I attempted to make this for myself last night - 'creamy pork apple casserole' (recipe and images from
here)
I went to trouble of going to a large supermarket to find pork shoulder steaks, which I was lucky to find. I even went to the trouble to get that exact cyder (yes, cyder with a 'y'!), but swapped out the double cream for creme fraiche as my friend used to make delicious sauces with that. I also bought some fancy chicken stock in a can...
Anyway, it was all going swimmingly until I added the creme fraiche and it instantly curdled.
The whole casserole was now awash with small white lumps that I was hoping would dissolve after a while, but they didn't. I also tasted the sauce and it was OK but quite disappointing, and even with the lid off the casserole dish it wasn't reducing anywhere near fast enough.
So I was pretty gutted, and decided I had to try and rescue it by draining half of the sauce off with a cup and reducing it manually in a pot on the gas hob. Even this took much longer - about 20 minutes - than I had expected, but man did it work...
...the sauce thickened up, the lumps disappeared, and the flavour intensified more and more. The by-now slow-cooked pork was still in the pot, so I took half of it out and plated it before covering it with the reduced/thickened sauce.
The pork was so tender and yet seared on the outside, so it was really tasty and easy to eat. Although the raw meat was quite unappealing (to say the least), there was not a single piece of it that was not good to eat, as most/all of the fat had broken down. But the sauce was a great hit, and so I've got the rest of it to eat tonight.