Monday · cooks for Mon, Tue
Pernil with Arroz con Gandules
pork shoulder, garlic, oregano, pigeon peas, stewed eggplant
A garlic and oregano paste driven deep into a pork shoulder and cooked until the meat gives up. The rice is cooked in the pernil's own skimmed fat, which is not optional so much as the entire point, and the stewed eggplant alongside keeps the plate from being all pork and starch.
Method
26 steps- Score the pork skin in a crosshatch about 1 in apart, cutting through skin and fat but not into the meat. Then stab a dozen slits into the meat itself, 2 in deep, all over.
- Mash the garlic, oregano, adobo, sazon, pepper, oil, vinegar, lime juice, sofrito and 1 tbsp salt into a rough paste.
- Force the paste into every slit with your fingers, packing each one full.
- Rub whatever paste is left over the whole surface, skin included, then leave the pork at room temperature for 30 minutes while you prep everything else.
- Cut the shoulder into two pieces so it fits, set both skin side up in the pot with 1 cup water, and Pressure Cook High 75 minutes.
- Natural release 20 minutes, then open the pot.
- Oven route instead: roast at 300F uncovered with 1 cup water for about 6 hours, until a fork twists freely. Raise to 450F for a final 20 minutes and skip the air fryer.
- Lift the pork onto a board and pour the cooking liquid into a fat separator. You want the fat for the rice and the liquid to cook it in.
- Cut the skin off in large sheets, pat it bone dry, salt it well, and air fry at 400F for 12 to 15 minutes, until blistered and hard.
- Break the cuerito into shards and leave them uncovered on the counter.
- Pull the meat into large chunks with two forks, and set 1 lb aside now, before it reaches the table, for Wednesday's pastelon.
- Arroz con gandules: heat 3 tbsp of the skimmed pernil fat in a heavy pot over medium.
- Add 1/2 cup sofrito and fry 5 minutes, until it darkens and the raw onion smell is gone.
- Add the sazon and alcaparrado for 1 minute, then the gandules and tomato sauce for 2 minutes more.
- Add the rice and stir 2 minutes, until every grain is coated and glossy.
- Add 3.5 cups liquid, the bay leaves and 2 tsp salt. It should taste slightly too salty.
- Bring to a hard boil over high heat, then stop stirring entirely.
- Boil uncovered about 8 minutes, until the liquid drops to the level of the rice and craters open on the surface.
- Drop the heat to low, cover tightly, and cook 20 minutes.
- Pull the pot off the heat and leave it covered another 10 minutes, then fluff from the bottom up, lifting the pegao off the base.
- Berenjena guisada, while the rice steams: heat 3 tbsp olive oil in cast iron over medium-high.
- Add 1/4 cup sofrito and cook 3 minutes, then the eggplant. Toss to coat and cook 6 minutes, until it starts to collapse.
- Add the tomato sauce, sazon, alcaparrado, 1/2 cup water and 1 tsp salt. Cover, drop the heat to low, and cook 15 minutes.
- Uncover and cook 5 minutes more, until the sauce thickens and clings.
- Build Tuesday's container before you plate anything for tonight.
- Serve the pernil with shards of cuerito on top, rice alongside, eggplant next to it, pique on the table.
Why It Works
- Deep slits, not a surface rub. Salt moves through meat at roughly half an inch a day, and a seven-pound shoulder is far too thick for seasoning to migrate inward in an afternoon. Physically packing the paste into the interior is the only way the center of the roast tastes like anything, and the same is true of any large cut.
- The rice stops being stirred once the liquid is in. Stirring releases surface starch and turns the grains creamy, which is right for risotto and wrong here. Left alone, the grains stay separate and the bottom layer forms pegao, the crisp golden crust that is the best part of the pot.
- Season the liquid, not the rice. Rice absorbs seasoning along with water, so the finished dish always tastes milder than the pot did. If the cooking liquid tastes correct, the rice will taste flat.
- Eggplant gets high heat before any liquid. It is a sponge, and hitting it hot first collapses the cell structure and browns it. Start it in liquid instead and it stays spongy and absorbs oil endlessly.
- Cook the rice in the pernil fat. Rendered pork fat carries the fat-soluble aromatics out of the garlic and oregano paste. This is what makes the two dishes taste like they belong to each other rather than sitting next to each other.
Day Two
Pork in one container with a few spoons of its cooking liquid, rice in another, eggplant in a third. Four days. The cuerito stays out at room temperature, uncovered, because refrigerating it turns it to leather. Before you sit down Monday, fill one wide shallow container for Tuesday: rice on one side, a generous pile of pernil on the other with two spoonfuls of cooking liquid over the meat, eggplant filling the gap. Put two shards of cuerito in a small bag on the counter rather than in the container.
Pernil is best in a hot cast iron pan for 4 minutes, letting the edges catch and crisp. That is the pernil frito move and it is arguably better than the first night. Rice takes a splash of water, covered, low heat for 8 minutes, or the microwave under a damp paper towel. Eggplant is forgiving and reheats any way you like. The prebuilt Tuesday container goes in the microwave covered, 3 minutes, stir, 1 minute more, with the cuerito dropped on top after.
Garnacha, 20 minutes in the fridge
Pernil is fatty, garlicky, and oregano-heavy, and a juicy low-tannin Spanish red cuts it without competing. A cold Medalla or any light lager is the honest local answer and easier to find.