Barbecued Pork

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/miscellany_pdf/Misc9recipes.pdf

Barbecued Pork

Ni Tsan no. 47
Wash the meat. Rub spring onion, chinese pepper, honey, a little salt, and wine on it. Hang the meat on
bamboo sticks in the saucepan. In the pan put a cup of water and a cup of wine. Cover. Use moist
paper to seal up the pan. If the paper dries out, moisten it. Heat the pan with grass bunches; when one
is burned up, light another. Then stop the fire and leave for the time it takes to eat a meal. Touch the
cover of the pan; if it is cold, remove the cover and turn the meat over. Cover it again and seal again
with the moist paper. Heat again with one bunch of grass. It will be cooked when the pan cools again.

15 oz pork tenderloin 
1 T honey 
1 c rice wine
1 T chopped spring onion 
1/2 t salt 
1 c water
1/2 t pepper 
1 T wine

Mix onion, pepper, honey, and 1 T wine. Rub them on the pork. Let stand one hour. Put 1 c rice
wine and 1 c water in a pot. Arrange skewers so the pork tenderloin can lie on them and you can
still put the lid on; I did it by putting a lower pan inside the pot with the skewers lying across it.
Put on the lid, sealing with wet paper towels. Simmer about 1 hour 25 minutes. Take off heat, let
cool about an hour. Turn over the pork. Reseal. Bring back to a boil, simmer five minutes,
remove from the heat, let sit another half hour or so. Slice.

I made this the day before we left for Raptor War because my husband said that we were not hauling up a bunch of cooking stuff for a day trip and because I had no idea how much dry grass I would need to cook this.

I marinated it for about an hour following the amounts in the redaction and using ground white

pepper because I felt it would be more appropriate than black pepper. I first tried using the cooking

directions from the original text, I put a pie pan in the bottom of a heavy Aluminum pot, put bamboo

skewers across the top for the meat to be suspended on and poured the wine and water mixture into the pan. I was going to put our portable fire pit on the edge of the parking area so that I could reach it on level ground, but my husband said since it was a shared area we couldn't use that. He set it up about 3 feet from the sidewalk (I moved it closer to the step but I couldn't get it close enough to reach easily). I managed to put the pot inside it on 3 river rocks that were about 1 ½ inches tall and put a bunch of dry grass in the space between the stones but after the grass was set on fire I couldn't reach the area to put more grass under it unless I fell on top of it since I'm not good at walking on uneven ground yet. Since my husband was getting more upset at the fact that I was attempting to do it the medieval way (which he feels is no longer done because “those ways didn't work, that's why we've invented better ways of doing things.” I decided it wasn't worth the fight and I would follow the stove top directions. I took it inside and set the pot on the burner and lifted the lid to check that the meat was still positioned properly. A whiff of steam rushed up as soon as I lifted the lid. Even though I didn't get to complete the process I could see how cooking with dry grass could work. I followed the stove top directions but since I had put a probe thermometer into the meat I only cooked it for about a half hour and it was done so I didn't go the full 1 hour and 25 minutes because that would have been too long. I decided to just let it cool and do the second heating the next day at Raptor War unless we chose to eat it cold. I decided that heating it the first time gets it mostly cooked and when you turn it off it finishes cooking with the residual heat in the pot. After it cools you turn it over and basically reheat it. At Raptor War we chose to eat it cold. It was well liked by all. You couldn't really tell it was cooked in rice wine (I used Sake) but it did taste good, the children had some of the leftovers (pictured) and they both liked it. It was moist and tender. I may try this recipe again but I would like to do it when I can move better on uneven ground so that I can try cooking it with dry grass again because I feel it would be an interesting experience that we wouldn't often get.