Best Food Writing 2015 (27 page)

“Piano piano,”
says Lisetta, slowly, step by step. “You cannot rush a good ragu.”

“The 1950s were full of misery,” says Anna #2. “Back then ragu was just a bit of tomato and onion and lard. It changed slowly over the years when people had more money to buy meat. A little pork, a little pancetta.”

“A proper ragu should be made with half pork, half beef,” says Anna #1.

“No, no! One quarter pork and the rest beef.”

“More pork than beef—it has better flavor. I use one kilo of beef and one and a half of pork.”

“Pancetta. Always.”

“No! Not if you already have pork. That's too much pork.”

“Can we all agree that skirt steak is the best?”

“No no no. In ragu Bolognese there's no place for skirt steak.”

“Piano piano.”

“Fresh tomato is better in the summer. If not,
concentrato
works.”

“Canned DOP tomatoes are more consistent.”

“When do you add milk?”

“I don't use milk. Only with the
ragù di prosciutto
. It helps mellow the saltiness.”

“You know there are people who serve their ragu with spaghetti.”

“Spaghetti! Oh please no. Tagliatelle.
Sempre tagliatelle!
”

“Good ragu comes from someone's house, not a restaurant.”

“Piano piano.”

As the debate rages across the table, I feel a sudden and overwhelming need to be one of their grandsons. Whatever food argument you've ever had with a friend or family member feels trivial by comparison; the differences at the heart of the discussion may sound miniscule, but it's clear that they matter to everyone in this room. I have zero doubt that the best ragu for me would be whichever one of their homes I happen to be eating in at the moment.

Despite the raised voices and the wild gesticulations, nobody here is wrong. The beauty of ragu is that it's an idea as much as it is a recipe, a slow-simmered distillation of what means and circumstances have gifted you: If Zia Peppe's ragu is made with nothing but pork scraps, that's because her neighbor raises pigs. When Maria cooks her vegetables in a mix of oil and butter, it's because her family comes from a long line of dairy farmers. When Nonna Anna's slips a few laurel leaves into the pot, she plucks them from the tree outside her back door. There is no need for a decree from the Chamber of Commerce to tell these women what qualifies as the authentic ragu; what's authentic is whatever is simmering under the lid.

Eventually the women agree to disagree and the rolling boil of the debate calms to a gentle simmer. Alessandro opens a few bottles of
pignoletto he's brought to make the peace. We drink and take photos and make small talk about tangential ragu issues like the proper age of parmesan and the troubled state of the prosciutto industry in the region.

On my way out, Anna #1 grabs me by the arm. She pulls me close and looks up into my eyes with an earnestness that drowns out the rest of the chatter in the room. “Forget about these arguments. Forget about the small details. Just remember that the most important ingredient for making ragu, the one thing you can never forget, is love.”

Lisetta overhears from across the room and quickly adds.

“And pancetta!”

Ragù alla Bolognese
Ragù alla Bolognese

        
This is not a definitive recipe, but rather a synthesis of the parts I loved most about the dozens of ragus I tasted in Emilia Romagna: the rich, gelatinous flavor of Massimo's hand-torn super ragu, the whisper of tomato from Alessandro's version (despite Massimo's convincing protestations, the light sweetness and extra umami hit of tomato has a certain place in the sauce), and, of course, the pancetta from the grandmas of Savigno. Whatever you do, don't serve this with spaghetti. Try penne, rigatoni or pappardelle—something substantial enough to grab hold of the chunky ragu.

            
1½ lb beef (oxtail, short rib, shank—something with fat, flavor, and preferably some marrow and gelatin), in one or two large pieces

            
Salt to taste

            
1 tablespoon olive oil

            
2 medium carrots, peeled and minced

            
2 ribs celery, minced

            
1 medium onion, minced

            
1 pound ground pork (preferably from the shoulder)

            
½ cup minced pancetta

            
1 small can whole peeled tomatoes (preferably San Marzano), drained and crushed

            
1 cup dry red wine

            
1½ cups chicken stock

            
1 bay leaf

            
1. Heat the oil in a large, heavy-bottomed pot or Dutch oven set over medium-high heat. Season the beef on all sides with salt and cook until deeply browned all over. Remove from the pan.

            
2. If the pan is dry, add another splash of oil. Sauté the carrot, celery, and onion until soft, about 5 minutes. Add the pork and pancetta and cook until lightly browned, then stir in the tomato and continue cooking for another 3 minutes. Return the beef to the pan, add the wine, stock, bay leaf and cover. Turn the heat to low and simmer for two hours, until the beef is falling apart.

            
3. Shred the beef by hand or with two forks and fold back into the sauce, discarding any bones, excess fat, or cartilage. If the sauce looks too dry, add a splash of broth or water to get the right consistency. Serve over pasta with freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano. Makes about 8 servings.

