Once again, I fell off the charts for way too long writing
about dinner. I am offering this one with some ambivalence, but at least I’m
dusting off my space a bit and adding something – anything – once again.
My wife and I are hoping to sell our condo so we can buy a
house. That has meant a good bit of legwork de-cluttering our current home, and
I wanted to make sure that any remaining items in our chest freezer got used up
sooner rather than later to insure we didn't have to deal with any substantial
quantities of perishables down the road. I had a couple of smaller pork roasts
left, and braised them in the crock pot for much of the day, half-submerged in
apple juice with a couple of apples and a couple of pears, some cinnamon, a
small touch of chili powder, and a bit of honey over the top. Thankfully, my
wife was able to occasionally “baste” the meat during the day, and the pork was
perfect when I got home.
As before, when I made empanadas, I used frozen shells. I
still haven’t taken the opportunity to make my own from scratch, and hope I
will next time, but the premade offering from Goya is really rather nice. I
coarsely chopped the pork and added about a cup of the juice to it, leaving the
rest of the juice and the fruit for later. Once cooled a bit, I assembled the
empanadas and set them aside.
I removed some of the peel from the fruit and added a few
bananas to it, along with a bit of applesauce I had (apple-banana, which my
daughters tend to not eat from the variety packs). I mashed this up and let it
chill. I then strained much of the liquid from the crock pot into a sauce pan,
reserving about a quarter cup, which I then mixed with some corn starch. I
began reducing the juice, added my corn starch slurry, a hint of honey and
vanilla sugar (yes, I keep a storage container with sugar and a couple of
vanilla beans on hand at all times), along with a bit of orange juice, apple
cider vinegar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. I kept this simmering and reducing while I
cooked the empanadas.
For the empanadas, I fried them in a 50/50 mix of peanut and
olive oil. Since they don’t really need high heat, this works nicely, and adds
a great flavor to boot.
The verdict
3 out of 4 of us really enjoyed this meal. Our younger
daughter reluctantly, but ultimate ate and seemed to like this. My wife went
nuts for the sauce. I was particularly pleased with the mellow apple-cinnamon
tones in the pork, and the juiciness and tenderness of the meat. Since I made
both roasts, and didn't have enough dough for more empanadas, I’ll make something else with that extra meat in a day or so (probably some nice tacos!).
The pork worked well here, but on its own would have done well with just some
good barbecue sauce, frankly. I really like the apple/banana sauce as a side.
It is nice, every now and then, to have some fruits in place of veggies at
dinner time, especially when it complements the meal so well.
Our older daughter decided to be stubborn. While she
eventually acquiesced and tried the pork, she basically skipped dinner.
Sometimes, we win, sometimes we don’t. It confounds me that she will eat a wide
variety of vegetables (heck, broccoli is her favorite), but beyond applesauce,
we cannot seem to get this child to appreciate fruit. I suppose I may have to
find some sneakier ways to get her to try fruits in the future, but on this
night, I failed.
While de-cluttering is not really much fun, it can be
rewarding. We have been thrilled to clean out closets and drawers, knowing that
so many gently-used items will find another life through donation. We have purged
books that each of us have moved multiple times over a decade or more, books
that really should have been passed along years ago. We find ourselves thinking
more and more about what is important, and when we have a meal like this that
removes from our larder something we don’t want to transport, we gain a nice
memory, a new dish to use again in the future, and in this case, a hope – a hope
that someday both our daughters will reflect back on our time sharing meals and
NOT remember the times they threw a fit because something was new, or
different, or not a favorite. We are building the last of our memories in the
home where each of our girls has thus-far lived exclusively. I probably should
make sure that I fill some of the remaining dinner times with more mac and
cheese (they will tell you, mine is the best), more ravioli, and more PB&J
and grilled cheese for lunch on the weekend. Oh, and broccoli. Definitely more
broccoli.
