Pork and Apple Stir Fry

I’m not sure why I’m calling this a stirfry. I think it’s because I’m remembering a recipe I used once or twice in college – do you remember this, muffins? It came from a large-paged cookbook with colorful photos that I no longer own, maybe it wasn’t mine to begin with. Anyway, I made this while I was visiting my gram last week. I brought some of my CSA stuff and used up some things I found in her house (namely, the pork and apple).

Garlic scapes are new to me: they are stems that grow from hardneck garlic and are snipped off so the garlic can put more energy into bulb growth. If I eat them raw or lightly sautéed, I find them extremely spicy – that slow acidic but delicious burn that you get when you eat raw garlic cloves. I think I prefer them cooked down a bit; they were still firm in this dish, but greenly sweet and mellow.

Stuff:
2 pork loins, cut into small (.5”?) cubes that will cook faster
2 small apples, also cut into small cubes and sprinkled with lemon juice to keep them from browning. (1 normal-sized apple would probably be plenty)
3 or 4 garlic scapes, cut into inch-long bits
2 cups (I think?) brown rice
Chicken broth (optional, but awesome)
Some onion (green part optional) and garlic
Fresh chopped sage
Olive oil*
Whatever other seasonings you like

*I actually infused the olive oil with sage, experimenting with a technique Elana uses… I slowly heated half a cup of olive oil and threw in two cloves of garlic and three sprigs of my fresh sage when it got hot. If it’s hot enough, it should sizzle around these water-based things when you throw them in and make tantalizing smells. I let it cook on low heat while I was doing other things, turned the heat off when the sage looked burnt to a crisp and the garlic looked mushy, and set it aside to cool. There was enough for the stirfry and also to coat some sliced beets for roasting.

1. Prepare the rice according to its package. It’s good to use chicken broth with this dish because it gives the rice a good flavor and texture; I also threw in a smidge of the sage-infused oil, and a handful of chopped green stalk from my spring onion. You probably should start the rice before you chop anything else up, because it could take up to 45 minutes to cook rice and the frying part of this procedure goes fast.
2. When you chop the pork, toss it with some dry seasonings. I like to use paprika for the color, salt and pepper, maybe some ground-up dried oregano and thyme, whatever’s around. You can also toss the scapes and apples in seasoning separately, but it isn’t necessary.
3. Heat up a little oil (sage-infused, if you like) in a pan that has a lid. Cook a few tablespoons of minced onion and garlic in the oil until it begins to brown. Add the pork cubes, adding oil if necessary to coat them; push the cubes around on fairly high heat until they start to brown. Add scapes; toss to coat. Add apple cubes. Cover the skillet and turn the heat low; you want all the things in there to produce their own juice and steam themselves a little.
4. When your rice is done and you are satisfied that the pork is cooked through, add a couple tablespoons of the fresh chopped sage to the stuff in the skillet. I spooned a bunch of the rice on top of that, covered it, turned the heat off and walked away for an hour to do something else – but probably you can mix it all up and eat it as soon as the rice and pork are finished.

I am not, of course, at all sure that this will work for you. But for us it was pretty tasty.