The Memory of a Wild Boar Ragu

On Sunday, we went across town to pick up kalua pig from a fundraiser.

When we got home, we cracked open the container and forked out some tastes - yum! Just enough salt and smoke - and probably too much fat! I put it in the refer until tonight. Most people in Hawaii would cook up some onions, add the pork and maybe sliced head cabbage, cook a pot of white rice, and eat it up.

Here are two things I do, for a change:

1) Heat the pork and add your favorite barbecue sauce, to your taste. Toast some buns or load some pork onto slices of good bread with a melty cheese like Havarti or Muenster top with another slice and grill in a pan with a little butter, Serve with pickles or salt and vinegar chips. Yum!

2) What I did tonight: thinly slice half an onion and saute in a pan sprayed with PAM or lightly slicked with oil until lightly browned. Examine your kalua pig and remove the obvious chunks of fat. Add to the pan, breaking up chunks, and heat through. Splash in a generous amount of red wine - 3 to 4 ounces - and stir until combined. Add enough spaghetti sauce - Barilla and Classico are ones that I like - until it's wet but not soupy.  Taste - I added cracked black pepper and garlic salt. Serve with linguine or pappardelle.

Why is this a dupe for Wild Boar Ragu? Well, it isn't, but it does bring back memories of the lovely restaurant where we had lunch, in the Pearl district of Portland, OR. The noodles were probably pappardelle, and the pork sauce was very rich and yummy - the perfect meal on a cool and rainy afternoon. I don't remember the name of the restaurant, but we were seated above the street level, and there were large open windows and lots of beautiful wood interiors. So, this is my approximation of that delicious food memory.

Along with the pasta and sauce, we ate leftover cucumber salat - thinly sliced cucumbers and onions salted, drained and mixed with vinegar, crushed garlic cloves, olive oil and cracked black pepper. And peeled julienned raw beets and diced sweet onion, marinated in Angelo Pietro ume dressing. Sliced tomatoes on the side, simply sprinkled with sea salt.

No dessert necessary - this was all yum!