Tasty Pork Favorites for Your Table

Top Chef Charlie Palmer Shares Recipes for His Favorite Pork Dishes

(CBS)  Charlie Palmer is considered one of America's best chefs. To many, he's a culinary icon.

Palmer has 13 restaurants, including several steak houses in Washington D.C., Reno and Vegas, a fish restaurant in Reno, and a wine boutique in Napa, Calif. He's also been a judge on the current season of Bravo's "Top Chef: Las Vegas."

Palmer has taken home several James Beard Foundation awards, which many refer to as "Oscars of the Food Industry."

"Early Show" recipes galore!

And Wednesday night in New York, seven award-winning chefs will gather to celebrate American cuisine at the foundation's annual gala and fundraiser. Palmer will be cooking there with the best of the best. However, he shared some of his favorite pork recipes on "The Early Show" that you can make at home.

Roasted Pork Tenderloin

Thyme-Roasted Apples, Truffle Brussels Sprouts
1 pork tenderloin, silverskin removed
vegetable oil
1 Golden Delicious apple, unpeeled, cored and quartered
2-3 T unsalted butter
3 sprigs fresh thyme
salt and pepper
1 T butter
2 T shallots, small dice
10 Brussels sprouts, leaves separated, blanched
1 T white balsamic vinegar
2 t black truffles, sliced, julienne

Method
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Season the tenderloin with salt and black pepper. Pour just enough oil into an ovenproof sauté pan to cover the bottom of the pan and heat until smoking hot. Sear the tenderloin on all sides, and then reduce the heat to medium. Toss in the apple pieces with the butter and thyme and move the pork and apples around to coat them with butter and herbs.

Transfer the pan to the oven and roast the pork for 7 to 10 minutes, depending on how you like it cooked (150degree F is medium). Make sure your meat thermometer reads approximately 150 degrees. Baste the meat occasionally with the pan drippings and turn the apples to keep them moist.

Take the pan out of the oven and transfer the pork and apples to a plate; cover loosely with foil to keep warm.

If there's enough butter left in the pan, go right in with the shallots. If not, add a little more butter. Sauté shallots until they are translucent. Add blanched Brussels sprout leaves and toss to combine with shallots. Deglaze pan with white balsamic vinegar. Toss with julienne black truffles to finish.

To plate
Slice the pork, spoon the apples onto a plate and spoon any remaining pan juices over the apples. Arrange the sliced pork over the apples and sprinkle with a little sea salt. Scatter the truffle Brussels sprouts around the plate.

Ahi Tuna Wrapped in Bacon

Serves 4 as an appetizer

Ingredients
1 each ahi tuna loin
6 slices applewood smoked bacon
1 tbsp butter
3 each shallots, finely minced
2 oz white wine
16 oz shitake/mitake mushrooms, cleaned
1 tbsp Sherry vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
4 each green onions, minced
drizzle Meyer lemon oil (recipe below)
8 oz mache, washed and dried
salt and pepper to taste

Method
Cut ahi tuna loin into a 3" x 5" portion. Wrap portioned tuna with bacon (approximately 6 slices will cover the entire piece of tuna). Cut four 8" pieces of butchers twine and tie the bacon wrapped tuna in four places making sure that the ties are spaced evenly. After the tuna is tied, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate and keep well chilled.

In a large sauté pan, heat butter to a foam and cook shallots until translucent. Add chanterelles and cook 5-7 minutes. Add wine and deglaze pan. Add sherry vinegar and season with salt and pepper. Remove from heat and slightly cool. Place in a food processor bowl and pulse until smooth. Check seasoning.

Place the chilled tuna in a large sauté pan over medium heat. Rotate the loin so the tuna cooks on each side and baste with the fat as it emerges from the bacon (this process is called rendering). The tuna should be cooked just on the outside edges leaving the middle of the tuna rare. Remove tuna from pan and let rest 5 minutes before cutting into four equal portions.
To plate, place a generous portion of chanterelle puree in the middle of the plate. Top puree with a slice of the cooked bacon wrapped tuna loin. Garnish tuna with minced green onion and drizzle liberally with Meyer lemon oil. Toss mache with Meyer lemon oil and season with salt and pepper. Place a mound of mache salad on the plate beside the tuna.

