Tag: apple

Categories
The Book Vegetables

55. Riesling Braised Sauerkraut and Apples p.575


The Recipe

This is kind of a funny recipe. It takes the “and the kitchen sink” approach toward sauerkraut. This version starts with packaged sauerkraut, then braises is with two kinds of apples, onions, shallots, slab bacon, Riesling, chicken stock, thyme, juniper berries, and a bay leaf. It was already getting a bit busy flavour-wise at this point, but we’re not done. Once the braise is finished the sauerkraut is tossed with two cups of heavy cream, and some apple schnapps. Thankfully the cream and schnapps were optional, and I opted for only the schnapps. I get the impression that the people at The Book looked up every traditional sauerkraut ingredients from every culture that makes it, and tossed them all into one recipe.

The main problem with the dish was the word sauerkraut. If it had been called stewed cabbage with apples, bacon, and cream it would have been fine. But sauerkraut should as a minimum be sour. In this version the sauerkraut is soaked and drained twice to get rid of a lot of the salt, but also a lot of the flavour. All of the braising ingredients are there to mellow the harsh bite of the sauerkraut, but at least the stuff I bought was pretty smooth after the rinsing. All the sweet ingredients just overwhelmed the remaining flavour of the sauerkraut. There were also far too many flavours competing here, some of the comments on the epicurious version of the recipe suggest that adding the cream would have tied it together, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

This recipe simultaneously had too many ingredients, and not enough. The flavours were a jumble, but it was drastically in need of some more acid to cut all the sweetness. On a positive note the thyme, juniper, bay leaf combination worked very well, and bacon makes everything taste good.

I guess the recipe was fine, and if I’d had some more potent sauerkraut as a starting ingredient maybe all the sweet additions would have been a nice compliment. As it was the dish was going in too many directions at once, and tried to do too much. All of the additions ended up taking away from what makes sauerkraut good in the first place.

Categories
Fruit Desserts The Book

44. Apple Crisp p.812

Sorry, no recipe.

The Book and I do not get along when it comes to dessert. It’s becoming a tired refrain, but it calls for too much sugar in just about everything.

Familiarity as we all know breeds contempt, and I am certainly familiar with fruit crisps. If this had been an obscure Austrian confection I would have been fairly impressed, but once you call it an apple crisp you’ve plunged into much deeper waters. My ideal apple crisp has a (wait for it) crisp topping, which crumbles nicely. I’m not sure how a crisp is distinguished from a crumble, but I want both in the same dish. The topping should be substantial, not too buttery, and avoid being too fluffy and cookie like. The filling should have a bit of running juice at room temperature, and distinct apple pieces which offer a bit of resistance when you bite into them. A nice dose of citrus punches up the flavours of the apples, and cinnamon is a must-have, tastes-like-home addition.

This recipe measured up reasonably well to those standards. The topping was nicely crisp, but failed the crumbly test. It erred too far on the side of cookieness. However the pecans added a nice crunch, and provided a bit of crumble. The topping could have stood to have more nuts in it actually. The dish let me down on the filling though. It called for three types of apples, Macouns, Fujis, and Jonagolds. The texture was nice, with some toothsome chunks and plenty of juice, but the flavour was way off. All of the apples they call for a fairly sweet, plus they added a good deal of sugar, taking it to candyland. The lemon juice was limited to two tablespoons, with all the sugar in there the lemon could have been doubled easily.

This dish had some things going for it, and the end result tasted pretty good. The topping could have been part of an excellent dish, unfortunately the filling was underwhelming. Fruit crisps are a simple, ubiquitous summer / fall dish, and everyone will have their own way of doing it, and their own standards by which to judge it. This dish may very well be someone’s favorite apple crisp in the whole wide world, it’s just not mine.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

31. Pork Chops With Sautéed Apples and Cider Cream Sauce p.480

Sorry, no recipe this time

The sautéed apples and cider cream sauce were absolute stars, but the pork chops themselves were a pretty indifferent base for this recipe. It starts with the cream sauce (shallots softened in butter, cooked together with apple cider, cider vinegar, sage, chicken stock, and heavy cream), then the chops are cooked through in a heavy skillet, and the apples are cooked in the pan juices with a bit of butter once the chops are done. The apples caramelized beautifully, and took on the best of the pork’s flavours from the fond in the pan. The sauce was creamy with an enticing acid bite which contrasted the sweetness in the apples. As I’ve mentioned I love sage, and I’m always happy to see it make an appearance outside of turkey stuffings.

The chops themselves were indifferent. This is probably both my fault and that of industrial agriculture. I’m far from the first person to bemoan the lack of flavour in today’s pork. I’m too young to look wistfully back on the halcion days when every pig farm was just like in “Charlotte’s Web”, but the state of industrial pig farming today is pretty disgusting. Beyond the objections of PETA and everyone of any moral fibre, the pork that those factory farms produce doesn’t taste very good. More ethically raised meat just tastes more pork-y. Of course those sun-kissed and morally unblemished pigs are going to set you back a chunk of change. For that reason I’m going to continue eating pigs raised in deplorable conditions a good part of the time, and so are most people for the foreseeable future.

The problem with the mega-mart super pack chops in this recipe was the cooking method. They’re pan fried with salt and pepper, and that’s it. They give up their flavour to the sauce, and you’re left with dry tough and flavourless chops. The cheap-o chops just don’t do well with dry cooking methods. I raved about Pork Chops With Onion Marmalade, which was exactly the same meat, just using a wet cooking method. This kept the pork moist, and added a lot of flavour to the meat itself. Brining these chops before cooking them could have kept them moist and added flavour too. As it was they didn’t really add much to the dish.

A note on photography: Experience has taught me that photos of a big plate of meat really don’t look very nice. I’ll stop inflicting photos like the above on you ASAP.

Rating this one is a bit tricky, the apples and sauce were out of this world, and the pork wasn’t terrible, just indifferent. I suspect that if I’d used thicker chops, and ideally better quality pork this could have come out as a five mushroom recipe. I can’t really hold The Book accountable for me choosing to cut corners and buy less than stellar ingredients. On the other hand, most people making this recipe are going to use the same chops I did, and they should have tested this recipe with the ingredients their readers are likely to use.