Pork in cider

Cider in rock
The Worzels

Traditionally, cider has the reputation as being something associated with country bumpkins in the West Country. The Worzels even did a song about it, parodying Una Paloma Blanco (see above). More recently, however, its image is very much Janus-faced. At its best, it's a wonderfully refreshing drink, catching the best of the British summer in a glass, and can have depth and complexity similar to wine. At its, worst it's diabolical, mass-produced. massively over-strong and is directly responsible for a torrent of tramp piss in public spaces across the country. As booze goes, cheap white cider offers the very most bang for the buck, being able to buy a big bottle of a couple of litres of 5% cider for about £2 which is why it's the tipple of choice for the itinerant and teenagers alike. No park is complete without an empty plastic bottle of White Lightning, along with the dog ends of a couple of spliffs. It's a scene that, were they alive today, JMW Turner or especially John Constable would have immortalised in oil on canvas.

Wivenhoe Park by John Constable (1816)

If you look closely, you can see the two guys in the boat are getting wankered on cheap cider

Source: https://www.atlasofplaces.com/painting/landscape-and-place/

It's fair to say that, in the UK at least, many people's first exposure to alcohol is with a cheeky sip of Woodpecker Cider when they're a teenager (or, heaven forbid, Babycham, which is not actually cheap champagne, but is in fact cider's pear cousin, perry). Woodpecker is dreadful. It's largely tasteless, but sweet enough to give you a molar cavity by just thinking about it. Couple this to the myriad of sweet fruit ciders that abound today, it's like the alcopop explosion of the 90s all over again. Those were the days. Hooper's Hooch, Metz, Bacardi Breezers. Many a teenager will have woken up with a splitting headache and the flavour of one of these aberrations in their mouth from the night before (usually mixed with the taste of vomit), and mushrooms growing on their teeth because of the sugar content. What goes around, comes around, but with a slicker marketing spin on it. Just don't get me started on Snakebite and Black

Cooking with booze is a great thing. If I'd bothered to do any research, I'm sure I'd find it's to do with the huge variety of chemicals produced during fermentation and the same thing could be said of recipes with other fermented ingredients, like gochujang soya bean paste as used here, for example. I've already featured a few dishes that include some sort of alcohol, by way of beer, wine or even rum and I've previously used cider in pulled pork. Like that recipe, it works so well in this dish as apples are a natural partner to pork, hence apple sauce with roast pork. Couple this to the aromatic herbs of thyme, bay and especially sage (again, think sage and onion stuffing), this stew is a wonderful, easy to make weekday dinner

INGREDIENTS

2 tbsp olive oil

1 leek, trimmed and cleaned then cut into 1cm slices

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1 stick celery, finely shopped

200g mushrooms, roughly chopped

1 medium carrot, peeled, topped, tailed and cut into rounds

250g pork tenderloin fillet

200ml decent dry cider

1 vegetable stock cube

Large sprig of fresh sage leaves, finely chopped (about a tablespoon when chopped), or 1 tsp dried sage

Small sprig fresh thyme, leaves stripped from stems and chopped (or a pinch of dried thyme)

1 bay leaf

1 large tsp Dijon mustard

1 apple, peeled, cored and chopped (I used two small Gala, but traditionally it would be a Bramley)

1 large tsp cornflour, mixed with a little water

Salt and pepper

Herbs

Sage and thyme

And, yes, I'm one of those foodie wankers that has a mezzaluna to chop herbs

RECIPE

Heat the oil in a pan and add the leeks, stirring until soft (10 minutes).

Add the garlic and celery and continue to fry for 5 minutes.

Add the mushrooms and continue to fry for a further 5 minutes.

Add the carrot, cider, herbs, stock cube and 200 ml water then gently bring to a boil.

Add the pork and stir.

Stir in the Dijon mustard.

Mix up the cornflour in water and pour into the pan.

Stir well, turn down to low, cover, and simmer for an hour and a half or so (long enough for the carrots to become tender).

Serve it up. Serves two easily and works really well with mashed potato.

NOTES

The leek adds a subtlety that is missing with onion. but you could use an onion instead if you don't have a leek. Likewise, you could use a different form of pork or even braise pork chops in this sauce

Add a splash of cream to make the sauce more rich. Not an option in our house as Mrs Sweary is not a big fan of creamy sauces, but really, it would elevate this dish to something that bit more special

I recall something Delia Smith had written about how pork goes well with apples because they come from the same sort of terrain. Your wild boar, where pigs come from, are very much at home in the old orchard.

Choose a good quality cider for this. Nothing too fancy or expensive, but not Woodpecker or, heaven forbid, some cheap white cider. The offerings from Westons would be good, like the example below. Hell, Strongbow might even work as a budget option, just nothing that's got other fruit in it as it would be too sweet.

Henry Weston's Vintage Cider

A good cider for this recipe

Leek, mushrooms, carrot, pork and cider. This dish couldn't be any more rustic if its parents were first cousins and it was caught fucking a sheep. That's not a bad thing (I mean the rustic thing, not the near incest or the sheep worrying, obviously) as this is good, honest food with no pretence. Indeed, it's a very good thing and adds yet another great recipe to make a lie of my scoffing at the awful cuisine of England which I've mentioned on a few occasions.

I have to do a Rick Stein and twat on about the Constable picture I posted above. This is Wivenhoe Park which is now the site of the University of Essex, where I studied. This was where I spent many years, through two degrees  (and quite a few Snakebites and Black, especially early on), and where I met my wife. I had a postcard of that very paintings on my wall throughout my student days. I did get wankered by the side of that lake on many occasions, though not usually on cider.