[Sca-cooks] Last night's dinner (basically OOP)

[Nick Sasso]

So, on this kick about braised meat dishes and all these various cultures, I
ended up springing off a couple of recipes to develop what turned out to be
a spectacular first effort.  I had a bone-in pork shoulder roast to deal
with.  I didn't feel so much like digging out my egurdouce receipt, so I
grabbed my Frugal gourmet-Immigrant Ancestors book. Seems I remembered a
"Swedish Loin of Pork" recipe that could be modified to a braised pork
pretty easily.  So, I took my recent experience with a pork loin in Chinese
Mother Sauce and played fast and loose with Scandinavian fusion.  this could
be modified pretty well to fit into medieval ingredient bills.  Here's what
we ended up loving:

2.5 lb pork shoulder or boston butt or other braising cut
2 TBL vegetable oil or lard
2.25 cups water or LOW SODIUM chicken stock
.75 cup light soy sauce
1 cup full bodied red wine or port
12 dried apricots
15 dried plums (prunes)
.333 cup raisins or currants
1 TBL chopped garlic
1 TBL hoi sin sauce
1 tsp oyster flavor sauce
.5 tsp dried marjoram
.5 tsp dried thyme
.5 tsp whole peppercorns

PREHEAT oven to 300F

Combine water/stock, wine, soy sauce and dried fruits in saucepan.  Bring to
a simmer and remove from heat.

While liquid is heating, brown the pork on all sides with oil in Dutch oven
just large enough to hold the roast.  About 2 minutes to a side.

Stir into hot liquid blend the remaining ingredients and pour quickly into
Dutch oven with pork.  Cover with fitted lid and place in oven for 2.5 hours
or until tender and cooked through.

Remove to a blender or food processor 10 prunes and 6 apricots, plus 1 cup
liquid, and puree.  Add this back to the sauce, stir to thicken.  Adjust
seasoning with sugar, salt and/or pepper.

Slice pork and serve with sauce napped.  Alternatively, slice pork and
return to the sauce to warm and additional 15 minutes.  We served this with
thick mashed potatoes and green beans.  The sauce is incredible accidentally
dripped on the potatoes.

Leftovers are still even better the next day.  I will cut the pork down to
half-inch cubes, heat in the sauce diluted with a little stock, and serve
over buttered noodles, boiled grain dish or potatoes again.  This really is
a deep flavor and rich tasting.  The lack of fat is not missed at all with
all of the assertive flavors layering up on the tongue.  The herbs don't
jump out, but they are definitely in there.  You could use apple sauce
instead of the chicken stock in your braising liquid, but it may just get
lost, and the sugar gets caught up in there.

This same process could conceivably be use with fowl or beef with various
changes in flavor, but I expect it to be great.  It will depend on what
protein comes on sale this week as to what the next experiment will be.
Mmmmm, shepherd's pie with egurdouce or this braised pork and vegetables
under a potato/root mash. . .

pacem et bonum,
niccolo difrancesco
(sauce is great on a cold roast turkey sandwich)