Friday Dinner: Tuscan Pork Stew and Polenta

Tonight, with rain coming down in buckets, it was a perfect night for a warm, aromatic stew over creamy polenta cooked with milk and finished with some Asiago cheese and parsley. When Lynn, my cooking partner extraordinaire, suggested that we make this I was immediately all-in but since polenta's not her favorite thing, I was a little puzzled. She found a recipe on the Food and Wine site and  and thought that polenta was just the thing. It looked great to me, too - pork shoulder marinated in wine, aromatics, rosemary, sage, bay, and cloves! ... and juniper berries! According to the writer, it was developed by Chef Joe Sponzo to be made with wild boar.

...not that we don't have feral pigs with a little wild boar in the historical breeding mix here in Northern California. When I lived in Clayton for a little while (in Contra Costa County), I would read news reports of the wild/feral pigs that are the scourge of parks in and around Mt. Diablo, but no... we used pork shoulder.

One thing that struck both of us about the recipe is that it seemed like it hadn't been adapted for pork instead of wild boar. Some of the aromatics (juniper berries, cloves) and methods (boiling the meat before searing and braising it - don't do it) seemed more oriented towards game so we made some changes that I'll pass along in the recipe. In addition to the stew and polenta - we went a different direction with the polenta - we had roasted asparagus (Spring!) with garlic, salad and we drank a San Giovese with dinner.

RECIPE: TUSCAN PORK STEW WITH POLENTA