Meyer Lemon Oil

Ingredients
6 each Meyer lemons, peeled
16 oz grapeseed oil

Method
Place Meyer lemon peel in small saucepan and cover with water. Over medium-high heat, bring water to boil. Reduce to simmer and cook peel for 3-5 minutes. Remove peel from water and shock in ice water.

Place grapeseed oil and lemon peel in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, turn off heat and let peel steep for 8-10 minutes. Discard peel and refrigerate oil in airtight container.

Note: If you do not blanch the lemon peel, the water in the peel will produce bacteria and spoil the oil.

Braised Pork Belly with Caraway Sauerkraut and Potatoes

From "Charlie Palmer's Practical Guide to the New American Kitchen" published by Melcher Media Inc.

Ingredients
4 lb fresh pork belly
2 1/2 cup kosher salt
1 cup granulated sugar
handful of Italian parsley, washed and roughly chopped
5 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
1 tbsp red pepper flakes
1 tbsp caraway seeds
1 lb sauerkraut, rinsed and squeezed dry
2 branches fresh rosemary, bruised with the back of a chef's knife
3 cups white wine
4 large Yukon Gold potatoes (about 1lb), peeled and cut into thick rounds
Dollop your favorite mustard

For braising the pork
Vegetable oil
1 large white onion, quartered and sliced

To Cure the Pork
Remove the skin from the pork belly (if the butcher hasn't done this for you). Using a sharp knife, score the fat side in a crisscross pattern, making cuts about 1/4 inch deep. Stir together the salt, sugar, parsley, garlic and red pepper flakes. Rub the mixture all over the pork, especially into the scored fat. Place half the remaining cure mixture in a large shallow pan or baking dish and press t he pork into it, bone-side down. Press the remaining mixture over the pork cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 24 hours.

To Braise the Belly
Brush as much of the cure mixture from the pork as possible. Pour just enough oil into a large, heavy sauté pan over low heat. Put the pork in the pan over low heat. Put the pork in the pan fat-side down and slowly render until golden brown, about 10 minutes. Turn the pork and brown the side with the bones.

Remove the pork to a platter and carefully pour off about half of the rendered fat from the pan. Add the onions and caraway seeds to the pan and cook for 5 minutes. The onions should be limp but not fully tender, and the caraway aromatic. Stir the sauerkraut into the pan and heat it through. Nestle the pork belly in the pan and tuck in the rosemary as well. Pour in the wine, cover the pan, and slowly braise the pork until fork-tender, about 2 1/2 hours. Check about every 45 minutes to make sure there is enough liquid in the pan, adding water if necessary.

About 20 minutes before the pork is done, add the potatoes, cook until they are fork tender but still have the slightest touch of a bite to them.

Slice the pork into 4 thick slabs and serve on a platter over the potatoes and sauerkraut. Accompany the pork with a dish or a dollop of mustard.

For a Pulled Pork Sandwiches recipe, go to Page 2.

I love pork tenderloin but have yet to five a procedure that produces a "safely": cooked product, yet is juicy & tender. Perhaps the two requirements are mutually exclusive, however this recipe appears to have achieved this very elusive, difficult to achieve outcaome! I can't wait to try it out, the acoutrements of the dish seem to be very complementary!

We are at a choice point with respect to where we want our country to be with regard to future realities of life, and in the eyes of the world. Unlike the U.S., many other countries have taken the ethical, moral high-ground where we should be, by elevating health care to a necessity, and not a luxury, of life! Do we want to set a world standard of health care comparable to the standards that we have set in industrial and scientific technology, medical knowledge and technology, civilization in general and standards of living that are admired by many world-wide? Do we want to be a country that is looked-up to and one that many want to become citizens of? Or do we want to continue to occupy the unaffordable, amoral abyss of greed, deception, and questionable standards of health care that are only rational if they benefit the "bottom line?"



