Sunday Night: Braised Red Cabbage with Apples and Pork, Roasted Carrots, Broccoli Puree with Beurre Noisette

Last night I made a couple different things in the interest of using up more of the CSA box. We ended up with a plate full of great food and wonderful color contrast.

The Broccoli Puree with Beure Noisette is an idea from JPFF and it's just amazing. The color and flavor of the puree is fabulous, even if I did put maybe a bit too much butter in the broccoli.

For the Roasted Carrots, I used a mixture of red and (light) orange carrots from the CSA box. These carrots are not especially sweet, so I roasted them with olive oil, salt, pepper, and a bit of B&vG spice rub (added about halfway through the cooking). I didn't make enough of these, but what was there sure did taste good.

To make the Braised Red Cabbage with Apples and Pork, I followed the red cabbage recipe from How to Cook Meat, but I left out the caraway seed and used cider vinegar instead of red-wine vinegar. I brined some pork country ribs in a salt/sugar solution with juniper berries for a few hours. After about 30 minutes of cabbage braising, I browned the ribs in a separate pan, added a few of the juniper berries to the cabbage, nestled the pork pieces down into the cabbage, and continued to braise until the cabbage was done (about another 30 minutes). It wouldn't have hurt to braise the pork in the cabbage longer. This is just a great combination of flavors; it made me really happy.