It’s interesting how firmly an adjective can get attached to a recipe. Say “a la Flamande” to most cooks, and almost all of those who’ve ever heard the phrase before will instantly add the word “Carbonnade” to the front of it, citing the famous recipe for beef in Belgian beer.
Yet they do drink other things in Belgium, and cook with other things. There is, for example, some good hard cider around. We specify “hard” here for the sake of our North American readers: in Europe, cider is always alcoholic, and everything else is just apple juice.
Stassen is probably the best-known of the Belgian ciders. But other ones would certainly have made their way across the border from France (when the local farmers weren’t already brewing their own cider out back). It was only a matter of time before some good dry cider found itself in a pork dish like this, displacing the ubiquitous beer.
(EuroCuisineGuy, a Belgian beer fan to the last, points out that this recipe might also work nicely with a lambic or one of the sharp dry fruit beers like Kriek or framboise, even though cherries and raspberries are less traditional with pork than are apples. An experiment for later.)
The spicing in this dish is interesting. The presence of the juniper berries and the rosemary suggests that the people who first came up with the recipe saw an advantage in flavouring it as if it was something gamier – specifically wild boar. Whatever, the juniper certainly enhances the flavour of the pork, pointing up the fruity quality of the apples as well.
This recipe can be made either with pork chops still attached to the bone, or boneless ones. Whichever you’re using, trim off any excess fat before you start.
Also, peel, core, and slice the apples. (Some people prefer to slice them thickly, as in our illustration: others prefer them more thinly sliced, for a “melt into the sauce” effect. Using a mandoline works well for the thin slicing, if you’re going that road.)
Preheat the oven to 200C / 400F. If the pork chops have been in the fridge, bring them out and let them come up to room temperature.
Brown the chops gently in butter on both sides for ten to fifteen minutes.
Arrange them in a shallow lidded casserole.
Crush the juniper berries and scatter them over the pork chops. Add the parsley and rosemary sprigs. Arrange the apples over the pork chops: tuck some slices down the sides as well, if they’ll fit.
Pour the melted butter over the apples. Finally, add enough cider to just come up to the top of the pork chops (leaving the apples just barely exposed).
Put in the oven for 30 minutes. At this point, remove the lid and check to see if the cider needs topping up. Continue cooking with the lid off the casserole for another 20-25 minutes, checking occasionally and basting with the sauce, until the meat is tender and the top (including the exposed apples) is getting brown.
Serve directly from the casserole, spooning cider sauce over.
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Stuff we’ve seen and found interesting, things we want, things you might want, who knows…?
Other people’s recipes that have worked really well