Finally, in order to avoid perturbations of the economic system such as those now in evidence, the implementation of the capitalism model requires competitive forces, and integrity, honor, honesty and character by all participants, the capitalists as well as the consumers! To be viable and effective, the model requires some sovereign, reigning power (presumably the government) to ensure that all model requirements are met. For me, capitalism is the best way to structure the economy of a country, but it only works, in reality, with true competition that fails to exist in our health financing system due to anti-trust-protection, and because health care consumers are unable to compare prices, quality of products and quality of services. It also requires that "capitalists" and "consumers" function with integrity, honesty and responsibility in their dealings with each other. Our government protects capitalists by relentlessly pursuing misbehaving consumers, yet it fails to protect the consumers to any comparable degree by doing so with dishonest capitalists. Whatever few regulations existed for monitoring and prosecuting capitalist's conformance to required fiscal and operational practices were discarded by previous administrations! This has resulted in the unscrupulous practices that are now much in evidence! For this reason, it is most important that the government make health care, of all sectors of our economy, absolutely fool-proof in guarding and protecting our citizens against all health service financing, and all service delivery fraud and exploitation! (For details of a career that has been dedicated to public service primarily in the health arena, visit www.nlouis.com, and www.myaleaux.posterous.com).

As you may agree, no one should make huge, or perhaps any, profit from the suffering of the poor or even the middle-class, especially if there is no added value in the process. Those who are against the "public option" abhor that under it, the U.S. government will dictate what procedures can, or cannot be done whenever they need health care services (this is impossible under the Section 330 model, because all services must meet or exceed nationally accepted quality standards!). Yet they are perfectly happy to accept policy restrictions designed to maximize company profits under their private insurance! Also, this third-party payer approach of our current system fails, in all-too-many instances, to meet the minimum standards of excellence that the federal primary care program requires! Opponents of a public plan will irrationally claim that any alternative to our present system will be a type of "socialized medicine." But why have these non-private, third party-payer alternatives become a standard around the world in many rational countries and societies whose citizens consistently score higher than their U.S. counterparts on many critical health status indicators? And I ask of these opponents, why then, do you accept, for example, Medicare? Medicaid? Social Security? Public water systems? Law enforcement? Fire departments? Emergency services? Educational systems? Highway systems? Street lighting? Quasi-federal railroads (Amtrak)? Even flood insurance has now become "socialized" capitalism because, being unprofitable as it is, the federal government subsidizes insurance companies with our tax dollars to cover profit needed by private companies to issue flood insurance policies! Why doesn't this waste our money?



The Section 330 model is not "socialized" medicine in any sense; it is only a system of private corporations directly involved in delivering health care services at their actual cost! Under this model, the government is involved only in a) subsidizing the difference between actual per visit cost and the amount users are able to pay (those with incomes above 200% above poverty level pay full cost of their visit), and b) establishing and enforcing sorely needed NAS standards of excellence in all health services delivered, where the main focus of important reform should be and is critically needed!



Furthermore, on the one hand, do we want the health care sector of our economy to be at the top of an income-producing field that attracts greedy, ruthless, amoral, profit-optimizing gurus and corporations, whose main (and only, in all to many instances) purpose in life is to maximize income and to amass huge fortunes? Most health insurance companies have proven themselves to qualify for this dubious honor, and were it not for the 2.5 million unnecessary operations performed every year, over-prescribed pharmaceuticals, etc., most assuredly there are providers who also qualify for it! Or, on the other hand, do we want it to attract individuals and entities who want to help and to do things for people in need, whose purpose in existence is to make life better for all mankind, who want to improve our knowledge to ease mankind's pain and suffering, or who have taken the Hippocratic oath and seek to help diseased, ailed or afflicted people in need (as is the case of the vast majority of health services professional staff and employees)? We have made a disastrous mistake in building profit into health care services; if doing so was based on the previously unproven expectation that the result will be health service improvement - we now should be convinced that building profit into the health care system simply doesn't work for the delivery of health care services! For these reasons, it is imperative that the health care sector be structured so as to attract only properly-motivated individuals! The Hippocratic oath, or a suitable version of it, should be required of everyone that enters the health care arena, including the financing of it, and proven violators of the oath should lose their privilege of engaging in this sector of the economy in addition to any other consequences deserved by their exhibited misbehavior!

