Fat’s Chance: If Not Now, When?

There are those of us who never left. Loyal and devoted, we continued to eat our butter and bacon, and to bake with our lard, while others, let’s face it, not only denied themselves but probably harmed themselves by eating hydrogenated oils in the form of cheap margarine. I was fortunate to grow up with a father who refused to have the stuff in the house. He was an engineer who loved new technologies, except when it came to his food: that was taking science too far. So we had two forms of butter on the table, hard salted and soft unsalted, to satisfy our varied preferences when it came to the best way to eat a fresh Kaiser roll or bagel.

Like butter, pork fat has been out of favor for decades except in pockets of New England and the South. I’ve known people to react with disgust when I say that my pie crust or biscuits are made with lard, or that I fry my chicken or chiles rellenos in lard. A friend even once refused a freshly made glazed doughnut because it had been fried in lard. Insane, I know. Needless to say, I generally remain silent on the matter of using goose or duck fat to oven-brown my potatoes.

The tides are turning back, however. We now know (as my father always knew) that margarine is suspect. Butter is better for you than the margarine you grew up on. We know that pure lard is better than Crisco, and better yet than butter. We know that “fat-free” as a way of life may actually be life-threatening. People are talking about fat in a good way again, and we are even starting to celebrate its inimitable fatness. Last year the truly beautiful book, Pork & Sons, exalted all things pig; recently, another attractive paean has been published, called, simply, Fat. It’s subtitle, An Appreciation of A Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes, aims to change the misguided mind on the subject.

This all makes us happy in New England, where salt pork remains a fat of choice for traditional cooking, and lard retains the blue ribbon for the flakiest crust (see photo above left…). There’s nothing like the holidays to get people to digress from their habits—some of them, such as wholesale denial of the pleasures of good eating, irrational if not downright self-destructive. Christmas is fat’s chance; take advantage of it.

LCM Pork Cake

Pork cake is a very old New England favorite. It may look a bit like fruitcake, but it is considerably different and, I think, much better. The recipe lends itself to adjustment according to personal taste or on-hand convenience. You can use glacé fruit in this cake, especially citron or citrus peels, dates or apricots (very good), raisins (traditional), and other kinds of nuts (or none). Some more “modern” recipes contain eggs; mine, like most of the old ones, does not. Adjust spices too, to taste, as long as they are very fresh. Makes one loaf or 3 mini loafs.

½ cup currants
½ cup best-quality dried cherries (not from the supermarket)
2 T muscatel (or sherry or port)

1 lb fat-only salt pork, to obtain 1 cup (see Note)
1 cup boiling water or coffee

½ cup molasses
½ cup dark brown sugar
1 cup sugar

3 cups flour
½ tea baking soda
1 tea ground cinnamon, preferably Vietnamese
½ tea freshly grated nutmeg
½ tea ground cardamom
¼ tea ground allspice
¼ tea ground cloves

Preheat oven to 300 F.

Put the currants and cherries into a small bowl with the muscatel and set aside.

Working carefully with a sharp, thin knife such as a slicer, and holding the salt pork horizontally on a board, remove the skin and discard. For safety, wash your hands and the knife frequently. If the fat is coated with salt, rinse it well and pat dry with paper towels. Put the pork fat into a food processor with the metal blade and process until it is well-ground and beginning to look creamy. Pack well into a 1-cup measure; use some of the leftover to grease a full-size bread pan or 3 mini bread pans, and freeze the rest.

Put the cup of fat into a large bowl and pour the boiling water over it; stir. When it is cool, stir in the molasses and the brown and white sugars. Sift 1 cup of the flour with the spices over the fruit and mix well. Sift the remaining flour and the baking soda into the fat-sugar mixture, then fold in the floured/seasoned fruit. Let it stand for an hour or so if you have the time.

Fill the pan(s) about ¾ full (do not overfill) and bake in the low oven, about 1 hour 15 minutes for the small pans, or 1 ½ hours for the large, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool in the pans on a rack before turning out.

This is delicious as is, but can be iced with a simple butter glaze or buttercream if you like. It keeps, wrapped, very well.

Note: If you cannot find all-fat salt pork, buy a larger amount of regular salt pork and cut off the lean, reserving for another use. You may also be able to find salted fat back, now being made as a kind of substitute for all-fat salt pork, which is disappearing rapidly (traditionally, fatback is unsalted).

