Sunday, October 13, 2013

Saveur's Pork Stew: Re-roll


I'd been thinking my stew repertoire needed to expand, and recalled a delicious pork stew recipe with dried apricots and prunes from Saveur Magazine from several years ago. I made it once, and enjoyed it, but never made it again. When I rediscovered the recipe, I recalled the sweet and slightly savory stew and thought I could alter the recipe to give it some more balance toward the savory side.

Here's the original recipe: click here.

What I did was also a morph, because I used cooked pork loin with fig sauce. Here's what I did: on the stovetop in a Dutch oven, I sweated half a yellow onion and a chopped carrot in olive oil, then added about 2/3 cup of diced dried fruit: prunes, apricots and figs; 2 cups of mushrooms, several sprigs of fresh thyme, 2T tomato paste, salt and pepper, about 2 cups of diced leftover pork, and 4 cups of liquid.

Instead of using all water, I used 2 cups of dry white wine and 2 cups of water. Then I put the Dutch oven into an oven preheated to 350 degrees uncovered for about 90 mites, stirring occasionally. I served it over roasted red new potatoes, and have to say, I liked my version even better than Saveur's original recipe. The original was good, but a little sweet. Cutting the sweetness with the wine and fresh thyme and adding the earthy mushrooms turned out to be a win. Adding the figs didn't make much of a difference. I did that mostly because the pork already had fig sauce on it. I'll make it again, for sure, but will probably start with uncooked pork for even better results.

What's your favorite stew recipe?

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