January 19th - Fennel braised pork and polenta

January 19th – Fennel braised pork with polenta

It was a cold day and it was actually pretty chilly when we were brewing in the garage. By the time we were through, I was looking forward to something hardy for dinner. I wanted to braise something and opted to use some pork country ribs which are actually from the shoulder and are great for braising. I love fennel and pork and decided to braise the pork in a combination of onion, carrots, celery, garlic, white wine and fennel seed. The flavors would be fairly simple and straight forward but would also be hardy enough to satisfy my craving for comfort food. I was out of potatoes (how does one run out of potatoes?) so I decided to make some polenta instead.

I used to cook polenta with a lot of butter, cream, and parmesan, or even mascarpone cheese. (I once had a meal with two friends who cook professionally, where they tried to see how much fat they could add to polenta before the emulsion broke. They never hit the breaking point, but the polenta was so rich that it was almost inedible. You could only have tiny spoons of it.) I’ve since gone away from it and prefer the purer flavor you get form cooking it plain, with only water and salt. In a lot of braises, I’ll puree the sauce for a thicker richer sauce, but wanted to keep the chunks of vegetables in this one, both for the texture and their visual appeal.

Since this was an Italian influenced meal, I decided on an Italian wine (why do I almost always drink wine after brewing beer?). I don’t buy a lot of Italian wines but did have a few in my cellar. 1989 was a fantastic year for Barbaresco and I had the good fortune to have bought several single vineyard Barbaresco’s from Produttori del Barbaresco at incorrect prices. There was an old chain of natural supermarkets in Portland that has since gone out of business. I used to buy some wine there and noticed that they kept putting the single vineyard Barbarescos in the slot for the regular Barbaresco. I told the wine stewards several times that they were incorrect, and they always told me I was wrong and that the $19.99 was correct for the single vineyard bottlings. But the same wine was selling for about $30 in other locations. But after I told them it was wrong and they insisted it was OK, I decided to buy a few bottles. They would have a different vineyard each time in the slot, and each time I would try to tell them, and every time they told me it was correct. So each time I bought a bottle or two and stashed them away. I cracked the last bottle of Monte Fico for this meal. Monte Fico was the hardest and most backward of all of Produttori’s offerings that year, but this one was beautifully mature. It took about an hour to open up, and then revealed a rich nose of cherry fruit, some leather and tobacco, and an earthier, tarry note. It wasn’t as full bodied as some Barbarescos I’ve had, but it had impeccable balance and was just plain delicious. It didn’t overwhelm the food and was a nice match, but it was so good it would have gone with pretty much anything. It was a truly memorable bottle.