How to Make Carnitas That Will Fix Everything That's Wrong in Your Sad, Horrible Life
How to Make Carnitas That Will Fix Everything That's Wrong in Your Sad, Horrible Life

B
Y
N
ICOLÁS
M
EDINA
M
ORA

From
BuzzFeed.com

          
Born in Mexico City, BuzzFeed reporter Nicolás Medina Mora is based now in New York, but he describes himself as “a perpetual foreigner.” Which perhaps explains why the cultural anchor of food—and, very specifically
carnitas
—looms so large in his complicated personal history.

They called him Güero, which means “blondie,” but he looked nothing like a Californian surfer. He owned a nameless taco stand in El Olivo, one of those ugly Mexico City neighborhoods that stand at the tense border between rich and poor. The place consisted of a small kitchen where four aproned men sweated in close proximity, cooking tortillas over an open fire and butchering whole pigs. Close by, on the sidewalk, sat a giant copper vat where vaguely discernible pieces of pork boiled away in a broth of lard and Coca-Cola. Everything was filthy—flies gathered over the wet-fresh cilantro and the finely chopped onions and the yellowing lime wedges. People ate on their feet, holding bright plastic plates close to their chins. For a city where pale and dark-skinned people generally do not mix, it was a diverse crowd—there were bureaucrats in ill-fitting suits, construction workers covered in paint splatters, and private-school boys in Lacoste polo shirts. On any given day, the line went around the block.

I ate his food every week for years, and yet I know nothing about Güero. People told apocryphal stories about him. Some said he had been born into a rich family in Michoacán and gone to culinary school in France but had dropped out, preferring the simple life of a taquero to the chef's pursuit of cultural capital. Others insisted he was a former narco, and that he'd learned to wield his butcher's knife in the darkest corners of Culiacán. Still others said he was just a kid from the neighborhood with a gift for braising pork and blending chiles. Güero cultivated an air of mystery: I never once heard him speak. People would yell orders at him; he would nod, chop the appropriate amount of meat, and hand it to the customer over two tortillas—all without a word. He also refused to handle money, insisting that people give their crumpled pesos to a teenage assistant.

My friends and I went to see Güero every Friday after school, before we went drinking. We were young at the time—15, 16, 17—but we drank like sailors with a death wish. I still don't know what compelled us to do such damage to ourselves. Part of it was the culture of excess of wealthy Mexico, but in our case there was a deeper existential crisis at play. The course of our allotted years seemed to stretch in front of us with hopeless inevitability. We would go into the family business. We would marry women who had been taught never to raise their voices. We would raise children who would develop a drinking problem before graduating high school. We would never lack for anything; we would somehow manage to be miserable. My grandmother would have said we were in desperate need of a priest, but we were faithless, and so Güero became our minister.

And yet those afternoons were also full of that Mexican joy that comes from basking in your own heartbreak. It is an exuberant, redemptive sadness best captured by a group of punch-drunk teenagers stumbling on a deserted street in the gray light of the morning, singing sorrowful
rancheras
at the top of their lungs, having the time of their lives. That's what carnitas are really about: the paradox of celebrating and mourning at the same time. They are sacrificial food—you butcher and braise a pig when you have a reason to feast, and those occasions tend to be bittersweet moments of parting. You eat carnitas when your daughter turns 15 or your father dies; when you graduate from college
or you retire from the civil service. You eat carnitas the night before you set out for the north. You eat carnitas once a week, because even though you are too young to understand the passing of time, you can already feel your life slipping away.

I left Mexico when I was 18, because I was unhappy and believed that my unhappiness had roots in history and geography. I chose to come to the United States because I was privileged enough to be able to secure a student visa, and because from a young age I had been fascinated with America. It was a place, I imagined, where things were mutable, where each person was allotted more than one life, in case they chose to start again. My America was the opposite of Mexico, which I thought of as a place where everything was fixed, where memory was inescapable and history ran in repeat. I applied to 10 colleges in New England and packed all my books. I did not intend to return.

Of course, once I actually arrived in the United States, I discovered that my America was nothing but fantasy. Still, I tried my hardest not to look back. This meant, among other things, that for a long time I did not eat much Mexican food. I began to approach the meals of my childhood like a gringo would: as a welcome variation on pizza and hamburgers. Güero's carnitas and their metaphysical significance became a distant memory, much like the faces of my high school friends.

And then, last winter, I found myself in desperate need to feel at home. I had just turned 23 and had recently moved to New York. The woman I loved had settled on another continent and found another man. I had a month-to-month contract writing for a news agency, but the company would not sponsor me for a visa, and the prospect of having to return made me nauseous. It had been snowing for weeks, and the windows in my apartment near the Gowanus Canal wouldn't shut properly, such that I woke up each morning covered by a thin blanket of snow. Everything felt ungrounded and fleeting, but not in the light-hearted, liberating way they advertise at the immigration desk at John F. Kennedy Airport. I got off the subway one afternoon after work and felt a deep craving for a heaping plate of carnitas and half a bottle of mezcal.