Perhaps the most successful approach to delivering health care to those below 200% above poverty level income are the Section 330 Primary Care Clinics that have been installed in areas of the U.S. designated as "Medically Under-served Areas" (MUAs) due to a physician-to-population ratio below a designated threshold. These clinics, based on a model developed by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), deliver primary health care services that meet NAS quality standards of excellence at profitless actual cost, by private, corporations governed by a volunteer, consumer board that establishes all clinic policies including management and health services delivery practices that meet the NAS quality standards. Currently by law, these clinics can only be federally funded in MUAs, however, taking seriously as 45 million or so, the estimated number of individuals without health insurance, it seems that a strong case can be made for the proposition that the entire U.S. qualifies as an MUA!



Everyone using these clinics pays a fee based on a "sliding" scale, from a minimum that can be only $1.00 to a maximum fee based on the actual average cost of a visit at that clinic (the program sets standards based on formulas embedded in the enabling legislation - about $30 - $50). This model can be applied to develop vehicles for secondary and tertiary level care services, including the requirement to operate within professional association-developed national standards. In fact, all health and health-related products, services, equipment and other health care resources eventually can transition to operate under this model for which national standards will be similarly developed and applied! To be successful, the transition process will be important, must be carefully designed, and most likely should be gradual and perhaps step-wise.



Changing the health insurance payment system alone may impact somewhat on health care premiums, but it will not introduce the more importantly needed reform of health service delivery as it now exists in the U.S. With our international standings in terms of health status indicators (life expectancy, infant mortality, etc.) below those of many other countries, there is much room for improving the quality and outcomes of our health system interventions! Furthermore, implementation of the 330 model does not represent a government "takeover" of health care in the U.S. as may be alleged by opponents, whose main interest is to maintain their established, on-going stream of income they derive from today's insurance premiums or campaign contributions from lobbyists! If the wealthy want no change, so be it for them, but it is imperative that a viable alternative be set in place for those who are forced to decide between family survival or the loss of a family member due to an unaffordable but treatable terminal health issue!

COMMENTARY ON HEALTH CARE REFORM

Our health care system is replete with waste, inefficiency, bureaucratic obfuscation and a "CYA" morality that defy the Hippocratic oath! In contrast, most other advanced nations have, for years, been using a scientific-based health planning process to develop their rational, integrated comprehensive health care systems! We have deliberately abandoned the development of our health care system leaving it to unbridled pluralism. Here's what happened. In the'70s the U.S. also implemented an excellent health planning process (National Health Planning and Resources Development Act) that established nation-wide Health System planning Agencies (HSAs). Each HSA assessed the health status of its assigned catchment area population to identify existing health issues, and also inventoried existent health resources within the area to determine gaps, shortages and excesses in available health services. By comparing the prevalence of major health issues with available health services of the area, it recommended future development of the health system by tailoring area health resources development to meet the actual area need for health services. This analysis and its results were published as the area's five year Health System Plan (HSP) for developing the area health resources, updated with specific objectives that needed to be achieved each year. These federally-funded HSA policies were approved by a local area consumer governing body consisting of limited-tenured community volunteers. Thus, the purpose of the federal Health Planning Program was for each catchment area to control its rising cost (then at about12% annually) of health care by limiting the acquisition of costly, unnecessary resources such as unneeded hospital beds, cat scanners, MRIs, and unnecessary or duplicate procedures and other costly services whose acquisition and/or utilization cost would encourage "overuse" in order either to amortize the purchasing loan, or to enhance the "bottom line" of their enterprise!

