Drinks advice

Pork stew with Blankenheym Oude Genever

In the casserole is a stew of browned cubes of pork tenderloin with mushrooms, baby potatoes, thyme and, added at the end, cherry tomatoes, simmered until done in beef stock. Set against that is a classic old genever from Schiedam, soft and double-aged, which catches the fried meat and the thyme with grain sweetness.

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Pork stew
Photo: pelican, CC BY-SA 2.0

From the shelf

The bottle

Blankenheym Oude Genever is a Schiedam old jenever of 38% vol in a bottle of 100 cl, with a history going back to 1714. The description calls it characteristic, soft and dubbelgebeid; it gives no precise malt wine share or maturation time. For the designation oude jenever, the law requires at least 35% vol and at least 15% of the alcohol from malt wine, with at most 20 grams of sugar per litre. At 38% vol this bottle is above that minimum.

Blankenheym Oude Genever

The combination

Why this works together

A pork stew like this is mild in taste: pork tenderloin is lean and gentle, mushrooms bring earthy depth, baby potatoes lay down starch and the cherry tomatoes add a touch of acidity at the end. There is little sharpness and little salt to drink against, and precisely for that reason a jonge jenever does not work here; it would stand beside the plate as cold alcohol without doing anything. An oude genever, with its malt wine, brings grain sweetness and a slightly nutty roundness, and that connects directly with the brown crust on the meat and with the fried mushrooms. The juniper berry finds the thyme, and the sweetness in the genever sits next to the acidity of the tomato the way apple sauce does with pork. That makes the glass part of the jus instead of a counterweight to it.

At the table

The dish

  • For 4 people
  • Ready in 35 minutes
  • Type main course

What you need

  • 1 beef stock cube
  • 400 ml water
  • 4 pork tenderloin steaks
  • 1 tablespoon meat seasoning
  • 2 tablespoons cooking fat for frying and roasting
  • 250 g mushrooms
  • 800 g baby potatoes
  • 3 sprigs of thyme
  • 250 g cherry tomatoes

How to make it

  1. Dissolve the stock cube in 400 ml hot water. Cut the meat into 2 cm cubes and sprinkle them with pepper and the meat spices.
  2. Heat the cooking fat in a casserole and brown the meat on all sides in 4 minutes. Lift the meat out of the pan and set it aside.
  3. Halve the mushrooms and fry them with the baby potatoes for 5 minutes in the same pan.
  4. Add the thyme and the stock, cover the pan and let everything braise for 15 minutes.
  5. Add the meat and the cherry tomatoes for the last 5 minutes and heat everything through.
  6. Season with pepper and salt and serve, for example with Brussels sprouts.

In the glass

Serving

Pour the Blankenheym at room temperature into a tulip glass, filled to the brim. Oude genever does not belong in the fridge: at around 18 °C the malt wine and grain sweetness that do the work here are released, whereas cold shuts the jenever down and leaves only alcohol. Simply put the bottle on the table next to the pan and top up between bites.

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