Slow Cooker Pork and Apple Curry

Mami birthday week. She turns eighty-two on Monday and I have been cooking since Thursday because a birthday party for Luz Maria Ortiz requires the full Delgado-Ortiz arsenal and the arsenal does not assemble itself. Pernil — twenty-four-hour marinade, six-hour roast. Pasteles — thirty-six of them, made with Rosa on Saturday, our hands working in rhythm the way women hands have worked for generations, grating and filling and folding and tying. Arroz con gandules. Tostones. Flan. Tembleque. Coquito. This is not a birthday party. This is a culinary monument to eighty-two years of a woman who taught everyone in this family how to eat and how to cook and how to love through food.

The party was Sunday. Twenty-two people — family, church friends, neighbors, Patricia with her eternal pie. Mami sat in the chair I placed at the head of the table and she looked at the food and she looked at the people and she was clear. Completely clear. The fog was gone, chased away by the smell of pernil and the sound of her family singing feliz cumpleanos in the kitchen she has made her own since February.

She blew out the candles — two candles, 8 and 2, because eighty-two individual candles would be a fire hazard — and she made a wish she did not share. I know what she wished. I know because I know my mother the way I know my sofrito — by instinct, by smell, by the forty years of studying her face at tables exactly like this one. She wished for this. For more of this. For the table and the food and the faces and the noise and the living. She wished for time. We all wish for time. Time is the only thing the kitchen cannot make.

She turned to me after the cake and she said, Carmen, your pernil was perfect today. PERFECT. Not close. Not almost. Perfect. Twice in one year she has said this — first the sofrito in June, now the pernil in October. Two perfects from Luz Maria in one calendar year. This has never happened before. This will probably never happen again. I am writing it down. I am carving it into stone. I am telling you, mi amor, because you need to know: Carmen Iris Delgado-Ortiz pernil was perfect on October 14, 2018, and her mother said so, and nothing in the world — nothing, not awards or accolades or restaurant reviews — will ever mean as much as those five words from that eighty-two-year-old woman in that chair at that table. Perfect, Carmen. Your pernil was perfect.

The pernil was the crown jewel, and it always will be — but when the party is over and the family has gone home and you are standing in the kitchen at eleven o’clock at night with the leftovers and the quiet, you need something that cooks itself while you rest. This Slow Cooker Pork and Apple Curry is the recipe I turn to in the days after a big celebration: the pork is tender and rich the way all good pork should be, the apple brings a sweetness that reminds me of Mami’s flan still sitting in the fridge, and the slow cooker does the work while I sit down and let those five words — your pernil was perfect — sink all the way in.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 6 hrs | Total Time: 6 hrs 15 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

2 lbs boneless pork shoulder, cut into 1-inch cubes
2 medium apples, peeled, cored, and chopped (Granny Smith or Honeycrisp)
1 medium yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
2 tablespoons curry powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)
1 tablespoon olive oil
Salt and black pepper to taste
Fresh cilantro or parsley, for garnish
Cooked rice or naan, for serving

Instructions

Sear the pork. Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Season pork cubes with salt and pepper, then sear in batches for 2–3 minutes per side until browned. Transfer to the slow cooker.
Add the aromatics. Layer the diced onion, garlic, and chopped apples over the pork in the slow cooker.
Mix the sauce. In a small bowl, whisk together the chicken broth, applesauce, curry powder, cumin, ginger, smoked paprika, and cayenne if using. Pour over the pork and apple mixture.
Slow cook. Cover and cook on LOW for 6 hours or HIGH for 3 to 4 hours, until the pork is fork-tender and the sauce has thickened slightly.
Adjust and serve. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper. Spoon over steamed rice or alongside warm naan, and garnish with fresh cilantro or parsley.

Nutrition (per serving)

Slow Cooker Pork and Apple Curry — For the Days When the Kitchen Has to Carry Everything