Clay Pot Initiation

Because I admire Cookiecrumb and she admires clay pot cooking, when I saw Clay Pot Pork on the menu at Harmony, I decided to try it. We were ordering for the table, and it's a good thing, as I probably could not have finished this all by myself.

The pork has a sweet-and-sour-barbecue sort of sauce with veggies tucked underneath in a rustic pot with a big hollow handle. Big, meaty mushrooms, bright carrots, baby bok choy - it's really enough for at least two and we shared it amongst four people happily.

As an initiation to clay pot cooking, it was a good beginning. I can see how everything in the pot shares flavor and there's something appealing about the pot itself. I imagine that when people first started more refined cooking, more than charred a leg of gnu or shoulder of eland, they put things into a clay pot over a fire and discovered that the flavors enhanced each other when cooked together.

I wish I had cabinet space for all the kitchen gadgets my heart desires; if I did, I'd have a clay pot in a New York minute.