Delicious Pulled Pork

Well, more time has passed than I intended since my last post. Pregnancy has just been more of a game changer than I expected. Luckily I am healthy and feeling well, but the doctor appointments, childbirth classes, prenatal yoga, etc really eat into blogging time. I know that this is only a taste of what is to come once the baby actually arrives. My due date is a week and a half away, so I thought it was a good time to check back-in with City Share.

Several weeks ago, before the spring vegetables were really showing up at the farmers' market, we had a great dinner that took advantage of some of the vegetables that store well over the winter. We got an acorn squash from the market and some spinach out of our freezer, and made some favorite dishes. We simply baked the squash and served it with some butter, and made some creamed spinach with some leftover cream cheese and half and half. As good as the vegetables were, the piece de resistance was some pulled pork inspired by a recipe in our Dinosaur BBQ cookbook. The meat was melt-in-your mouth tender and the sauce was a great combination of tangy, sweet and spicy. It was a delicious feast.



Pulled Pork inspired by Dinosaur BBQ

4.5 lb pork shoulder
1/2 can of tomato paste
10 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
1 large onion, chopped
1/4 C apple cider vinegar
1/4 C balsamic vinegar
1/4 C water
2 T ketchup
1 T spicy brown mustard
4 T maple syrup
1/2 lemon, juiced
1/4 t cayenne
1/4 t allspice
1/2 t salt

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

Sear pork shoulder in a Dutch oven over high heat on each side. Remove the meat from the pan, and combine the rest of the ingredients in the pan. Add the meat back in and spoon the sauce over the pork shoulder. Place in the oven and cook for 2.5 to 3 hours. Flip over every hour or so. The meat is done when it is falling off the bone.

This post is part of Miz Helen's Full Plate Thursday, Turning the Table Thursday, Jenny's Alphabe-Thursdays, Ultimate Recipe Swap at Life As Mom, Frugal Food Thursday, Recipe Swap Thursday at Prairie Story, and Simple Lives Thursday.

Dinosaur's Mean Greens

I couldn't wait to start digging into our share last night. I decided to cook up the braising greens based on a recipe from Dinosaur Bar B Que. If you have never been to Dinosaur Bar B Que, it is worth the trip. It started in Syracuse, and now has a location in NYC at 125th St (right across from the Fairway). Friends from Texas even think the brisket is good, and it's hard for a Texan to admit that New York State BBQ is even edible.

So I started with the Dinosaur recipe for "Mean Money Greens Revisited," and made a couple of tweaks based on what we had available. This is what I ended up with:



Dinosaur Inspired Greens
1/2 pound braising greens (use up to 1 pound)
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 red bell pepper, chopped
1/2 large onion, chopped
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
4 large cloves of garlic, minced
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon Tabasco sauce (or to taste)
1 teaspoon maple syrup (or honey)

Wash the greens well. Drop the greens into a couple of inches of boiling water. Boil for 5 minutes. Drain and rinse with cold water. Coarsely chop. Pour the olive oil into a large skillet over medium high heat. Add the peppers and onions. Once they're soft, add the garlic and cook 1 minute more. Dump in the greens and give them a stir. Add 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon pepper, the vinegar, Tabasco, and maple syrup. Stir a couple of more times, and it's ready to serve.

Ours ended up heavy on the peppers and onions because we only had a little over a half pound of greens, but it was really tasty and we got a rainbow of vegetables right in one dish. All of the veggies were still firm. If you prefer a more traditional texture, just keep on cooking them until they are to your liking before adding all of the seasonings.



Even though the greens were good enough to eat by themselves, we decided to add a couple of other things to our meal. We started with a salad of mixed greens with a bit of red onion and some yogurt dressing leftover from some Pakistani takeout (from Lahore Diner - delicious!), and the rest of the menu included some blackened salmon and lemon, garlic quinoa. Doesn't it look delicious on our gorgeous mustard yellow plates?

Looking forward to the next delicious meal.