Wishing I was in Paris...

After a pretty rough year I decided to skip town and get lost in Paris. Oh Paris. Words do not begin to describe how wonderful it is to get lost in Paris. To just forget about everything and emmerse yourself in drawing, painting, people watching, gallery hopping, coffee drinking and macaroon eating, is an extraordinary luxury and I am so grateful for it.

However, I am not so luxurious to have gone and done it all in style, and so, to balance out my daily macaroon budget (4 euro a pop!) I ate completely delicious sandwiches that were both cheap and exceptionally tasty. The one I ate the most of and the one which you can’t find any where in Vancouver were big slabs of crusty baguette stuffed with pork rilette, cornichons and dijon mustard.

Pork rilette is basically pork thats salted and then braised in it’s own fat and shredded when it gets tender. This mix gets put into jars and will last, if done properly, for several years. But I certainly don’t have that kind of patience.

Pork Rilette

1 lb Pork (it will make a difference if you splurge and get good quality grass fed pork!)

1/4 cup Salt (again, good stuff will make a difference!)

2 sprigs of Thyme

2 cups of Pork Fat

Cut the pork into 1-2 inch cubes

In a bowl mix the salt and the pork, let it sit for 2 hours, at room temp, or overnight in the fridge.

In a culender rinse off the pork.

In a small pot put the pork, the fat and the thyme and bring to a boil.

Immediately bring down the heat and let it stay at a bare simmer for a couple hours until the pork is fork tender. If you let it sit overnight it will get to soft so I don’t recomend that.

Either by hand or in a kitchenaid fitted with the paddle attachment shred the pork until its seperated into tiny string like peices.

Add in a couple tablespoons of fat until it comes to a thick consistency.

Put into a jar, or eat it write away! depending on your patience!