I'm back, continuing my long-standing tradition of posting recipes at wildly irregular intervals. You're welcome.
This one has no specific “original recipe” to draw upon. My
initial impulse was to make the Italian Beef recipe from last year, but
with pork shoulder instead of beef. However, as I was going along, I ended up
heading in a different direction. So while this was somewhat improvised, there
were two recipes that I used as inspiration. One was J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s Braised Oxtail Sandwiches, which was my starting point for the Italian
Beef dish. The second was another Serious Eats recipe, by Jennifer Olvera: Cider-Braised Country-Style Pork Ribs. I first sampled these succulent
braised ribs at the home of my friend Kelly, whom I first cooked with decades
ago, when we were in grad school together. We once considered pitching a TV
cooking show entitled “Don’t Try This at Home,” but that’s a story for another
time.
