Pork Stew

SCENE

A Paris apartment. It is Sunday, which, as all good Parisians know, is the perfect day to mope around in your pajamas, drink lots of coffee, do all your laundry and clean all the surfaces in your apartment with Windex, because you didn’t have time to get to the Ed this week to get the cheap spray bleach, and everything is closed on Sundays.

EMIGLIA, 23, charmingly high-strung, spills boiling gravy on her hand.

EMIGLIA: (To self) %$@*%#@!!!

EMIGLIA’S PERCEPTIVE ALTER-EGO: Well, it’s your own damn fault. You’re the one trying to make stew in a toaster oven.

***

Those of you who have met me (and my perceptive, often annoying alter-ego), may not need any explanation as to the above scene, but for those of you who have not met me, allow me to delve into my psyche on that cold Sunday morning, just two days ago.

You see… it’s fall in Paris. I’ve been keeping track (whether I want to or not) of the weather in other parts of the world, and while I congratulate you Californians on pissing me off not just once, but twice this summer (seriously… if I have to listen to California Girls one more time this summer, I’m going to hurt someone), in Paris, it is unmistakeably, 100%, grab-your-scarves-and-jackets-folks fall. Which is not altogether a bad thing.

Naturally, like the rest of you food bloggers, I’m bemoaning the loss of summer corn, the one (or twelve) tomato recipes that I’ll have to archive for yet another nine months, because regardless of whether the heirloom tomatoes at my new outdoor market are delectable (fun fact: they are), when I come home from work, the first thing I want isn’t a plate of tomatoes decorated with basil, nor is it a few cold cobs of cooked corn leftover from last night, which, two weeks ago, were my two favorite snacks.

Nope, now I’m looking the pig in the mouth: I’m back in France, and I want pork, goddamnit–I don’t care how you slice it.

It’s mostly thanks to my fellow bloggers; as fall rolls around, we all get nostalgic. We think of the smell of new pencils and the crunch of fall apples. We equate the changing of the leaves with the first pumpkin loaves. I found myself getting wistful as I stared off my balcony at the foggy, grey sky, reminiscing about walks through the woods with my “weaseling” grandfather, watching as he collected piles of dead leaves from the ground outside his Westhampton house.

“Fall is my favorite season,” I remember telling him. He laughed and said nothing, probably because he knew that in a matter of years, I would equate fall with school starting. And yet I still equate fall with something else, something that doesn’t make me miss summer at all. Spring is traditionally the season of new beginnings, but spring, for me, has always felt like more of an ending–it’s always in spring that I leave the place that I am for the place that I’m not, perhaps by virtue of the fact that I’ve spent the majority of my 23 years as a student–and it’s always in fall that I find myself starting over, seeing new things or old things in a new way.

Fall, for me, is the season of starting anew. I organize my life for the nine millionth time and tell myself that this time it will stick. I restock my pantry with fresh spices and dried beans and lentils. I plan. And a lot of my planning comes from reading your blogs, which is how cinnamon, cloves, thyme and nutmeg fly off the shelves of my local supermarket at the same time each year. Fall has arrived, and with it, a plethora of fall dishes to try, including this one, which I stumbled upon a few days ago and promptly messaged to The Almost Frenchman, because he was at work and I knew it would torture him. I’m nice like that.

“Putain.” He wrote back. And so we made plans for “Pork Night.”

Pork Night would be on Sunday, we decided, so that I would have enough time to braise the pork cheeks I was using to make the stew–because as everyone knows, I can never just make a recipe to the letter. I am physically incapable of leaving well-enough alone.

One small problem: my new kitchen doesn’t have an oven. It has two induction burners, a microwave, an electric water heater, a dishwasher and a toaster oven. While I briefly entertained the idea of the dishwasher after the stovetop proved to be an exercise in futility, I finally decided that a loaf pan would be an appropriate vessel for stew, and so, covered with tinfoil, I proceeded to braise pork cheeks in my toaster oven for the next seven hours.

The Almost Frenchman made mashed potatoes, and as we do every year at around this time, we promised to make a habit of making dinner together. Who knows if it will happen–it might, or it might dissolve, like the rest of my fall resolutions tend to do: I lose my new pencils, my organization gets abandoned in favor of laziness. All I have to show for it is recipes and toaster oven scars… I think I’m OK with that.

Pork and Apple Stew

6 pork cheeks
1 tbsp. thyme
1/2 bottle white wine
2 tsp. olive oil
salt and pepper
2 small onions, diced
1 carrot, diced (note: I would add a carrot. I did buy a carrot. I somehow lost the carrot. But if you have a carrot, add a carrot)
10-12 white button mushrooms (or other white mushroom), sliced
2 tbsp. flour
1 apple, grated

The night before, trim the pork cheeks of all visible fat and silverskin, and marinate in white wine and thyme.

The next morning, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. If you have a pot and an oven, use a Dutch oven and preheat the oven to 150 degrees C. Shake pork cheeks of excess liquid and season with salt and pepper. Reserve marinade. Cook until golden brown, about 3 minutes per side. Remove to a plate.

Add the onions, carrot and mushrooms, and sauté until lightly browned and soft. Add the flour and cook until no longer raw, then add the reserved marinade and the grated apple. Stir to combine, then add the pork cheeks back to the liquid. Cover and braise for 5-7 hours, or until someone else has made mashed potatoes and poured you copious amounts of wine. Eat. Enjoy fall.