For the second meal that I will cook after my sabbatical I will be preparing a recipe that I found in The Globe and Mail for Pork Piccata with a side of Braised Kale. From what I can gather, a Piccata is an Italian dish that is made with fish or meat and served with a lemon, butter, and parsley sauce. I’ve never made a Piccata before but this preparation is very similar to a French dish that I have prepared in the past called Sole Meuniere which has a lemon, butter, and caper sauce.
Since this recipe calls for quite a bit of white wine in both the Pork Piccata and Braised Kale I decided to have two guests accompany me tonight. My first guest is the Naked Grape Pinot Grigio. Naked Grape is a winemaker that does not age their wines in oak, therefore, having never been oaked this wine is young and brash, which I hope to tame in the pan.
The next guest to accompany my meal is once again from Italy. With only a DOC branding, this wine isn’t as classy as the previous Italian wine I’ve had, but I’m hoping that what she lacks for in class she makes up for in body:
Call me neurotic but I had to get my mise-en-place in order hours before execution:
For a fleeting moment I thought to myself, ‘Hey, that’s a lot of bacon’ but I quickly checked myself, too much bacon is like saying “I’m too happy”, it’s just not possible!
To begin, I wanted to start cooking the kale so I put the bacon in the pan to get it going. To layer in the porky goodness I cooked off some bacon in the pan that I was going to fry the pork in.
When the bacon was cooked I added the garlic, kale, wine, and cider vinegar:
Meanwhile I started frying up the pork in the bacon fat:
When the pork was cooked I let it rest on paper towel while I started the sauce:
You ‘monte au beurre’ with the capers and parsley then put the pork back in to simmer:
Meanwhile I’m finishing off what’s left of the Naked Grape and getting started on the Bollini, both of which look very similar (left is the Naked Grape, right is the Bollini):
And here’s the finished dish:
I’d describe this dish with the word ‘tangy’. The wine held up very well and cut through the butter and fat of the sauce. This dish was refreshing and I could not resist having seconds. Here’s a pic of my second plate:
Oh sweet gluttony, I understand you so much better now, although I was stuffed I still craved that porky goodness. I have reached that happy place where drunkenness and shortness of breath from drinking and eating too much meet. Oh what a sweet but laboured place to be. If I die right now I will die with a smile on my face and a full belly, could you ask for anything more?