Sometimes you see things and think to yourself "huh, I'd have changed x, y or z". That's kind of what happened to bring about this really, really, tasty pork stew that Karina and I had last week. I was listening to Food Network (which I freely admit is evil, but some days there just isn't anything good on the gazillion other channels and those are the days you need background noise, but not just background-background noise, you need something with a bit of substance, and you know you can't pop The Hunt for Red October or the Star Trek reboot movie in the DVD player again else your child will revolt and you'll wake up bald or covered in honey or some other heinous thing....but I digress) and Ina Garten was making Beef Burgandy, a dish I love long time (I shall post mine some time in the future). As she went on about what to do I thought to myself "self, you don't have beef in the freezer, but you do have those tasty pork chops that you won't actually make as pork chops" because I wouldn't have, trust me. Even though they came from Jaworski's and their meat is always amazing. Just not a fan of pork chops in a pork chop preparation.
Anyway, I thought of the pork chops and then I thought "I bet they'd taste good as a stew braised in white wine and tossed over hot buttered egg noodles". And you know what, they tasted even better.
And please forgive the photography. I like to use natural light for pictures, but for some reason have yet to find optimal placement of my freezer (which I use for placing things on) to capture the light. In addition I really need to invest in a tripod. Also, I should probably read more about how to take good photographs. I took about 15 shots of the finished dish and this was the best of them. I should have checked them out before saying it was done and digging in to the stew. Live and learn.
Pork Stew
marinade:
1 1/2 cups white wine (whatever makes you happy)
2 cloves garlic, peeled and just smacked with the back of a knife
1 tablespoon grey sea salt
1 1/2 tablespoons dried rosemary
2 small bay leaves
2 pounds lean pork, cubed
prep:
1/2 pound button mushrooms, quartered
1 large onion, large dice
2 tablespoons bacon drippings (or oil)
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
3 cups stock
1 cup white wine
grey sea salt to taste
binder:
2 tablespoons butter, melted
2 to 3 tablespoons flour
Combine all the marinade ingredients together in a gallon sized plastic bag, close it and then massage everything together. Stick the bag in the fridge and let sit over night.
Next day take the pork out of the fridge and let it set at room temperature for about half an hour. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Heat a large pot over medium high heat and add the bacon drippings. When the drippings are spitting hot, add in the pork cubes, roughly drained (grab them with tongs and shake them off), in small batches to sear. Remove the seared meat to a large casserole dish and continue until all the meat is browned. Add the olive oil to the pan, reduce the heat to medium and toss in the chopped onion. Sprinkle with a little sea salt and saute until translucent. Remove onion to the casserole and add the butter to the pot. When melted and hot toss in the quartered mushrooms and saute until just barely browned. Remove mushrooms to the casserole. Pour wine into the pot to deglaze, then add stock and bring mixture to a boil. Taste for salt and add if needed. Combine the melted butter and flour to make a cold rue. Add to the boiling mixture and allow to thicken. Taste for seasoning again and adjust if needed. Pour over meat and vegetables in casserole dish, stir to combine, cover with foil and pop it into the oven for about an hour to an hour and a half. When finished, remove from oven and serve over egg noodles.
Ok, now let's talk about a few things that I hope will help you out. The process of making the stew may seem complicated, but it's really not. It's mostly just a bit time intensive. While I guess you could just toss everything together in a casserole dish and bake it, you'd really lose a lot of flavor. A whole lot of flavor.
First things first, stock, it is your friend and really beyond easy to make from scratch. There really is no need to complicate homemade stock with a bunch of frivolous ingredients or multiple steps. I used meat bones and scraps (which I keep from breaking down bone-in chicken and other meats with the bone still attached, I put the scraps and bones in bags and toss them in the freezer), onion, garlic, salt, bay leaf, juniper berries (absolutely not necessary, I just like the taste in my stock) and water to make my stock. Just threw them all together into a large pot, tilted the lid, put a medium flame underneath it and walked away to go fly the skies of Outlands looking for silver rares. Came back to stir it a few times, but mostly because I was already in the kitchen for something else. After a couple of hours the stock was ready to cool. The onion looked pathetic, the meat scraps looked even more pathetic, and the smell was heavenly. Once it cooled I just strained it using a colander over a large bowl, tossed the scraps and pathetic onions, cleaned the pot and strained it back into the pot using a finer meshed sieve, packaged it up in containers and bags and tossed them into the freezer. Oh, and the onion and garlic? I didn't even peel them, they were just cut in half and tossed in. The only thing I'd recommend further would be to roast the scraps and bones in a 400 degree oven for about 30 minutes before tossing into the pot.
Prep work, very easy. Called "mise en place" in the culinary world, what it does is make for a stress-free cooking process. Read through your recipe several times, both the ingredient list and the directions. Note what needs to be done, especially to vegetables and meat since they are more often than not broken down. Sometimes that information is in the ingredient list and not the directions. "1 large onion, large dice" means that you should start with a large onion and then dice it about half an inch. Something like "2 pounds lean pork, cubed" is more open to whatever size floats your boat, just not leaving the meat whole. Once you know what you need to do, take care of it before you start cooking and make sure you have your other ingredients ready at hand as well. Oil, salt, wine and butter are all ready to use when needed and you won't run around your kitchen trying to find them at the last minute.
Kitchen gadgetry, no expensive stuff required. I have a lot of kitchen gadgetry that is not absolutely needed in order to produce good food. Things like a favorite garlic press gifted me by my sister:
As you see in the searing pork picture, I'm just using my large stock pot to prep my meat and vegetables for the stew. It's not special in any way, though it is of good quality (the set I have belonged to my mother...she bought it back in 1980).
I also do not own Dutch oven (aka, a pot that can go from stove to oven). What I do have is this awesome 1960's casserole dish. It, too, belonged to my mother. She gave it to me when I first moved out on my own. She bought it as part of a set before I was even born (let us have a moment of silence for the small casserole dish that did not survive my childhood). Again, it wasn't expensive, but it is of good quality.
I hope this helps you realize that making something that is of fine dining quality (because this stew is that) doesn't require fancy equipment, and though I didn't mention it, expensive ingredients were not on my list either. Even the wine, which you can see in the prep picture, was inexpensive. But they were all of good quality.
Ok, seriously, I used the word "quality" enough that now all I can think of is Lord of the Rings and "A chance for Faramir, captain of Gondor, to show his quality". It's stuck in my head, on repeat. I want to cry.
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