Your Cooking Lesson

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This recipe enhances tender, juicy pork with some of the finest vegetables of spring, including sugar snap peas, woodland mushrooms, and rhubarb. Rhubarb is a perennial plant that produces thick, celery-like stalks traditionally used both as a food and, in some cultures, as a component in botanical medicine. Highly nutritious, it has a bold, tart flavor that must be balanced with sugar or other sweet ingredients to counter its acidity. In North America we commonly use rhubarb as a fruit, in sweet preparations such as pies, compotes, and jams. However, it makes a great addition to savory dishes, as well, lending a sweet-tart flavor to sauces, side dishes, and as an accent vegetable.

In this recipe we use rhubarb as a flavoring and thickening ingredient for a gastrique. Gastrique is a lesser-known, French, sweet-and-sour sauce typically used to contrast with rich protein foods such as duck and pork. In its simplest form, a gastrique is a thin, syrupy mixture of caramelized sugar and vinegar. But chefs often elaborate on the genre by adding fruits, vegetables, stock, or glace (highly reduced stock). In our recipe, we lightly caramelize diced rhubarb with sugar, and then simmer it with vinegar and chicken stock to make a slightly sweet, lightly sour sauce for pan-roasted pork tenderloin.

Fregula (often spelled “fregola”) is a type of couscous made in Sardinia, a large island that is part of Italy. Couscous is a pasta originating in North Africa and especially associated with Moroccan cuisine. Traditional couscous is handmade by mixing durum semolina wheat flour and water into a stiff dough, and then rubbing that dough between the palms of the hands to create little spheres which are then air-dried. Due to centuries of cultural and culinary trade with Arabs, cooks in southern Italy adopted many Middle-Eastern and North African ingredients, including couscous. Whereas Moroccan couscous grains are very small, Sardinian cooks originally formed larger spheres (ranging from 1/8-inch to 3/16-inch in diameter), and added their own special touch by oven-toasting them, resulting in a nubbly exterior and varied colors ranging from pale beige to deep brown. Toasting truly elevates couscous, giving it a pleasantly chewy texture and a complex, nutty flavor. Today fregula is commercially produced, but the best brands nonetheless have the rustic mouthfeel and flavor of handmade fregula. Look for the designation “fregula Sarda grossa” on the label. If Sardinian fregula is not available, you can use the more widely-available Israeli pearl couscous, which is not pre-toasted.

To make the rhubarb gastrique, start by fine-dicing the rhubarb stalks and mincing the shallots. Sauté in butter until the vegetables soften and begin to brown at the edges. Add the sugar, vinegar, rosemary, and stock, then simmer until the vegetables are very soft.

To achieve a smooth texture, strain the gastrique. Pour it into a mesh strainer and force it through with a wooden spoon. Be sure to scrape off and use all of the solids from the bottom of the strainer. If necessary, add some stock or water to achieve a light nappé consistency: thick enough to coat the back of a spoon but thin enough to flow on a plate. Evaluate the flavor and, if necessary, adjust by adding more salt, sugar, or vinegar.

You’ll notice that the rhubarb I used for this recipe has dark-pink stems; it was homegrown outdoors. When cooked, it yielded a yellowish-colored sauce. If you prefer a more vibrantly pink sauce, use bright red, hot-house rhubarb…. Or cheat, by adding some grated raw red beet to the vegetables!

Most sugar snap pea cultivars have strings running along both sides of the pods. To remove the strings, use a paring knife to make a diagonal partial cut on one end, then pull. The sting will come off. Do this on both ends to ensure a pleasant mouthfeel. To ensure a crisp-tender texture after reheating, blanch the stringed snap peas in boiling water for a few seconds only, then refresh under cold water. Blot dry on paper towels. To save time and nutrients, retain the blanching water to boil the fregula.

Salt the snap pea blanching water before par-cooking the fregula in it. Like all pasta shapes, fregula absorbs water as it cooks. By salting the cooking water, you ensure that the fregula is evenly seasoned throughout. Boil until the grains are chewy-tender, then drain and rinse briefly under cold water to stop the cooking. Shake dry before storing.

