Reconciling with Swine

Apologies for the dearth of posts this month. I haven't stopped cooking. If anything, I've been immersed in it -- nothing like a downturn in the economy to motivate someone to cook instead of getting take-out. I just haven't had the time (and frankly, the discipline) to sit down and write about any of it. It's time to start making amends.

One of the best and worst things about dining out in Spain when I was there was the abundance of pork. The variety of pork preparations was staggering: roasted, smoked, salt cured, dry cured, fried, grilled, or braised chops, loins, sausages, hams, back fat, pork belly, and on and on. It was all awesome but it didn't take long for me to start yearning for chicken fingers and a Big Mac. A full-on pork ban took effect in my kitchen when I got back. You can have too much of a good thing.

Two months later, a link of dry cured chorizo reunited me with Spanish pork. That day, I was frozen and sore from shoveling the infernal Canadian snow and ached for some belly-warming stew. I had read in a Japanese cooking magazine that Asturians cook a smoky stew with Iberian bacon (tocino), white beans and generous amounts of sweet smoked Spanish paprika (pimentón). The photo of it has always made me salivate. I didn't have any tocino on hand but I knew that Spanish chorizo is often seasoned with pimentón which imparts a deep red color to the sausage. Between my chorizo, my little ceramic jar of pimentón and can of white beans, I had what I needed to concoct my own stew.

I caramelized a generous amount of sliced shallots and minced garlic in a pot with a bit of oil. When soft, I added a heaping spoonful of pimentón to impart some color. Slices of chorizo were thrown in, and after a couple of minutes, a can of white beans was emptied into the pot.

I could have stopped there but I was seized by the impulse to make this stew even redder than it already was. I had oven-roasted and peeled some red bell peppers the day before; those got chopped and mixed in. Then I did a sudden about-face and wanted a contrasting color, so I tossed in some chopped okra.

One thing about okra: it imparts a silky texture to stews. I'd like to take credit for finding that adjective for cooked okra, but I stole it from Toronto chef Roger Mooking. He featured okra in an episode (EP 1015) of his Food Network program, Everyday Exotic. Mooking kept referring to the ingredient as his "obedient ingredient" and saucily described its texture as "silky" as he demonstrated his recipe for Okra Chili. I've long been a fan of okra because its texture resembles that of natto, my most favorite food of all. Sadly, I had always described them as being "gooey" or "slimy" -- a depiction that often elicited "eww" in response. "Silky" is distinctly better.

Smoky, silky, warm and filling... I present to you my chorizo okra stew.