I misplaced a Mark Bittman recipe from The Times I saved two weeks ago. Now that I have a nice bottle of Reisling to cook with after visiting the Finger Lakes wine trail and plenty of firm apples to buy at the market, I was adamant to replicate it with some guess-timates. I still had some leftover thyme in the fridge kept fresh by the best thing in the world right now–Glad Press’n Seal–so I threw those in while the juices cooked the pork. We drank the rest of the Lamoreaux Landing Reisling with this and ate it with broiled white potatoes.
Ingredients:
6 pork steaks, about 1 inch thick, cut from the shoulder
3 Gala apples, cored and sliced
1/2 cup of Bordeaux or any other semi-heavy red
1/2 cup of dry Reisling
1 medium red onion, thinly sliced
half a stick of butter
2 sprigs of thyme
salt and pepper1. Rub the steaks with salt and pepper. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat for 3 minutes. Add the butter and brown the pork on both sides, about 4 minutes. Do this in batches to avoid overcrowding the pan.
2. Reduce the heat to medium. Add the red wine and the onion and cook, turning the pork once or twice, until the wine is all but evaporated, about 3 minutes.
3. Add some water if the sauce is a little too thick, turn the heat to low and cover. Cook for 10 minutes, turning them once or twice, until the pork is tender but not dry. Remove the pork to a plate.
4. Add the apples in the remaining liquid, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan as the apples cook. Add the Reisling and simmer in low fire until the apples absorb most of the liquid. Return the meat to the pan during the last few minutes to reheat them.
Comments
good memory! here’s the original –
Pork Steaks and Baked Apples
Time: About 30 minutes
Salt and coarsely ground black pepper
Pinch cayenne
1 teaspoon minced garlic
4 crisp apples, like Cortland or Macoun, skin on, cored and cut into eighths
1/2 cup semisweet white wine, like muscatel or off-dry riesling
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
About 1 1/2 to 2 pounds 1-inch thick pork steaks, cut from the boneless loin or shoulder
Flour for dusting
1 cup fruity but sturdy red wine, like Barolo or a ready-to-drink Cabernet.
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Combine a large pinch of salt with a few grindings of pepper, the cayenne and garlic, and sprinkle apples with this mixture. Put apples in a baking dish, pour white wine around them, and bake until apples are shriveled but moist, about 15 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, heat oil over medium heat in a skillet large enough to hold pork. Dust pork lightly with flour and sear it on both sides for a total of just a minute or so; it need not become brown. Add red wine and adjust heat so mixture boils energetically. Cook pork, turning occasionally, until it gains a beautiful deep color, is cooked through and wine reduces to a syrup; about 10 minutes. Season meat with salt and pepper.
3. Serve pork with red wine sauce spooned over it, next to apples, with a little of the white wine they cooked in.
Yield: 4 servings.
Whoa. Thanks. Not so bad, eh? I usually skip the flour when I brown meats anyway. That cayenne pepper is interesting though.