Health planning was one of the first programs to be eliminated by the newly installed, "forward-visioned," Reagan administration of the 80's! Why? HSAs prevented hospitals from adding un-needed beds (thus contractors were not getting getting contracts to build the costly "wing-additions" needed to house them). HSAs blocked local health-care provider entrepreneurs from installing unneeded, costly but highly lucrative MRIs, cat scanner, dialysis and other services, in order to enhance their "bottom lines." Under the health planning law no costly facility or service could be added to the health resources of a community without an HSA "certificate of need," a program authorization instrument that enabled or prevented development of any new community health resource. Abolishing health planning cleared the road for unbridled health resources development. It was a vitally-needed program, specifically designed to limit the rising cost of health care by preventing the profit-driven, unbridled acquisition of the costly, duplicative and wasteful practices of today's unaffordable and unsupportable health system!

The absence of any health planning in the U.S., one of the very few first-world nations without it, explains many of the dysfunctional practices of our current health system. For "true" reform, it is imperative that the U.S. Congress re-establish this program ASAP! Systematic planning is essential to the rational growth and development of health care in any context. Leaving our health system development to "unbridled pluralism" as has been done, has resulted in the system that we have today, where the "bottom line," rather than "cost-effective" patient interest, is the primary decision-making criterion in development of the system!

Health Care Reform must do more than lower insurance premiums and expand policy coverage!

This is a commentary on health care reform. I wrote it because I think that we need a grass roots movement to trump the vested interests that adorn the health care reform issue. The general public is not well informed about alternatives to our current "for profit," 3rd party (private insurance) health care system, or the "humongous" money-making enterprise that it has come to be today. In contrast to this commercial, profit-making approach to paying for health services there is a very successful Section 330 primary care clinic model that delivers health services at cost, i.e., no profit (as will be described below). It appears that most media may be keeping the general public unaware of this approach, perhaps because of pressures from advertisers, lobbyists, politicians, and others who have acquired and need to retain wealth that they have amassed via financing and/or providing "for profit" health care services! But to achieve true system reform, we should insist that status quo with only minor changes is unacceptable. Changes that provide just enough "eyewash" that is needed to appease the politician's constituencies is not the kind, or magnitude of change that will make a difference in the lives of most Americans!



In the U.S. there seems to be some type of "invisible" censor to all ideas that threaten the status quo of elite (and affluent) individuals. SO, I hope you'll agree with me that everyone who has an interest in putting our country on a better track to health care services than the side track to disaster that we are currently on, should be advised that a proven, highly successfully, private-sector, low cost, high quality of care system does exist, one that has been implemented by the U.S. Public Health Service, and one that can be expanded to provide all services of the health care sector to all the population!



Please forward this to everyone you know who cares about fixing the current broken system. A "ground swell" of opposition to the insurance/profit-based/ private financing will be needed to pry legislators out of their self-serving dream-world designed to preserve their future by deafening them to the voices of their constituents! And most assuredly, those who want to maintain status quo (and their lucrative income) as much as possible, and who are threatened by change of this kind, will find and use many disparaging adjectives and degrading comments to discredit and/or dismiss it. But this model is much too powerful to be taken lightly, and hopefully we will muster enough pressure to eventually rid ourselves of this insurance "rip-off" that has existed for over 50 years. I hope that you will help get this message to your official federal and local government "representatives!" [ For information on my background in health, mental health, evaluation research, organizational development, and list of publications and research please go to my web site: <www.nlouis.com>.]

[sherylt4chc]

The caption and photo don't match! That's a pic of the bacon wrapped Ahi tuna. Please people never eat pork that looks like that!

[gene1206]

While it's nice to have these recipes from well known chefs to try, it's getting a bit frustrating to see that for two days in a row now the chef has included an exotic, difficult to find and generally unaffordable item such as black truffles in the featured recipe. It would be nice if, when they do this, if they'd offer what they consider a good substitute!