Got time? You'll have flavor with these slow-cooking recipes

Ever since Americans discovered balsamic vinegar, each year seems to herald the arrival of an exciting new cooking ingredient. For one season, this prized treasure will be all over restaurant menus, food magazines and dinner parties. It may disappear in a flash (remember fennel pollen?), overstay its welcome (truffle oil) or possibly change the way you cook forever more.
This year the must-have ingredient seems to be in the latter category. It is something commonplace yet always in short supply, and never used to its full advantage. What is it? Apparently, time. From the plethora of slow-cooker cookbooks that line bookstore shelves to the revolution of sous vide cookery remaking restaurant kitchens, slow food is today's food. Quick sautés are fine, but today's chefs have discovered that foods cooked for many hours -- or, in some cases, days -- have all the sex appeal. Trendy menus that once drew attention to the farm that raised their meat now boast of the time in the oven. Consider Richard Blais, the "Top Chef" finalist who impressed the competition judges with a brisket he cooked overnight.

Your oven is, in fact, the best slow cooker in your house. Think of it like your barbecue -- without the smoke or live fire, alas, but with a much more reliable thermostat.

As any barbecuer knows, the sweet spot for slow cooking meat lies in the range of 225 degrees to 275 degrees. Temperatures in this range are high enough to break down the tough connective tissue into soft gelatin, but not so high as to force too many of the moist juices from between the meat fibers and into the pan. Fatty cuts of meat do particularly well as the melting fat bathes the surface of the meat and prevents evaporation.

Oven recipes follow two basic methods: wet cooking and dry cooking.

When you cover a dish, the food within braises in its own juices or softens in its steam. This is wet cooking, and as long as you keep the pot juices at a simmer rather than a boil, this is the best method to keep meat velvety and moist.

You may, however, leave the same dish uncovered and wind up with different results. The radiant heat from the flame or element perpetually bombards and browns the surface of the meat, creating all sorts of tasty flavors but potentially desiccating it. This is dry cooking.

Chef Billy Allin of Cakes & Ale restaurant in Decatur, Ga., says both methods can prove just as easy -- and just as rewarding -- depending on the cut of meat used.

"I like to do something between a French pot roast, with just a small amount of liquid in the pot, and an American pot roast, where you put in some aromatics and a bit more liquid."

Allin adds a judicious amount of stock and plenty of onions to the pot, covers it, and deliciousness ensues.

But were he to cook a large bone-in pork shoulder, he'd prepare the dry-heat one he learned when working at the legendary Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif.

"We used to cook it in a big, deep vessel with tomato and lots of grated onion in the bottom of the pan. I remember grating the onions until my knuckles hurt," he recalls. "The trick was to keep turning it over and over in the pan to keep it from drying out. When the juices start soaking in, you get a really great crust."

Some cuts, however, come with such a thick layer of fat that they prove perpetually self-basting and require no tending at all.

Yet even leaner cuts respond well to direct heat. The French have a number of recipes for "seven-hour" leg of lamb -- some cooked with a cover (wet cooking), others simply set in a roasting pan (dry cooking). It's an unusual way to present a cut of meat that's often blast-roasted and still bloody at the bone.

I tried the wet-cooking method first, with the leg immersed in a soupy melange of white wine, herbs and aromatic vegetables. It came out good in an enormous lamb shank kind of way. Soft. Shreddy. Fine, but nothing more.

I then tinkered with a dry-cooking recipe. I turned this leg a couple of times over the seven hours and basted it whenever the thought occurred.

This burnished haunch made for a gorgeous presentation, smelled like meat heaven and got well nigh devoured to the bone at the table. It sure beat worrying about degrees of doneness and mint jelly for once.