big Roasting Pan, and in the end we had one of those great big medieval Joint Of Meat situations again. And a very kind guest who agreed to do the carving. And we had full bellies and big smiles after.
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