Äppelfläsk

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Äppelfläsk
Smoked Bacon with Onions and Apple Rings

From Time/Life's Foods of the World - The Cooking of Scandinavia, 1968:

 There is an excitement to Swedish cooking today....Of late [the Swedes] have come to know foreign dishes and to experiment with foreign recipes; their recent cookbooks are lavish affairs, veritable compendiums of world cooking. Yet in spite of all these culinary distractions, they have happily not forgotten their cuisine.... 

The real Swedish cooking is called husmanskost, and it is plain, delicious and charming, a foil to extravagance. In the past this was what people ate everyday while reserving the smörgåsbord for special occasions; today it is a cherished thing - the remembered cooking of childhood.... Holding onto these old country foods is one way Swedes have of retaining a connection with the regional past....

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vilseskogen/4953681308/

[Even w]hile experimentation with foreign recipes grows, people are coming back to native pleasures - finding in husmanskost food of distinction. The "country" is being taken out of it and more sophistication is being put into it. Sauces have been freed of their traditional burden of flour, fat has been wiped out of the pan and replaced by butter...and the sugar that used to be sprinkled on almost everything as though it were a spice rather than a sweetener is now employed with restraint. What has emerged is some of the finest - and most interesting - cooking of Scandinavia.

Many dishes...remain inviolate; but others are undergoing a face-lifting. There is a sturdy dish from Skåne called äppelfläsk, often made in the old days with fat pork, sour apples and onions; a munchy, greasy thing, fine for farmers who had hard work to do in a cold, damp climate but hardly suited to more modest nutritional needs. Now it has been transformed: the sliced apples and onions are still there, but they have been sautéed in a little butter, and the fat pork has been replaced by a leaner variety resembling Canadian bacon. The combination is a good one, and the ease with which the dish is prepared recommends it for a Sunday brunch....one more example of the truth in the Scandinavian saying that the old shall meet the new.

Above, a coffeehouse glows in the late-winter darkness of a Swedish town north of the Arctic Circle. In the winder stands a harbringer of spring, a bouquet of dyed chicken feathers tied to branches forced to sprout prematurely. Drawn up in the snow is a spark, or chair toboggan.

The Swedish concept of husmanskost could be a synopsis of my "culinary point of view" - almost to a T; food of the land, from a time when man was tied to the land. Call it rustic or peasant cooking, call it comfort or soul food - whatever you call it, it is honest, unassuming, wholesome and good, in more ways than one. It reaches back through the years to a time when a hot, satisfying meal was something to look forward to after a cold day's hard work, as opposed to the quick, on-the-go, over-processed, microwaved or "fast" foods that are now squeezed into a busy, hectic, modern schedule. 

Coming from a rural Swedish heritage, it is a sure bet that my Scandinavian ancestors prepared this meal - in its original form - on more than one occasion, and it is my intention to try it. Today, I began curing a 2-pound pork loin; when the curing is finished, I will smoke it - transforming it into Canadian bacon - and use it to prepare this dish.

Here's the recipe, fromTime/Life:

 Äppelfläsk
Smoked Bacon with Onions and Apple Rings

To serve 4:

2 to 4 tablespoons butter 
1 pound Canadian bacon 
2 large red, tart cooking apples, unpeeled, cored and cut in 1/2-inch-thick rings 
2 large onions, thinly sliced 
Freshly-ground black pepper   

Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a heavy 10- to 12-inch skillet, and when the foam subsides, add the bacon. Fry 5 to 10 minutes, or until the bacon is lightly browned. Remove from the skillet with a slotted spatula and set aside on paper towels to drain.

Fry the onion slices for 6 to 8 minutes in the fat remaining in the skillet, adding more butter if necessary. When the onions are soft and transparent, add the apple rings and cover the pan. Simmer over low heat for 5 to 10 minutes, shaking the pan gently at intervals to prevent the apples from sticking.

When the apple rings are sufficiently cooked (they should offer little or no resistance when pierced with the tip of a sharp knife), return the drained bacon to the skillet. Cover the pan and simmer an additional 3 to 5 minutes, or until the bacon is heated through. Grind black pepper liberally over the top and serve the äppelfläsk directly from the pan as a luncheon entrée or Sunday night supper.

Alright, let's make some äppelfläsk!  

As you can see in the recipe above, the primary ingredient for the modern version of this time-honoured Swedish peasant dish is Canadian bacon (cured and smoked pork loin); I figured that a rural home in Sweden would probably cure its own bacon, and set out to do exactly that. 

The instructions for making Canadian bacon are pretty well laid out here, so there's no need to review them in-depth: 

http://foodsoftheworld.activeboards.net/my-first-attempt-at-canadian-bacon_topic2882.html

Using Mad Hunky's Tenner Quack (which is a clone of Morton's Tender Quick) as a curing agent, I cured a 2-pound section of pork loin for the required amount of time. When the curing was done, I dusted the pork loin with a freshly-cracked medley of peppercorns:

And let the loin rest for a while to develop a pellicle, which is a slightly-dry, slightly-tacky exterior that aids in smoke flavouring and penetration.

