Prairie Pride Farm's Pulled Pork: Three Days, Three Meals

We love the St. Paul Farmer's Market. Yes, Minneapolis has many, but St. Paul's is special. For one, everything sold there is completely local. It has a warm, community feel, there's always free parking and making trips there helps me keep up with all the new restaurants and shops popping up in St. Paul. But there is one more reason- the presence of Prairie Pride farm  . They sell pork. And it is amazing pork. Check out their website and they'll give you the details. We have two favorites, the pulled pork and the (ready??) cinnamon bacon. You had to have guessed that bacon had something to do with it. Cinnamon bacon is just that, bacon infused with cinnamon. It is delicious with our weekend morning oatmeal. Yum. Even better, the leftover fat can be stored and used to enhance many recipes, we have found that it combines amazingly with Salmon. But this post is about pulled pork, specifically, how easy it can make your life. One may not think of versatility when they hear pulled pork, but oh how versatile it is. You can go traditional and pair it with BBQ sauce, in fact Prairie Pride farm makes a kick-ass blackberry and chile BBQ sauce that is really good with the pork. In my opinion, though, just dousing the meat in BBQ, although classically delicious, just doesn't use it to it's potential.

Prairie Pride sells the pulled pork frozen in 1.5 lb. packages. Generally we buy one, bring it home to thaw and eat it for at least three meals. The goal is to make dishes that are so different we don't think "pulled pork again?" (I guess I do that a lot).

Day One: Salad style
This dish consists of three main parts. Pulled Pork, black beans and a salad, which will all be mixed together.
Salad:
1 shallot, sliced thin.
1 tomato, cored and diced.
2 Serrano peppers
Black pepper and salt.
Basil flavored oil and white balsamic vinegar.
Flat leaf parsley.
Fresh ground parmesan.
Slice shallot and immerse in the white balsamic, let it soak for about 20 minutes. Do this before you start the black beans and then use the extra time to make a margarita or mojito. Chop your tomato and sprinkle it with basil oil and salt. Dice parsley (enough for just a bit more than a garnish), the serrano peppers and add black pepper to taste. Mix all the above ingredients together and set aside. 

Pork :You'll need 1/2 lb Pulled Pork and an Achiote Annato sauce (at any Mexican grocer, or select Cub foods) it's basically a red Mexican hot sauce- not vinegary. Mix the pork with the sauce, and heat in a frying pan until warm.

Beans: We used 1 can of Kuner's southwestern spiced black beans and modified. Open the can and pour into a sauce pan over medium heat. Mix with black pepper, 2 small cloves garlic, cinnamon and 1/2 tsp dried oregano.

Assemble: Mix it all together (with about half the black beans) and top with freshly grated parmesan cheese.

Day Two: Add an egg. Yum. 
So this is more like a hash. Completely different feel from day one, but you'll use a lot of the same ingredients. As you'll notice above, I said to use half the black beans, that's because you're going to use them again, see the picture?

This dish consists of four parts, you'll notice a vegetable slaw, the pulled pork, leftover beans and a fried egg. You're going to use the pork almost exactly as it comes, without sauce, but you'll add a bit of cayenne pepper to it. Then, in a frying pan coated lightly with butter, saute some onions, bell pepper and garlic, when the onions become translucent, add a fistful of parsley and 1/2 tsp dried oregano. In a sauce pan, heat the leftover black beans. Plate the slaw and heat the pork in the same pan you cooked the slaw. When heated through, place heated pork next to the slaw on the plate. Cook an egg (could use the same frying pan, too, it'll cook fast). Top with the egg and then add the black beans. Top with some slices of sun-dried tomato. Doesn't that look good? It tasted great, and I usually don't like runny yolk. You can cook the egg more if you wish, but the yolk adds sweetness.




Day Three: Pulled Pork Sandwich with Peach compote
If you're buying pulled pork, you do have to make a sandwich. This is the
easiest of all the recipes and equally as delicious. Simply take the remainder of the pulled pork, mix with a conservative amount of your favorite BBQ sauce (you can always add more, too much will ruin it). Buy a nice bun, add a slice of cheese and you're there.

To make this meal more than just a sandwich, the AC created an amazing peach compote. Pretty much dessert-worthy. Not healthy by any stretch. That's your warning.

Sweet Peach Compote: Put 1/2 c brown sugar in a sauce pan with a 1/2 c of water, bring to a boil and cook until the sugar completely dissolves, you're making a simple syrup of sorts, actually more like a caramel. While the syrup is cooking, grind 4-5 cloves and 3 allspice seeds with a mortar and pestle. Once the sugar is dissolved, add the ground spices to the pan with 1/4 tsp powdered ginger, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp vanilla, 1/8 tsp coconut extract, 1/8 tsp cayenne and a pinch of salt. Let the sauce reduce to about half and add two thinly sliced peaches and 1/2 tbsp butter, turn heat to simmer and cook until the peaches are soft. Remove the peaches from the sauce and continue to let the sauce reduce until thick. Pour the sauce over the peaches and garnish with fresh mint.

There you are. Three completely different, ridiculously simple, fairly cheap meals to serve three days in a row without any boredom. Don't eat pork? Bummer.