‘Sharon Cooks’ cookbook debuts at Hotchkiss Library author signing

Surprising bit of pork trivia: The cut that is known as the butt actually comes from the shoulder (which reminds me of a common expression used when people are perennially confused and are said to not know their, umm, their butt from their elbow).

Pork butt got its name, according to Wikipedia, because butchers used to put the “cheaper” cuts such as the ham and the shoulder into butts or barrels to transport them from place to place. I guess the tenderloins got to travel by coach or something.

Summer is pork season, in my opinion, because people are always thinking about pork ribs (unless they’re from Texas, where they primarily eat beef ribs, I believe). 

I grew up in Chicago and even though Carl Sandburg called my hometown “the hog butcher for the world,” I don’t remember ever really eating pork when I was growing up. 

Here in New England, I find myself eating it all the time, and really enjoying it. That took a while to happen though; I grew up in the 1970s and always kind of associated pork with trichinosis. I’m not sure if there was a big outbreak of parasites in pork at that era or why I became so aware of it. And I don’t really want to do a big internet search on it because sometimes it’s just better not to think about parasites in food (I still don’t eat swordfish after reading about it in one of Anthony Bourdain’s books; enough said).

Suffice it to say that I’ve become convinced that pork is as disease-free as pretty much any meat we eat in this modern world of ours. And of course you can increase your confidence in the quality of your pork by purchasing it from one of the excellent farms in the Tri-state region where pork is raised under the watchful eye of your friendly neighborhood farmer. 

All this talk about pork arises from the advance glance I just got of the new “Sharon Cooks” cookbook, a fundraiser for The Hotchkiss Library of Sharon that will make its official debut during the weekend of the annual author signing (Aug. 4) and used book sale (Aug. 5 and 6).

There’s nothing quite as fun as a community cookbook, and this is a particularly fascinating one, with recipes that range from very, very old-fashioned and quaint (cheese balls, macaroni soup, hot crab dip, lemon-pineapple jellied salad!) to quite sophisticated (Thai beef salad, duck in red wine sauce, chicken with endives au gratin!).

I was particularly captivated by two recipes from Sharon First Selectman Brent Colley. I attended a talk he gave last year on Mark Twain; he cooked a variety of sausages and things for that talk and, boy, were they good.

So it shouldn’t have surprised me that two of the most interesting recipes in this cookbook are from his files. 

One is amusingly called “Don’t open that oven! prime rib” and it’s a fairly involved technique for perfectly cooking a very expensive cut of beef.

The other is, in my opinion, a really good recipe for summer because it lends itself well to picnics and it’s cooked in a slow cooker, which produces little to no heat in your kitchen. 

You’ll notice that this recipe calls for root beer, which like all caramel-colored sodas can add flavor and a little stickiness to your meat. Joan Nathan features a beef brisket recipe that features Coca Cola in her excellent book, “Jewish Cooking in America.”

If you want to get your own copy of “Sharon Cooks,” it’s $20 and will be sold at the book signing on Aug. 4 between 6 and 8 p.m. and at the book sale on Aug. 5 and 6, beginning at 9 a.m.  

The book was compiled by The Friends of the Hotchkiss Library of Sharon and it has about 70 pages of recipes and cooking tips. 

Other contributors include former state Rep. Roberta Willis (a native of Sharon), garden and interior designer Carolyne Roehm, Back in the Kitchen chef Peggy McEnroe and JAM owner Lee Kennedy. 

 Root beer pulled pork

 From Brent Colley and ‘Sharon Cooks’

Bone-in shoulder cut of pork (4 to 5 pounds), 2 teaspoons garlic salt, 1 teaspoon paprika, 2 teaspoons minced sweet onion, a can of root beer and a bottle of barbecue sauce.

Coat the pork with the garlic salt, paprika and onion and leave the meat in your refrigerator for two or more hours. Then put the pork in your crockpot (when you’re buying your pork, you should of course be aware of how big your crockpot is and how much meat it can hold). 

Pour the root beer over the pork, set the crockpot to “low” and leave it to cook for six hours, or until the meat comes easily off the bone. 

Use two forks to shred the pork. Smother it in the barbecue sauce. Serve as is, on pasta, or in sandwiches, tacos or as a wrap.