Dinner with friends.

Saturday night the wife and I went over to our friends Lindsey and Jesica's house for supper. Lindsey is a vegetarian, but her significant other Jes is carnivorous and had a hankering for some pork, so I thought I'd oblige her. I wanted to do a braised pork belly, but the wife rejected that idea (she's got weird texture issues, but that's a story for another post) so I settled on a a pork shoulder braised in apple cider with lots and lots of onions, and a chocolate cream pie for dessert. 


The pork shoulder recipe I use can be  found on Epicurious.com. It isn't the most complicated preparation ever, and I can see no reason why this couldn't be done in a crock pot, aside from the searing. Don't skimp on the onions, even if you're not a fan, because they disintegrate in to the most amazing gravy that really sets the pork off. One could even add a few chopped apples, if one was so inclined.

I do a pot roast that's prepared exactly the same as this dish, but calls for beer instead of cider as the braising liquid. If pork ain't your thing, use a chuck roast and a bottle of your favorite beer instead for fabulous results. 




This picture is from about halfway through the cooking process. The finished product looks a little less creepy, and the onions really fall apart once you start reducing the braising liquid and onions in to gravy. 


The chocolate pie recipe is from the Homesick Texan and turned out fabulous. In hindsight, we probably should have let it cool off for a while before throwing it in the fridge, but we didn't mind the little puddles of fun that formed on the meringue.