Last Sunday I attended a wonderful Astoria event series, The Meatwave. It’s run by local Astorian Josh Bousel, who really knows his meat and how to cook it. He (and probably his wife, Kristin) comes up with clever titles, and the one for this particular day was “Carne-val.”
There was pulled pork, pepper vinegar barbecue sauce, ribs, chicken—all grilled and/or barbecued. Plus there was a delicious mustard slaw, plenty of beer, and one of the guests offered me one of her s’mores bars. It was all so good and I’m glad I went.
Here are some of the things I ate. First, the pork in two states—whole and pulled. Here’s the before:
And the after:
Josh used big black rubber gloves to shred it by hand. He then poured some sort of liquid on it—probably braising liquid, which helped to keep it moist. This batch of meat was cooked in foil. There was another chunk of pork he had cooked without foil, which promised great bark. All I know is that they was truly delicious and made for a great pulled pork sandwich. Here it is—on a appropriately squishy Martin’s Potato Roll—with the aforementioned slaw.
The ribs were great, too! I believe they were in the smoker and then grilled with a sweeter barbecue sauce. I loved the texture and taste.
I did not get a chance to try any of the chicken, though.
As for the weather, it was damn hot, the beginning of a seven-day heatwave. I sweated buckets and was happy to find myself in the air conditioning afterwards; we headed to MOMI to catch a movie, then over to a nearby pub for more A/C, conversation, and project planning—more on that later. And since we were there on the early side, it was nice to have a chance to chat with our hosts.
Thanks to Josh and Kristin for a delicious afternoon!
