Braised Pork Empanadas

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.

Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day...

As implied in my last post, my mind has been flashing memories of my youth at a pretty steady pace lately, with so many friends still contending with the aftermath of Sandy back east. It was not completely by happenstance that I chose Wednesday as the day to use the crock pot to make something of a "Sunday Gravy," obviously not on a Sunday, but because I so warmly remember seeing advertisements for Prince spaghetti all over the airwaves as a young boy in NJ. Granted, the commercial is supposed to be set on the north end of Boston, but somehow the imagery reminds me still, more generically, of nearly any tenement building in a large city in the northeast, and by association, the images remind me of NY, or at least the kind of hazy and faded memory of NY that I hearken back to in the nostalgic part of my brain.

More importantly, the ad reminds me of how, in my neighborhood, calling kids in for dinner was commonplace. At any given moment, you'd hear moms or siblings yelling, "Willy [yeah, I had to endure that nickname], time for supper." Or dinner. Or whatever a family called it. We'd hear it, and the game we were all playing would either realign to adjust for those called away, or would simply dissipate as the critical mass dwindled to the few who hadn't yet been called in. By urban standards, our yards were luxuriously large in the north Jersey suburbs, but really, the block where I spent most of my youth was compact enough that no one was really ever out of earshot of their own home. I suppose there is a part of me that mourns the idea that my daughters might not get to experience the call to dinner that was so familiar to me and to my friends growing up, in part because I doubt we'd ever have that luxury in our densely urban neighborhood, but more so because it seems that we have reached a point where the cell phone, the text message, or some other digital beacon has taken the place of a good set of lungs when rounding up the family these days. 

Dinner, tonight, was a joy to cook, and the prep this morning was incredibly simple. I had a bony, cheap cut of beef and a lovely, but small pork tenderloin roast defrosted. Both went into the crock pot along with canned tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato paste, garlic, salt, pepper, and a nice dose of herbs (mostly basil, oregano, and parsley today). I copped out on cutting up an onion, and just added a bit of onion powder today, mostly out of a concern for time (I was too persnickety about getting the garlic cut up to allow me the time to hack at an onion). I let this cook all day, and since it was a rather large batch, decided I'd keep my meatballs completely separate from the process. And for those who care, I did add a tiny dash of sugar, but I was on the fence about it. I know some folks insist that it is essential, and others consider it an abomination. For me, since I'm not Italian by heritage, I have no loyalties, and just cook as the spirit moves me.

Once home from work, I made up the meatballs. I kept them simple - beef only, some breadcrumbs (wish I'd had more on hand, but I made it work), eggs, herbs, and a healthy dose of parmesan cheese added in. I baked the meatballs, and made sure I'd have plenty to freeze along with the sauce for a week or so down the road, and to make sure we'd have enough for leftovers tomorrow as well. I was craving the simplicity of spaghetti (and not some other pasta shape; I think the commercial really got to me, but it was not Prince brand), but ended up mixing in a small bit of linguine I had opened as well.

The Verdict

(I really need to take pics on the white or red plates;
 the yellow does NOT photograph well)

Writing about spaghetti and meatballs is nor really an earth-shattering idea. Yes, the meal was absolutely delicious. You just can't rush a really good sauce, and so the slow cooker does wonders for a deep, flavorful meat sauce like this. The strands of tender meat that melt in the mouth, bathed in an herb-y tomato base are so comforting, and the somewhat saltier and chewier meatballs on the side such a delightful contrast. I have not had nearly enough wine lately, and was thrilled to find a bottle of Brunello di Montalcino in our stash. It was a great treat with this particular dinner.

So, again tonight, I let my mind drift back to my youth, to the turf of my teens (and younger), to old friends, and to old ways. I recalled a lunch at my friend Phil Mastronardi's house, and how, between his mom and grandmother, I could barely walk away from the meal. I remembered several meals at the homes of friends in the neighborhood, including a fair number at Andrew Lange's house, where his mom made some traditional German meals that I have still yet to find the courage to try to recreate in my own kitchen.  I recalled playing kick the can with my buds on 4th Ave in Westwood. I found my mind walking to any number of my old schools on brisk days like today, the smell of leaves as I crunched them underfoot, and the sound of the train whistle bringing parents back from work in "The City." And again, tonight, I wished I could do more than just remember and think good thoughts. 

Still, a rich meal like this on a cold, late-autumn evening, with my family around me, makes me realize that, for them, I'm laying the foundation for the memories my daughters will have. They will have comfort in the familiarity of the mundane things we now share, and I hope each of them will get to look back on these memories fondly, in good times and bad. And I hope they will find something that can call them back as easily as the sound of "Anthony... Anthony..."