Apple-Pork Ragu with Papardelle (GK)

• 1 teaspoon olived oil
• 12 ounces ground pork
• 2 slices thick-cut bacon, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
• 1/2 cup diced onion
• 2 Honeycrisp apples, peeled and cut into 1/4-inch slices [I subbed some Pink Ladies]
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
• One 15-ounce can whole peeled tomatoes, smashed by hand or chopped
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 1 pound dried papardelle [I used a box of ziti I had since in the forward to the recipe Stephanie Izard says that it's fine to use a pasta that might catch some bits of pork or apple]
• 2 tablespoons brined capers
• 2 tablespoons thinly sliced fresh basil
• Coarse salt
• Freshly ground black pepper

Mise en place.

Browning the ground pork though admittedly there was very little browning well after the suggested five minutes.  I was afraid of drying the ground meat up.  This ragu isn't really a seriously braised or stewed affair.

Browning the bacon.  Still working off the stuff I made in september.

Add onions and garlic and sweat them until onions are translucent.  Um, two minutes ain't going to do it, but as it was with the pork, it was getting there.

Add the apples and wine.  Reduce the wine by 3/4's.

Add tomatoes, broth, and browned pork and simmer, partially covered for fifteen minutes.

The dish struck me as quite sweet when I had it right after completing the dish, but it mellowed out nicely after refrigeration.  The flavors of the dish are not complicated, but they were fine enough here.  I'm surprised Stephanie Izard didn't throw some fish sauce in here as well when it dominates the rest of her cookbook.

Preserved Lemons 1.0

from Girl in the Kitchen by Stephenie Izard:

•  2 1/4 cups coarse salt
• 9 lemons
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 1/2 cups vodka
• 1 teaspoon fennel seeds
• 1 teaspoon black peppercorns
• 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1 teaspoon mustard seeds

Boiling the lemons in batches for five minutes.

I never managed to get this crazy amount of salt and sugar to dissolve into such a tiny amount of alcohol.  Sure, I've super-saturated pickle brine with salt and sugar many times, but I don't use alcohol to do it.

Throwing the jar down my bedroom floor for two weeks.  Crossing my fingers that they don't come out smelling ammonia-y like Mark Bittman says they could get if something's gone wrong.

I also wound up using bottled lemon juice to top off the liquid so the lemons would be submerged.

Strips of the result muddled with some club soda.  Pretty awesome beverage.  If I was in the mood or I had company, vodka certainly wouldn't be out of place.  And hey, it's not full of sugar and chemicals and is WAY more interesting that water with a squeeze of lemon.

I titled this entry 1.0 because I have recently read three different techniques for preserving lemons recently.  Partly due to fear of failure (stupid salt and sugar), I admit, and largely through curiosity, I definitely want to try Bittman's recipe when I run out of this batch.  Izard's had a longer shelf life and seemed more interesting in terms of spicing (oh I guess I could've played around myself) so I went with that first.

Zak Pelaccio's recipe in Eat wtih Your Hands (which I recently read and will inevitably cook out of) doesn't involve a liquid at all but involves packing the lemons with salt.  This techniques demands fridge space though and I'd have to be in the right moment for that.  I see myself making one of his two recipes for bacon soon...