Pork shoulder braised in hard cider

When Steve Sando, founder of Rancho Gordo and author of Heirloom Beans, a cookbook that has given us many great meals, mentioned that Cooking in the Moment by Andrea Reusing was his favorite cookbook of the moment, that was reason enough to order it. Specifically, the comments mentioned this recipe, which made a second good reason.

And it was delicious. As simple as Marcella Hazan's classic pork loin braised in milk, this yields an equally tasty and very hearty dish. The recipe calls for a 5-6 lb. pork shoulder, but Whole Foods doesn't cut them that big, so I settled for their biggest, a 3.5 lb piece of meat. You insert a dozen slivers of garlic in the meat, salt and pepper, sear in 2 Tbl of vegetable oil, and remove to sautee a sliced carrot, quartered onion and apple cut into chunks in 1 Tbl of the oil (though I used new oil). Add 2 c. of hard cider and 1 c. of regular cider and a head of garlic cut in half, bring to a simmer, put pork back in, cover with parchment and lid and put in preheated 300-degree oven for 3 hours.

The dry hard cider adds an edge to the sweet cider and both flavor the pork with the other aromatics while the braise keeps it moist. Since my piece of meat was smaller, I probably didn't need the full 3 hours, but it doesn't really matter.

We accompanied it with a delightful little recipe from Deborah Madison's Local Flavors. You slice half a small Savoy cabbage, the white of a large leek, and a quartered fennel bulb, wash them (don't dry them) and put the vegetables in a sauteuse with 1 Tbl butter and salt and cover to let them steam, not brown, for 10 min. In the meantime you reduce juice of one lemon to 1 Tbl and then, away from the heat, swirl in 3 Tbl butter. You chop 3 Tbl of parsley or chervil (I used parsley) together with the zest from the lemon and add half of that to the butter and half to the vegetables. Then you toss the vegetables in the butter. Madison refers to it as a "big green mess" but it was delicious, preserving the freshness of these flavorful vegetables and getting some real zing from the butter and lemon.