Generously sprinkled atop the blanched rice noodles are: Sarsang palabok (thick shrimp-flavored sauce), chicharong bulaklak (pork intestines
chitlins), chicharong balat (ground crispy pork rinds), swahe (white shrimps), tokwa (bean curd), adobong pusit (stewed baby squid), tinapang himay (flaked smoked fish), boiled egg, calamansi, and rendered pork fat.
But it is the "
chitlins" that always bring a big crowd.
He is also passionate about avoiding food waste and makes a tasty and persuasive case to save collard green stems for pickling, as well as for trying often-unloved products like gizzards,
chitlins, and okra seeds.
Here, Jordan turns out dishes such as
chitlins with rice, fried chicken gizzards, and salt-and-pepper brisket.
Orr lauds Robert Young as manifesting "perhaps the biggest range in contemporary poetry (it extends even to
chitlins, which Young somehow manages to turn into a vehicle for an elegy)." Can an independent mind not laugh out loud at that one?
But I imagine it would have been kosher, so to speak, if we had met to discuss foundation business over
chitlins in some greasy spoon in Harlem."
It's not pork
chitlins. There's nothing wrong with
chitlins, but we're getting healthier and better with food.
He also serves
chitlins - yet another Black Country variation on intestines, black pudding, traditional meat and potato pie - but recently pulled the plug on pigs' trotters.
Many of his chapter-end recipes come from the Miller family collection, my favorite being "
Chitlins Duran," a dish inspired by his brother Duran's recipe--one I will never make but admire for its authenticity, although I have never heard of
chitlins being served with spaghetti before.
Scientists have good news for those who love that delicacy of down-home Southern cooking, but hate the smell of
chitlins. They have found a compound in cilantro that quashes the notoriously foul odor of
chitlins.
Next I mentioned
chitlins, that once prized delicacy of Black Country cuisine.