Jamie Oliver

Hutchings Walk, London, June 21, 2011—

THAT TITLE'S JUST TO catch your eye: by rights it would read "Mary W____". She's the one cooked the thing, after all; Jamie simply provided the recipe, in his book Jamie at Home: Cook Your Way to the Good Life.

Judging by Mary's execution of the recipe, it's a very good life indeed. I don't know where she bought her pork shoulder, but it was a delicious hunk of meat, with a flavor I thought unlike the Italian pork we've been eating, and unlike the American pork back home — except perhaps for some we've had recently from noncommercial sources.

Oliver calls the dish "spicy pork and chilli-pepper goulash," and you can read the recipe here: but the photo you see on that website is nothing like what you see here. Mary's version of the dish is succulent, festive, beautifully colored, brightly flavored, crisply textured, one of the finest things I've had to eat all year; and I envy her the leftovers.

wine: yes: what was that inexpensive but sound, rather bright red wine John poured? Didn't take notes; write this four days later — in any case quite up to the main dish, and enough to provoke some marvelous conversation…