Hank Shaw

Nobody really knows why this West African stew of meat and greens is called palava sauce, or, alternately, palaver sauce, but it is a recipe worth adding to your repertoire. although leaving the “r” off and calling it palava sauce makes perfect sense given the way English is spoken in much of West Africa; like New Englanders, they aren’t much for the hard “r” on the ends of words. Like the meat, you can use whatever greens you’d like. Serve your palava sauce over simple steamed rice, and, if you want to make a cool Ghanaian meal out of it, some Ghanaian red red.

Royal reds are, relatively speaking, the warm water cousin to the spot prawn. Royal red stock (and spot prawn stock) is the best of the best. You can also buy royal reds online, through places like E-Fish. This recipe will work with both royal red shrimp and spot prawns.

It’s a wide, cooked, usually pork sausage served in winter, and especially around Christmastime, that evokes nostalgia in Italians the way Hoppin’ John or oyster stew does with Southerners, or lutefisk and lefse does in Minnesota. Once it’s made, can eat cotechino any way you want, but it’s traditionally seared, sliced and served over lentils. Simply simmer the pieces -- remember they will need to ultimately fit into your grinder -- for about 30 minutes if it's duck or goose skin, and 1 hour (or more) for pork. When it comes time to tie off the other end of the links, you want to be diligent about removing air pockets -- and you want to tie it off with a loop you can hang your links from.

Simply rinse your caul fat in cold water, and, if there is still a smell, soak it in more cold water with a little citrus, vinegar or vanilla extract This warm water soak is especially important for any of you working with caul fat from bovids or cervids, meaning all the cow, sheep, goat, deer or elk type animals. This stuff has been so valuable to so many people for so long because of how caul fat works to preserve moisture in otherwise dry meats (and even fish), acts as a wrapper for things like meatballs and sausages, and, more recently, to stick food to other food — typically, say, ground meat or a mousse to the outside of a solid piece of meat. You want to lay out the sheets of fat in large areas, place whatever is going to be wrapped on them, then use the knife to cut pieces to shape.