Tartine Trial 2 - Chocolate Almond Toffee

I'm clearly skipping Tartine Trial 1, but I promise to come back and post about the Lemon Bars with Shortbread I made a couple weeks ago.  But, this recipe is fresh on my mind and stuck in my teeth, so here we go.

Working my way through the Tartine cook book, this looked like a relatively simple recipe yielding delicious results.  A and I have both been on a pretty severe dessert kick the last....well, year or so.  Cooking at home more often than not, we'd finish dinner, look at each other and try not to be the first to flinch and ask "what's for dessert" (typically, 10 seconds was as long as we went).  Last night, as I was working on stuffed bell peppers (another post coming soon) I quickly realized that we had polished off the remaining "birthday"sherbert the night before.  The Girl Scout cookies were obliterated, the ice cream destroyed, and now, the sherbert.  It was time to take decisive action:

2 c. sliced almonds
1¾ c. granulated white sugar
3 T. water
½ c. unsalted butter
1 t. Blackstrap or other dark molasses
¼ t. sea salt
1 t. vanilla extract
¼ t. baking soda
5 oz. bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped (used Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate chips)

Heat the oven to 350, spread the almonds on a baking sheet and toast for 7-9 minutes.

Let them cool, then spread half on a parchment lined baking sheet, covering as much of the parchment as possible.

Prepare the toffee.  Combine sugar, butter, water, salt and blackstrap in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat.  Stir occasionally until the candy thermometer reads 295F.  This takes anywhere between 7-10 minutes.

Take it off the heat and quickly add the baking powder and vanilla.  Mix both in quickly, then pour the mixture over the almonds.  Work quickly as it will begin to set immediately.  I tried to get a perfect rectangle, but quickly gave that up to the misformed blob, which ended up being perfectly fine.  The shape doesn't matter as you'll be breaking it into chunks soon enough.

Once the toffee is no longer too hot to touch, spread the chopped chocolate over the blob-o-toffee.  It will begin melting, at which point I used a spatula to spread the choco-love around.

Cover with the remaining almonds and allow it to completely cool.  My batch finished around 10, so I let it cool overnight.  If we had available space in the fridge, I likely could have sped this up.  Woke up this morning, hacked it into pieces and......behold.

Rotisserie Pork - Char Siu Edition

First, man created fire. Then, man created a device to spin animal carcass over said fire.  I procured a rotisserie accessory for my grill last week and as soon as it arrived, put it to work on a recipe ripped off from my favorite blog Dad Cooks Dinner. 
http://www.dadcooksdinner.com/2010/02/rotisserie-pork-shoulder-char-siu-style.html

The nomBlog is a big fan of the pork shoulder.  While the pulled pork sandwich recipe proved to be a quick and easy project, this one took a little longer.  The roto (I'm not spelling out rotisserie more than I have to) took some tinkering to get the "universal" brackets to work just right.  Despite being a CharBroil product, like my grill, the parts were anything but.  Nothing a little creativity couldn't fix.  The meat itself marinated for a day (original plans to cook Saturday night ran into a sick wife who needed chicken soup, not a chunk of pork) and then I had to learn the basics of trussing.  I tied a bunch of knots that seemed to work.  Whether or not that can be called trussing, I'll let someone else decide.

The Marinade (or Brinerade as DCD calls it):

• 1 cup soy sauce
• 2 tbsp hoisin sauce
• 4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed through a garlic press (or 1 tbsp garlic powder)
• 2 inch piece of ginger, peeled and grated (or 2 tsp dried ginger)
• 2 tbsp rice wine vinegar (or dry sherry)
• 1 tbsp sesame oil

The Glaze:

• 2 tbsp reserved brinerade (or 2 tbsp soy sauce)
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/4 cup hoisin sauce

Split the pork, stab the pork, marinate the pork (anywhere from 2 hours to overnight), truss the pork, throw it on the spit.

For my 4 burner grill, I turned on both outers to full blast, placed a drip pan in the middle and let it spin for 30 minutes.  Lowered heat to medium for the remaining 45 minutes.  After 45, I took the glaze and basted it as it turned, letting it cook for another 10 minutes.

Off the grill, rested for 15 minutes, sliced.  Paired it with some stir fry bok choy.  Outstanding results.  I may try and tweak the grill a little bit next time and do the long cook at a slightly higher heat as it was slightly undercooked.  The meat thermometer registered at a nice 175 internally though, so I'll call it a success.