"I had to learn the price of everything - because I could never afford it - when I came to the city on my own as a sixteen-year old apprentice: hunger taught me the prices, and the thought of freshly-baked bread rendered me weak in the head. In the evenings I would often wander through the city for hours on end, with only one thought in my head: bread. My eyes ached, my knees were weak, and I felt a wolf-like longing in me - bread. I was addicted to bread, just as you can be addicted to heroin. I frightened myself, and I kept thinking about a man who had once presented a slide-show at the apprentices' hostel about an expedition to the North Pole, and who had told us that they had torn apart freshly-caught fish and eaten them raw. Even now, when I have collected my pay and then walk around the city with my coins and notes, I am still often overcome with that wolf-like fear of those early days, an I buy which I see lying freshly baked in the bakers' shop window: I will buy two which look particularly good to me, then another one in the next shop, together with small crispy brown rolls, far too many of them, which later I will put in my landlady's kitchen because I cannot eat even a quarter of the bread I have bought and the thought of all that bread going mouldy fills me with horror."

Heinrich Böll, Das Brot der frühen Jahre (The Bread of Those Early Years) 1929

Overnight Pork Shoulder

A friend of mine endearingly refers to this as Pork Fantino, or Pork F. for short. She recently made a big batch for her wedding and small dusty rolls and her guests made their own pulled pork sliders. I can't remember why I first put cinnamon in this recipe now but it's precisely what makes it so hauntingly delicious.

Pork Shoulder (6lbs or so) (bone in)

8 cloves garlic, peeled

1/2 bunch rosemary, chopped

2½ tsp cinnamon

1½ teaspoon cayenne

1 teaspoon coriander

2 star anise, broken up

Salt

Lots of Pepper

Oil, peanut oil is best, but grapeseed is good too

With a paring knife stab the pork shoulder repeatedly all over, making deep incisions. Slash the fat side with long criss-cross lines. Next, with your finger probe each stab wound open so that it can be filled. Fill each wound with one clove of garlic, or if you wish, cut the cloves in half lengthwise and insert half a clove. Next. Rub lightly with oil, just enough to coat all sides top and bottom. Sprinkle liberally with the powdered spices and chopped herbs, these are guidelines and you should feel free to load it up with more. It may seem like a lot of strong spice but the mass of meat on the inside is essentially unseasoned, so go big. Do the same with the salt and pepper, Place the shoulder on a sheet pan or hotel pan or roasting pan (whatever you have that is large enough to hold it) FAT SIDE UP. Scatter the star anise petals and pieces on top of the fat side.

Meanwhile you’ve preheated an oven to 250-275F. Place the roast in the oven and let roast for about 8 hours (overnight). The fat will crisp up into an unctuous dark bark and the meat should be tender when you poke a fork into it.

A nice variation is to slice a few oranges and limes and place them on top during roasting.

Insalatta di Dente di Leone

My grandmother used to point out dandelion to me when we'd go on walks around the neighborhood, she explained that she used to eat them a lot as a girl but she warned me not to eat the ones she was pointing at because dogs pee on them and cars belch their exhaust on them. I remember thinking that maybe the dogs were more courteous in her day and that perhaps there were no cars. My grandmother thought the whole world was little more than a big pile of germs. So it was extra weird for me to think that she grew up on weeds.

Dente di Leone, "Teeth of the Lion" is what the Italians call dandelions, and you can see the English word in that delightful phrase. Lions Teeth has a way of catching the imagination especially considering Italy is a country without lions. Fangs are such fierce imagery. Italians should have been given the task of labeling the universe.

In the summer of 1993 I found myself driving a small truck thru the Californian desert en route to Las Vegas for a friends wedding. The truck was completely innocent of air conditioning and entertainment was provided via the AM radio. Somewhere out there, though I can hardly believe it, was a Greek restaurant, the whole experience seems more like a heat-stroke hallucination or mirage to me now. So unlikely a place and for no reason at all the food they served was remarkably good. Half dazed I ordered their dandelion salad. It was a family run affair with an old looking man and his wife and two daughters, I was the only one there and we all watched eachother nervously as if we were expecting a gunfight at any moment. The finished plate was passed thru each of their hands first the father, handed it to his wife and nodded his head towards me and she summoned one of the girls who took the plate and gave it to her sister who finally delivered it to me, no more than ten feet away, with a cheerful though nervous smile.

Suspicions slowly melted away when I tasted it and then with quickening pace, devoured it, within a few minutes they were seen smiling and nodding and I smiled back with little green flecks between my teeth. I have still never had a more quenching sensation than that salad, the heat and dust from the road had nearly done me in yet this salad was some kind of corpse reviver. Later I learned that it is packed firm with potassium and a handful of other vitamins and minerals.

I like to wait for a heat wave to sweep thru and make this salad as an afternoon lunch with good crusty bread. I have replicated it totally from memory from that peculiar restaurant out in the middle of nowhere that oppressively hot summer day.

I blanch the dandelion greens in plenty of well salted water for several minutes until the thickest stem is soft and tender then I drain them and let them cool. I squeeze out as much water as I can and lay them on paper towels while I get everything else ready. Then I assemble the leaves onto a chilled plate and top the heap with thinly sliced onion, rough chopped kalamata olives, the best feta I can afford, fiery hot Calabrian chile peppers, I anoint everything with a squeeze of at least half a lemon and plenty of the best extra virgin olive oil I can get my hands on. Lastly, I scatter a pinch of dried oregano and a few twists of black pepper.

I like to twirl the strands of dandelions with a fork as if it's strings of spaghetti, catching all the condiments along the way, that way every bite has a little taste of everything.