Amontillado sherry braised pulled boar with coleslaw & dressing

#SP This recipe is created for the 6th International Sherry Week as part of the Sherry Week Blogger Competition. As always, all opinions are my own. #sherryweekblog

As you all know, I love a good challenge! So when I got selected as a finalist for the Sherry Week Blogger Competition I was beyond excited as I have never cooked with sherry before. Now there’s many kinds of sherry, but the one I worked with was Amontillado sherry. It’s a dry, aromatic sherry with aromas of hazelnut and hints of wood. There are many ways to produce Amontillado though, so some have a paler color and sharper notes. Others have more of a nut & wood notes and a darker colour. For this recipe we’re using El Tresillo Amontillado Fino, with notes of dried fruit, old oak and toasted hazelnuts.

Those hazelnut aromas is one of the reasons why I decided to pair it with boar. It’s such an underused and underappreciated ingredient, even though it’s a very lean and low in cholesterol. I kept the recipe fairly easy, but it does need to go in the oven for some time. We’re first going to brown the boar in a frying pan along with some onions, and then we’re using the sherry to soak up all the flavour from from the pan. This will then be the sauce we’re going to braise the boar in. The boar is then braised in the oven for a few hours in those lovely sherry juices, with only a bit of thyme and bay leaf. Last but not least we’re then going to pull the boar apart once it’s tender enough.

As a side dish I added a homemade coleslaw, with a dressing made of mayonnaise, honey, apple cider vinegar, mustard and olive oil. I also made some pickled red onion, which also had a dash of sherry in it.