Dried mushrooms are packed with concentrated flavor. Optionally adding some reconstituted dried mushrooms significantly enhances the taste of commercially-grown fresh mushrooms, giving your dish depth of flavor as well as fresh texture. In this recipe I’ve used dried porcinis. To reconstitute, cover them with boiling water and soak for 10 minutes. The soaking water will become imbued with mushroom flavor and, so, should be retained and used. Be sure not to include any grit that may settle at the bottom of the liquid; pour off the clear liquid and leave the grit behind, remaining in the container. Mince the soaked mushrooms to release as much flavor as possible. You’ll use both the porcinis and their liquid to elevate the finished fregula.

Even more so than common button mushrooms, cultivated wild-type mushrooms have highly porous cell structures; when they come into contact with water they act like sponges, soaking it up and easily becoming waterlogged and soggy. Fortunately, cultivated mushrooms are grown under controlled conditions and rarely harbor soil or insects. So, usually, you don’t have to wash them. Simply inspect them carefully and, if you see any foreign matter, just wipe it off with a damp paper towel. Trim away any hard stem ends, and cut into bite-size pieces. All mushrooms can become wet and slimy if stored directly in plastic and sealed air-tight. If prepping ahead, loosely wrap in paper towels and keep in an open, unsealed plastic bag.

Finish a few more tasks and your prep is complete. Here’s your mise tray:

It’s dinnertime—let’s COOK!

Pan-roasting is a smart cooking method for tender cuts of meat of about one pound in weight or smaller. If you were to cook such a cut by traditional roasting, by the time the interior of the meat achieved the desired internal temperature, the exterior would not have had time to become crusty and golden brown. Pan-roasting begins with searing on the stove top, by the sauté method, before finishing in the oven. To help ensure great browning, use a carbon steel sauté pan such as the De Buyer pans I use. https://amzn.to/3H7eA7C For both safety and good browning, be sure to blot the meat dry with paper towels, but try not to dislodge the pepper. Heat the pan very hot, add a little pure olive oil (not extra-virgin, which has a lower smoke point), and then sear all surfaces, including the ends. Transfer to a sizzle pan or small roasting pan and finish in the oven. And don’t wash the sauté pan! During browning, the meat has deposited some flavorful sucs, or browned bits of protein, in the pan. You’ll deglaze these as you use the same pan for finishing the mushroom fregula.

To transform our plain boiled fregula into delicious mushroom fregula, we’ll start by sautéing the mushrooms. To properly sauté mushrooms it’s essential to use high heat and to not crowd the pan. As raw mushrooms come into contact with heat, they release a lot of internal moisture. In a blazing-hot pan that moisture immediately evaporates; this concentrates the mushrooms’ flavor. But if the heat is too low, rapid evaporation doesn’t happen and the mushrooms stew in their own juices, becoming soggy and bland. We’ll use a combination of butter and pure olive oil as the sauté cooking medium. (The butter adds flavor, whereas the oil raises the butter’s smoke point, preventing scorching.) Just as mushrooms soak up moisture, they also soak up fat—so you need plenty of it to achieve good browning. If you don’t hear sizzling, you need more fat! Only when the mushrooms have become dry and well-browned, add the shallots, garlic, and minced porcinis.

Now stir in the fregula, chicken stock, mushroom soaking liquid, and a little salt. Cover, and simmer until the fregula absorbs the liquids and all of the other flavors. When finished, the fregula should be moist, but not watery, and have a pleasant, chewy mouthfeel.

Just reheat the snap peas in the microwave and you’re ready to plate. Using an entremet ring (aka food ring) for the fregula makes an attractive presentation. If you use one, be sure to pack in the fregula and firmly press down on the top to help it hold together. Slide your carving knife under the pork slices, hold them in place with tongs, and transfer the slices to the front of the plate. If necessary, fan them out a bit further. Use a plating spoon https://amzn.to/450GICx to nap the pork with the gastrique.