Italian roast pork shoulder

This is a great dish to make for company -- it feeds a lot of people you can prep it the night before, and it roasts low and slow all day until you are ready to serve it.  When it's done, the meat just falls off the bone when prodded with a fork, and it's as juicy and flavorful as anything you've ever eaten.

1 pork shoulder (approx 9 pounds, either bone in or boneless is fine, but the bone does impart more flavor to the meat)

Kosher salt

Dried Oregano

Black Pepper

Smashed garlic cloves.

Take your pork shoulder and trim off any big chunks of fat, but don't worry about getting all of it or doing a pretty job of it -- it will all dissolve into the meat during the cooking process.

Make 6-8 slits in each side of the meat and put a smashed garlic clove or two into each of the slits.

Make a mixture that is approximately 1 tablespoon pepper, 3 tablespoons of salt, and 6 tablespoons dried oregano and slather it all over the pork shoulder, patting it into the meat.  If you have an "Italian Mix" of herbs that you want to use instead of the oregano, that's fine too.

Place the meat into a roasting pan, cover tightly with aluminum foil, and refrigerate overnight.

The next day, put the covered pan into a 250 degree oven and cook for about 3 or 4 hours.  Then uncover the pork and turn your oven up to 300 degrees.   Every 45 minutes or so, baste the pork roast with its juices (they will be plentiful!)  After 3 hours, pull at the shoulder with a fork to confirm that the meat comes off easily.  If it doesn't, cook for another hour or so.

Remove the pork from the oven about 30 minutes before serving and wrap up the shoulder tightly in a couple of layers of aluminum foil.  You can also cover it with a few towels to help keep it nice and warm.

Strain all the juices into a bowl and in about 10 minutes, skim off all the fat and the scum that rises to the top.  

When ready to serve, use large serving forks to pull all the meat off into chunks and place them on your serving platter.  If the meat in the center needs a little nudge with a carving knife, that's fine too.   Then splash all the meat with the pork juices, sprinkle with a little salt if desired, and serve.

I promise you'll earn rave reviews for this.

Homemade French Onion Dip

Let's be honest -- we all LOVE French onion dip made with sour cream and a packet of Lipton onion soup mix.  It's salty, creamy, tangy and plain-old delicious, especially on a potato chip.  But sometimes you want an elevated onion dip and every time I've made this, people have RAVED about it.   It takes a bit of time to put together because you need to caramelize onions, but it's so easy to make.

4 large yellow onions, diced

1/4 cup of extra-virgin olive oil

2 teaspoons of salt

2 teaspoons of dried thyme

1 teaspoon of fresh cracked black pepper

2 tablespoons of Worchestershire sauce  (if you will be feeding this to vegetarians, you can skip this ingredient as it includes anchovies)

1/3 cup of grated parmigiano reggiano cheese

16 ounces of sour cream or plain Greek yogurt

Place the diced onions in a saute pan and add the salt, pepper, thyme and olive oil.  Mix thoroughly, cover the pan, and turn the heat onto its lowest setting.   For the next 30 minutes, stir the onions every 10 minutes and keep them covered.  By the end of this 30 minutes, they should be swimming in a lot of liquid.  Now take the cover off and turn the heat up ever so slightly, and stir them every 5 minutes.   The liquid will begin to thicken and evaporate and over the course of the next 30 or so minutes, and the onions will begin to gently turn a light brown as they caramelize.   Once they are all a nice rich golden brown, turn off the burner and let them cool.

Once cooled, add them to the sour cream or Green yogurt, and add the Worchestershire sauce and the grated cheese.  Stir thoroughly and taste for seasoning, adding more of any of the seasonings as desired.

Let it sit for at least a few hours before serving so the flavors can all meld together.

As an optional variation, you could also add 8 ounces of finely diced mushrooms (I like crimini best, but white button or any other variety are fine!) to the onions when they are just about done and cook these down for about 10 minutes until they're very tender.  This adds a nice earthy-flavor to the dip as long as all your guests like mushrooms.