I then turned my attention to smoking the pork loin, using a new product that I had just recently acquired, the A-MAZE-N Pellet Smoker (also known as the AMNPS), which I ordered from my friends Marty and Tanya at www.owensbbq.com:

http://www.owensbbq.com/products.html

This handy little unit is perfect for cold-smoking of meats, fish, jerky, sausages and other charcuterie; I am sure it has many other uses as well, and am looking forward to discovering them as I continue my food-smoking projects.

Since this traditional Swedish dish features apples as well, it was only natural that I chose to smoke my Canadian bacon in apple. The AMNPS is designed to use convenient wood pellets, so I loaded up it up with some made from applewood:

The AMNPS is designed to be used in some sort of enclosure; anything will do, as long as it will protect the unit (and the meat) from the elements and allow air-flow in and out. For this project, I made use of a most convenient enclosure, my 18.5-inch Weber Kettle. I placed the AMNPS on one side of the bottom of the kettle, then lit one end of the "maze" with a propane torch: 

Once the smoke was going good: 

I placed the pork loin on the rack above the smoke on the opposite side of the kettle: 

I then covered the kettle and left it entirely alone for several hours while the sweet, rustic apple smoke penetrated and infused itself into my pork loin.

I was a little under the weather that day from a nasty virus, so I am not sure exactly how long the AMNPS produced smoke; I know it was at least 8 hours, but it could have been more, because I fell asleep. When I woke up, the smoking process was finished, so I wrapped the Canadian bacon in plastic wrap and placed it in the refrigerator for one week, so that the smoke could mellow and equalise throughout the loin. I don't know if this step is necessary, but I can certainly vouch for the results, because this Canadian bacon was the tastiest and "best-smoked" Canadian bacon I had ever made. Three cheers for Owens BBQ and the AMNPS! 

Worthy of note is that this Canadian bacon was entirely cold-smoked, and not brought "up-to-temperature" (usually around 150-155 degrees internal), so it was not a "ready-to-eat" product and required cooking. I could have brought it up-to-temperature, but because the recipe instructions called for frying the Canadian bacon, I chose not to so that I would not run the risk of over-cooking it. This was indeed the right choice for this application.

When the time came to prepare the äppelfläsk, things went pretty smoothly; here we are with the goods for a double recipe:

A note on the apples: the recipe calls for tart apples; normally, I would immediately think of Granny Smith apples, but I wanted to expand my horizons a bit, so I chose an apple I had never tried before: Braeburn apples. These were an excellent choice, with a sweet-tart, almost spicy taste; I'm a fan of them, now! 

Note that since I crusted the Canadian bacon with pepper, I did not add any to the recipe; I also did not add any salt, since the salt-cured loin brought plenty of its own.

First, I ran the Canadian bacon through my slicer:

I tried to find a happy medium between "robust" and "not too thick," and think I did pretty well: 

Next, I sliced the onions into thin half-moons: 

The recipe calls for rings, but it seemed to me that the half-moons would be easier to handle when eating, so that's what I went with.

Since I did not want the apples to turn brown, I waited until I actually needed them to cut them up for the recipe; this departs from the instructions above, but it makes sense to me.

Ready to put this dish together, I fried the slices of Canadian bacon in a little butter, aiming for a decent sear on each side, without burning the meat:

It's here that my decision not to bring the Canadian bacon up-to-temperature paid off; had I done so, it is very possible that the meat would have started burning - or at least blackening - before it could get a nice, even sear. As it was, things went along very well. 

Once all of the Canadian bacon was cooked and transferred to a tray in the oven on the lowest setting to keep warm, I tossed the onions into the cast-iron skillet, stirring them as they caramelised and released their moisture to naturally de-glase the pan:

I tossed the onions around in the pan until they were fairly well-cooked; I didn't know what to expect when I added the apples, so I made the decision not to give them a deep caramelisation, for fear of burning them. As it turned out, there was no need to worry about this, since the apples released plenty of moisture that could keep the onions from burning.

Speaking of the apples, while the onions were cooking, I sliced them into sections; the recipe says to cut them into thin rings, but as with the onions, this seemed like awkward eating, so I decided to go with the sections. Either way will work just fine, of course.

Once I judged the onions to be just right, I added the apples:

I tossed them around to mix them in well with the onions, then added the bacon back to the pan, covered it, and reduced the heat so that everything could simmer a bit while the apples softened up. After about 10 minutes, here's what I ended up with: 

Talk about husmanskost ~ this is it, for sure! 

The meal was ready, so I plated up and served it with some plain, white bread to sop up any juices:

I can't think of enough good things to say about this dish - it was great! The salty-sweet-tart combination of the Canadian bacon and apples were in wonderful harmony, with the onions lending an outstanding savoury element. Everything went together beautifully, with a rustic sophistication that must be experienced to be appreciated. The fact that I had cured and smoked my own Canadian bacon for this project only made the meal even more satisfying. Of course, you don't have to make your own Canadian bacon to try this; however, if you are so inclined, it does, in my opinion, add to the experience. 

Everyone in the family did enjoy this dish very much; there were no complaints and no leftovers, and it will definitely be made again. I can't think of anything that I would do differently, so in my opinion, it must have gone pretty well. 

Thanks for taking the time to look at this ~ now please, go out and try it! You will not be disappointed, and will certainly get a first-hand view of what the concept of husmanskost is all about. 

If anyone has any questions, please feel free to ask, and maklig måltid!