                                                               

Butterscotch Beans: Saturday Night Special

To an outsider, New England has some odd gustatory habits. Sweet doughnuts served with sour pickles during sugaring-off season (hard upon us: coming up in a future post). “New York System” wieners that put minced hamburger meat on top of hot dogs—appropriately called “gaggers” here in Rhode Island, and not to be found anywhere in New York. Coffee milk, of course. And sweet baked beans as a main course, accompanied by rich, slightly sharp brown bread. Strange to you, perhaps; perfect sense to us.
The baked beans and brown bread are, in fact, a tradition for supper on Saturday in New England. It is, granted, an old-fashioned one, but one that has by no means disappeared, especially in the Northern states where, let’s face it, rib-sticking, intensely flavored food is what we crave on a blustery night (I live in “southerly” Rhode Island, but as soon as the temperature drops below 60, I start craving this kind of food). Baked beans are underrated, I think; they are one of those things, like good homemade potato salad, or rice pudding, that you just have to keep taking one more spoonful of. I’ll wager you haven’t made, perhaps not even served, baked beans in years (ever?). Try some; you’ll like them. You needn’t necessarily (although I recommend it, at least once) limit yourself to beans and brown bread: beans with baked, glazed ham and scalloped potatoes and green salad, a favorite menu of mine, will do. But do try them.
I use Butterscotch beans, a calypso bean also known as Steuben Yellow Eye, although you can use the more readily available Great Northern white beans. Butterscotch beans are a true heirloom, 17^th-century bean generally believed to be the original—and still the best—bean for Boston Baked Beans. Like many dried beans, they are really pretty: you want to make something with them (I mean like a bracelet, not just something to eat). They nearly triple in size when cooked, having wonderful absorptive capacity, to borrow a term from the strategy field. Baked beans are infused with the flavors in which they are cooked. These are, in my house, maple, mustard (which supposedly aids their digestion, but just tastes good), and roasted salt pork. Sometimes I add some good chili powder for a little kick.
Rhode Island Baked Beans
This is based on the recipe of my old boss, Gary, but altered to substitute maple syrup for most of the molasses and with the addition of a huge hunk of roasted salt pork. You can, of course, skip the roasting step and simply cut up and add the salt pork. But you’d be sorry you did if you knew what you’d be missing. Historically, this dish would have included much more salt pork--the meat of the meal. Serves 12 or more; may be halved except for the pork, which can be cut by ¼.
2 lb butterscotch beans
1 lb salt pork, with as much lean as possible
1 large onion, finely chopped
½ cup dark molasses
1 cup maple syrup
3 fat cloves garlic, finely chopped (Gary said, “infinitesimally”)
6 T dry mustard
Put beans in a large bowl, add water to cover by at least 2 inches, and let soak overnight. The next morning, put the beans and water in a Dutch oven, adding more water if necessary so that they are completely covered; bring to a boil; and then reduce to a simmer and cook, skimming the major foam, for up to an hour—likely less. To test, lift out a spoonful of beans and blow on them gently: they are done if the skins split. Drain, reserving the liquid.
While the beans are simmering, preheat the oven to 400 degrees and cut the pork in half horizontally. Score the rind of the top half (you may need to make individual cuts in it with a sharp knife, as the skin is tough) and place it in the oven in a shallow baking dish; roast for 45 minutes, or until golden brown and the skin blisters. When done, lower the oven to 300 F. Chop the remaining half of the salt pork into ¼” cubes.
In a bean pot or other deep heavy dish (my ancient bean pot fractured from fatigue years ago, and I have since used a hefty soufflé dish), place the roasted salt pork. Pour the beans over/around the pork, leaving some of it exposed, and then distribute the chopped pork among them.
In a small bowl, mix the molasses, maple syrup, mustard, garlic, onion, and 2 cups of the reserved bean liquid. Pour over the beans, and combine gently so as not to bruise or break them; your hands are best for this. The liquid should be just at the level of the beans—not above, or they will stew; if not, add a bit more of the reserved bean stock. Put the lid on the pot (or cover with foil) and bake for five hours, checking the level of liquid hourly and adding a bit more to keep them just covered and to prevent them from drying out. Remove the lid and cook one hour more. The beans should be glazed and dark caramel in color. Serve with Boston brown bread and butter for supper, digging under the pork rind to pull out some long meaty shreds of pork for each serving.
If you are a true New Englander, you will make a bean sandwich with the leftovers next day, mashing them between two slices of sturdy homemade white bread spread with a little mayonnaise and mustard. A little sliced, grilled Portuguese-style chorizo would not be amiss.