I set out to look for a taqueria. I wandered aimlessly around streets lined with abandoned factories, auto-shops, and crumbling row houses, feeling the snow leak into my sneakers and soak my feet. And then, by
one of the large avenues that run north-south in that part of Brooklyn, I stumbled upon the Country Boys Restaurant. The place has since shut down, but on that afternoon it had just opened for the day, and the windows were covered in handwritten signs that advertised, in Spanish, a taco-for-a-dollar special.

I walked in and felt like I had stepped into a mummified soda fountain from the '50s. There was a long bar, and in front of it, 10 or 12 spinning chairs upholstered in pink patent leather. Behind the bar there was a dusty mirror. There was nobody to be seen, so I sat down in one of the chairs and waited. A middle-aged man appeared five minutes later, wearing a black T-shirt and a Yankees baseball cap. In English, he asked me what I wanted. In Spanish, I replied I wanted carnitas. He went into the kitchen and came back, sooner than I expected, carrying my tacos in a bright green plastic plate exactly like the ones at Güero's. I bit into the tortilla and was mildly disappointed. The tacos were good, but they just weren't the real thing. That was my first intimation that “the real thing” may well not exist, except in memory.

The Brooklyn taquero and I talked about soccer for a while. And then, as I was finishing my last taco, he asked me a question out of the blue.

“So, do you have papers?”

I stared at him for a second. I finally answered that I did.

“That's great,” he said.

I then tried to explain that I had only a yearlong work permit and that it was about to run out.

He interrupted me. “That's still great.”

I tried to pay him the five dollars I owed him, but he refused to take my money. I walked out of the restaurant and went home. I still felt lost and alone, but the world seemed a shade more tolerable. Soon afterward everything improved. I found a job that sponsored me for a visa. I met someone else. Winter ended.

It was around that time that I began making carnitas, using a recipe I cobbled together from dozens of YouTube videos narrated in Spanish by men who sound like they don't like to talk. Once a month, I invite my American friends to my apartment and feed them the food of my adolescence. The tacos I make are but a pale ghost of Güero's—the store-bought tortillas you find in the Northeast are always a little
rubbery, the chiles are never quite as varied, and a Dutch oven over a Brooklyn stove is no match for a copper vat over a roaring fire. Still, they do the trick. They induce that same kind of melancholic joy I felt when I was in high school.

How to Make an Insanely Delicious Feast of Mexican Carnitas; or, How to Make a Mexican Feast at Home in Gringolandia
How to Make an Insanely Delicious Feast of Mexican Carnitas; or, How to Make a Mexican Feast at Home in Gringolandia

        
In Mexico, you eat carnitas when your daughter turns 15 or your father dies; when you graduate from college or you retire from the civil service. You eat carnitas, like I did, every Friday after school, at the same filthy-delicious taco stand owned by a silent taquero named Güero. And you eat carnitas the night before you set out for the north.

            
Below you will find directions on how to make carnitas without access to Güero's giant copper vat or a whole pig or a tortilla-making machine or a well-stocked chile stand or decent avocados or juicy limes or any of the things that make life in Mexico wonderful. This recipe will tell you how to make something that approaches carnitas but will never really be the real thing, because the real thing only really exists in the memory of people who have left the old country.

            
To be clear, this takes a full 24 hours: You have to soak the beans the night before you plan to eat, and the pork needs to simmer for 6–8 hours. During that time, you can get drunk, make two salsas, beans, and spicy green rice. And then you will feast. Also, most of it is appropriately (i.e., extremely) spicy, especially the green salsa, the pickled onions, the green rice, and the beans.

For the pork

            
8 pound pork shoulder, de-boned

            
2 pounds pork belly

            
1 cinnamon stick

            
1 piece star anise

            
1 tablespoon ground cumin

            
2 tablespoons mustard seeds

            
2 cups lard*

            
1 white onion, coarsely chopped in rough ½-inch pieces

            
10 garlic cloves

            
1 bottle of Mexican Coke (or any cola made with real sugar)

            
2 sprigs dried epazote leaves (or a big pinch, if they're crumbled) (epazote is a Mexican herb, like an anise-y tarragon)*

            
2 dried bay leaves

            
2 tablespoons dried Mexican oregano*

            
1 orange

For the smoky red salsa

            
5 dried guajillo chiles

            
5 dried chipotle chiles

            
5 medium, ripe tomatoes

            
½ white onion, peeled

            
10 garlic cloves

            
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

For the tart green salsa

            
8 tomatillos

            
4 fresh serrano peppers

            
4 jalapeño peppers

            
½ white onion, peeled

            
6 garlic cloves

            
4 limes

            
¼ bunch cilantro, coarsely chopped (leaves and stems)

            
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

            
1 ripe avocado

For the spicy pickled onion

            
1 red onion

            
2 habanero chiles

            
2 cups apple cider vinegar OR distilled white vinegar

            
1 teaspoon dried Mexican oregano