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It's interesting how firmly an adjective can get attached to a recipe. Say "a la Flamande" to most cooks, and almost all of those who've ever heard the phrase before will instantly add the word "Carbonnade" to the front of it, citing the famous recipe for beef in Belgian beer.

Yet they do drink other things in Belgium, and cook with other things. There is, for example, some good hard cider around. (We specify "hard" here for the sake of our North American readers: in Europe, cider is always alcoholic, and everything else is just apple juice.) Stassen is probably the best-known of the Belgian ciders. But other ones would certainly have made their way across the border from France (when the local farmers weren't already brewing their own cider out back). It was only a matter of time before some good dry cider found itself into a pork dish like this, displacing the ubiquitous beer. (Though EuroCuisineGuy, a Belgian beer fan to the last, points out that this recipe would also work nicely with one of the sharp dry fruit beers like Kriek or framboise.)

The spicing in this dish is interesting. The presence of the juniper berries and the rosemary suggests that the people who first came up with the recipe saw an advantage in flavoring it as if it was something gamier -- specifically wild boar. Whatever, the juniper certainly enhances the flavor of the pork, pointing up the fruity quality of the apples as well.

Plated up with the côtelette in the image is shredded baby cabbage baked in cream.

Click on "read more" for the recipe.