Salt Pork: Local Fat of Choice

Every region has its traditional cooking fat. In France, it’s butter. In Italy, olive oil, and in Mexico, lard. Here in New England, it’s salt pork.
In colonial New England, salt pork was made from the odds and ends of the pig, tossed together in a pork barrel or crock with a salt cure or brine, and drawn on and replenished on a regular basis. It kept well, making it an ideal ration for sailors and other travelers, and lent richness and flavor to all kinds of dishes, particularly during the winter when butter was scarce. Today, salt pork is generally made from a particular cut, the meat from the tummy and lower sides of the pig, called pork belly or “side pork.” This is a multilayered section of lean and fat, the same that is used to produce bacon, the key difference being that bacon is smoked and salt pork is not. Salt pork is available as “lean” or “fat,” the latter being all white fat from the same side belly area, and increasingly hard to find. It should not be confused with fat back, which is neither salted nor from the belly.
While today’s salt pork is a more standardized product than it was 200 years ago, it is still used in traditional ways. The most common, and emblematic, uses are in clam chowder and baked beans, often called pork and beans. Baked beans and brown bread for Saturday night supper are still a tradition in some parts of New England. Another supper (and sometimes breakfast) dish that still has many fans is fried salt pork with milk or cream gravy; you must try this to believe how wonderful it is. Salt pork is also an ideal fat for sautéing with greens and vegetables; a simple dish of potatoes and onions fried in salt pork, sometimes called “Scootin’ ‘long the shore” in the Cape and Islands area to reflect its popularity as a dish prepared by fishermen on the beach, is a satisfying treat. Salt pork makes a good pie crust, and salt pork cake, a moist, rich spice cake, is a very old recipe that retains a loyal, if small, following. I’ll provide my version soon.
Culinary uses, then, are alive and well for salt pork. What has largely, and thankfully, disappeared—although surprisingly recently—are medicinal uses. Salt pork was once widely used by physicians as an effective “pack” for nosebleeds, reportedly into the 1970s in some parts of the country (one can only wonder where that might have been); apparently, the salt caused swelling and pressure on the blood vessels as the nasal lining came into contact with the pork, thereby stanching the flow. I’m not sure whether this is welcome information or not, but it could come in handy someday. Salt pork was also used as a poultice for sore throats. In the political arena, salt pork was literally used to “grease the palms,” or bribe, officials in Stalinist Russia during the days of deep privation, leaving a lasting legacy to the language of corruption.
Today’s salt pork is sold by a few major packers of pork products, generally in 12-16 ounce blocks; in some parts of the country, you may still be able to find a locally cured product from a pork butcher, and in the South, you can find a similar product, pork side meat, but it is cured with sugar and pepper as well as salt. You might also try making your own, either dry- or brine-cured, from pork bellies, which are increasingly available through Asian markets and online. Commercially available salt pork will keep well, unopened, in the refrigerator for a few months, and may be frozen; I recommend freezing leftover pieces, although they will keep well-wrapped in the refrigerator for several weeks. When buying, go through all the available packages to look for one that has more or less lean, depending on what you are making; if you want more fat than lean, you can often find a piece with a single layer of lean along the edge that can be cut off and saved for another use; just be sure to buy enough to compensate for the loss in weight. Some recipes call for blanching salt pork, but I do not except when making fried salt pork with gravy. Just rinse it well under cold water and pat it dry. Salt pork has a skin that, depending on your recipe, will either be scored or cut off and discarded. Generally, I cut it off when slicing, chopping or grinding the pork, and leave it on when I want large chunks or am using it primarily for flavoring, such as for baked beans or sautéing vegetables. Either way, you will find that salt pork has a silky, melting quality and adds rich, deep flavor.
Scootin’ ‘Long the Shore
Using salt pork as your cooking fat adds a new dimension to the simplest dish, like beans or these fried potatoes. Serves 2.
½ large sweet onion, thinly sliced
4 slices lean salt pork, about ¼” thick, diced
2  medium-large red-skinned or Yukon Gold potatoes, unpeeled
Salt and freshly ground pepper
In a large heavy skillet, fry the salt pork over medium-low heat for 8-10 minutes, or until it is turning golden. Add the sliced onion and cook, stirring, for a few minutes until soft and translucent. Distribute the potatoes in the pan, pushing the onion and salt pork aside to make as much contact as possible with the pan bottom. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and cover. Cook slowly over your medium-low heat, stirring and turning the potatoes occasionally, for about 15 minutes or until the potatoes are easily pierced with a knife and some have begun to brown. Remove the lid and cook uncovered, turning, for another 5 minutes or so. They should be partially brown but not crispy, with brown bits of pork and caramelized onions.