The World Table

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Haitian · Main

Griot

  • Intermediate
  • 40 min
  • roughly 2 of 4 for cost

bright · fiery Leads with acid holding everything up to the light, real fire that builds and stays.

Ingredients

  • 1.2kg pork shoulder, cut into 4cm cubes with the fat left on
  • 150ml sour orange juice, or 90ml lime juice plus 60ml orange juice
  • 80g epis
  • 100g onion, sliced
  • 1 scotch bonnet, left whole and unpierced
  • 3 sprigs thyme
  • 12g salt
  • 3g black pepper
  • 250ml water
  • 750ml neutral oil for frying

Equipment

Deep-fry pot

The skills inside

Reducing a sauceDeep fryingThe bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil

Allergen screen

None found among the 14 screened.

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

  1. Wash the pork in cold water acidulated with half the sour orange juice, rubbing each cube between your hands, then drain and pat dry.
  2. Toss with the epis, the rest of the juice, onion, thyme, salt and pepper and leave covered in the fridge; overnight is better than four hours.
  3. Tip the lot into a heavy pan with the water, lay the whole chilli on top, cover and hold at a bare tremble until a cube crushes under the back of a spoon with no resistance, 60 to 75 minutes. 75 min
  4. Lift out the pork, discard the chilli, and boil the pan liquid down to a dark syrup that just coats a spoon.
  5. Spread the cubes on a rack and leave until the surface looks matte and dull rather than wet, about 15 minutes. 15 min
  6. Fry at 180C (355F) in batches that do not touch, until deep mahogany and the crust crackles when tapped with tongs, 3 to 4 minutes. Toss the hot griot with a spoonful of the reduced glaze. 4 min

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Reducing a sauce 95 recipes

  • A steady simmer with the surface moving, never a rolling boil that throws it up the sides and scorches what is left on the base.
  • Judged by behaviour rather than the clock: it coats the back of a spoon and holds a clean line when a finger is drawn through it.
  • The drop in volume is visible against the side of the pan: there is a line to see, not a guess about whether anything has happened.
  • Seasoned at the end and not the beginning, because salt concentrates at exactly the rate everything else does.
  • Nothing is catching underneath: a spoon drawn across the base comes up clean, with no browned film building where the heat is fiercest.

Where it goes wrong It was seasoned at the start and then reduced by half. The salt concentrated along with everything else, so the sauce reaches perfect body and is too salty to serve. And the only remedy is to dilute it and reduce it all over again.

Deep frying 96 recipes

  • The oil was at temperature before anything went in, measured rather than guessed, and the vessel is no more than two-thirds full.
  • Everything went in dry. Surfaces are patted down and any coating is not dripping, because water hitting hot oil erupts and is the one accident this technique actually has.
  • The oil recovers between batches. It is back at temperature before the next load goes in rather than falling further with each one.
  • A steady vigorous bubbling that slows as it finishes: the bubbles are the food’s own water leaving, so a piece that has gone quiet has stopped drying out and is done.
  • Seasoned or finished in the first seconds out of the oil, while the surface is still hot and will hold what lands on it. Anything applied to a cooled crust sits on top and falls off.

Where it goes wrong Too much went in at once and the oil temperature collapsed. The crust forms slowly while the food sits in warm fat absorbing it rather than shedding steam, and it comes out heavy and greasy instead of crisp, which no amount of draining afterwards will fix.

At the Table

The Pour
Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
Also Right
Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
From the Taps
Crisp lager or pilsner
Zero-Proof
Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea

Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Griot Technique: Reducing a sauceThe skill inside this recipe The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Haitian kitchen