Pork N Peas Recipe

How to make it

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• Toss the peas onto the counter to thaw. We're not huffy, we know you'll get to them eventually.
• Slide your pork shoulder hunk onto your cutting board. Hone your knife on the steel. Eye the pork. Hone the knife some more. Then SQUARE YOUR SHOULDERS cuz you gonna OWN THIS PIG!
• D'you see fat on that hunk? Slice it off. Right off! Snick snack! Then chunk the nicely trimmed pork up into eating size -- 2 - 3 inches for each hunk. Whack off any large outside bits of fat you see.
• Wash yer hands and start heating up your olive oil in a big ol' pan for to make with the DELICIOUS BROWNING num num num.
• Ya gotta love the tongs! Tongs are the BOMB. Tongerize the pork from the cutting board into the pan. Make sure there's at least a finger's width of space between the little pork nuggets, you can brown them up in batches if you need to. Crowded browning pork is steamed icky pork. Tong them again when you turn them, cuz you gotta brown all the sides for optimum numming.
• Once the pork has been thoroughly lavished with loving browningness, fish out the last of the nuggets and deglaze with your liquid of choice - water, chicken, vegetable, Elm stock, go nuts. Leave a couple pieces of the nuggets poking up out of the liquid, though, okay? No drowning in the kitchen.
• Scrub the bottom of the pan with a spoon to get the marvelous brownness up into the liquid. Scrub scrub scrub!
• Fling in the bay leaf, Onion, Garlic, Salt, Pepper, carrot, and celery stuff in. Stir.
• Lob in the browned pork nuggets of heaven, bring to a simmer, and walk away for about half an hour. Okay not really, you gotta stir it once or twice. Easy peasy.
• Now, ordinarily, I'm a one-pot kinda cook. However, this totally calls for a quick roux to thicken the sauce, so, I'm sorry but....haul out another pan.
• Once the pork's been happily simmering for 30 minutes:
• Melt the butter and flour over medium-low heat. Slap it around until it begins to brown. (Great good googly moogly I love brownage.)
• PREsent....WHISK! Okay, with your LEFT hand, glug the tiniest glug of wine ever glugged into the roux, and with the RIGHT hand whisk the crap out of it. Do it again. Now again. And again, until all the wine is gone, the roux smells heavenly and is pillowly smooth and even. This is an easy way to avoid gravy with lumps WHOO HOOO!
• Get out your turkey baster (I hope it's metal, heat does nasy things to plastic) and suck up some of the marvelous liquid from your pork. You can put the nozzle under the fat, so your gravy isn't swimming (drowning?) in it.
• Slosh it into your roux, as much as you want. Taste and adjust for flavor. Try not to fall over, I know it's good, but you can't finish the dish if you're on the floor.
• Now toss some of those thawed peas into the bottom of whatever you're serving this on and tongerize out some falling-apart browned pork onto the peas, and slop a little gravy over the top. The peas should be doing the backstroke. Serve with yer bread and butter (makes for good sopping of heavenly sauce) and proceed to scarf on the way to the table OM NOM NOM NOM.
• Oh, I'm sorry, did I say you'd have leftovers? I meant SECONDS!