Olson’s latest book all about living high off the hog
Google ‘How to overcome writer’s block’ and you’re not likely to find Michael Olson’s cure for a creative downturn.
The storied chef, who helped forge a culinary identity for Niagara in the late 1990s as the founding cuisinier at Jordan’s Inn on the Twenty, finds inspiration at Niagara Sausage when the words stop flowing.
It’s not going for a walk or turning on some Mozart, but when you’re writing a cookbook about pork, a visit to the Welland butcher shop is fitting. There, Olson channels his muse in the store’s deli counter, with its tangles of sausage and cured meats, or the refrigerator case, sensibly divided into ground and diced cuts, stacks of chops and steaks, and roasts and big cuts.
More than practical merchandizing, the layout of Niagara Sausage became the ideal outline for Olson’s latest how-to, “Living High Off the Hog: Over 100 Recipes and Techniques to Cook Pork Perfectly” (Appetite by Random House). The homage to all things porcine hit shelves last week, with chapters about buying and cooking different cuts inspired by the way Mike and Valerio Sorrenti organize their Ridge Road meat store in Welland.
“I actually thought that’s a nice dividing line between the style of recipes and style of cooking, and I thought that was a nice way to divide (the book) up,” Olson said.
“Living High Off the Hog” is Olson’s first book in more than a decade. It follows the 2005 release of “Anna and Michael Olson Cook at Home: Recipes for Every Day and Every Occasion,” which he co-authored with his Food Network star wife. Despite going it alone on his latest title, Olson’s “Living High Off the Hog” channels the same practicality and is geared toward a similar audience: the home cook.
“Living High Off the Hog” isn’t about making people more chef-like in the kitchen, he noted. But it is about pushing the chief cook out of their comfort zone when preparing pork.
If someone has a habit of buying only chops or ribs, Olson hopes his book will have them considering tenderloin or ground pork the next time they’re browsing at the meat counter.
“I thought this is where people need help. When people go to buy groceries … they’re typically in a rush and rarely pause to say, ‘What is the most nutritious and delicious for my family and what’s in season?’” he explained. “Through no fault of their own, people tend to choose the same two or three things they’re used to cooking. There’s nothing wrong with that, but they don’t use (their creativity). This book is good for people putting dinner on the table on a Tuesday night when they don’t have much time.”
Even Olson’s focus on pork is rooted in his MO of making meal time simpler. Originally, he wanted to pen a literary look through the butcher shop window. But as much as he loves beef, for example, writing about cooking it posed a challenge he wasn’t willing to thrust on his audience. There’s grading to consider with the red meat, a process that depends on the breed of animal and feeding practices. It’s also a topic most people beyond a meat inspector don’t understand.
Pork, on the other hand, is more consistent and forgoes grading as a result, Olson explained. It’s also widely available, which is why Niagara Sausage served as more than writing inspiration. Located in a small city, it was a proverbial litmus test for what home cooks could easily find in their respective corners of the continent.
So don’t expect him to push nose-to-tail cooking. Aside from not holding much “curb appeal,” organ meats and other pig parts aren’t always easy to source, he said.
“If we can’t find it in the small town where we live, how is someone going to do that in Brandon, Man., or Foam Lake, Sask.?” Olson asked.
“I tried to keep it practical and away from obscure things. I’ve never come home on a Friday night and said ‘I want fried brains.’ It’s just not in my wheelhouse.”
But these recipes are, including sweet and spicy, char siu pork capicola; comforting, mild yellow Thai curry tenderloin; a heart-racing tenderloin stuffed with perogies, onion and bacon, whimsically named Ukrainian Treasure Chest; and a showstopping kielbasa-stuffed pork rack. With four kinds of schnitzel, too, and a recipe for ribs done in a countertop pressure cooker, Olson gives nods to how other nations honour pork on their plates and current preparation trends.
The modern-day pressure cooker is the only dabbling he does with kitchen gadgetry, though. That’s more a reflection of Olson’s unyielding appreciation of the sear, and his unwavering skill at making pork sizzle — in Olson’s world, there’s no such thing as cook’s block when it comes to the stuff.
“I really love cooking and eating pork. I have a great source for it. I can cook pork with my eyes closed,” he said.
“You know that kid on the morning show who can do the Rubik’s cube with his eyes closed? That’s me with pork.”