Slow-Cooked Pork in Beer

Apparently writing blog posts in one's mind doesn't automatically mean that you're being an active food blogger.

This recipe was inspired by a recent event in which beer - in glass bottles - was accidentally left in the freezer for about twenty-four hours. Although no disasters occurred, there was quite a lot of fizzing once they'd been safely retrieved, which meant we were left with 1500ml of very flat beer. For a while I lamented our lack of a slow-cooker, and then pulled myself together and did it anyway. The meal was super-easy, super-tasty, and based very (very) loosely on the little I could remember from SmittenKitchen's brisket recipe, after cooking it once, more than a year ago.

I used Hite, a Korean brand of lager; if you try something else, let me know how it turns out for you.

Slow-Cooked Pork in Beer

(Printable Recipe)

Serves 4

1 tablespoon oil

3 onions (3rd is optional)

1 tablespoon brown sugar

800g lump of pork

2 tablespoons ketchup

750ml beer (with extra to top up if necessary)

1 teaspoon chilli powder

Seasoning

Pork with Chilli-Apple Sauce Disaster

Oh, this dinner could have been so nice. I fried apple chunks, chopped chilli and pork in a pan to go with the stovetop roast potatoes. The first time we served it up, the potatoes were somehow uncooked in the middle. Everything went back in the pan, and the second time it was served up, the sweet potatoes were burnt and the pork had gone rubbery. Sigh. Oh well, when you make it, you'll know better.

The chilli barely added any spice at all, even with extra chilli powder - there was just a hint of warmth. I would add one or two more next time. Also, alcohol (of course) would make this apple sauce better. By the way, this is one of the easiest sauces I've ever made, given that apple sauce pretty much makes itself.

This is just the recipe for the main dish - the recipe for the side can be found above. I did five small potatoes and three larger sweet potatoes, and my mistake was in boiling them for under 10 minutes before draining them to be fried. We also put the normal potatoes in the frying pan about five minutes before the sweet potatoes, as sweet potatoes seem to cook faster.

Pork with Chilli-Apple Sauce
Serves 2 (generously - probably serves 3 really)

200g pork
Handful of chopped onion
1 kwari pepper (a small, green, curled chilli)
1 and a half apples
Chilli powder
Cinnamon
Seasoning

I chopped the pork and pepper, and peeled and chopped the apples. The onion and apple were put into a hot oiled pan and fried for five minutes. The chilli and pork were added, along with spices and seasoning. The pot was left for ten minutes, though I stirred occasionally. The apple releases its juices and creates a lovely brown sauce which the pork braises in.

Purple Pasta

This dinner was so exciting - not only was it a fabulous colour, but almost all of the ingredients were alliterative! In the interests of full disclosure, this was pasta with pork, potato, (chilli) pepper, and probably some other p-words that I've forgotten a few hours later.

Despite John suggesting that 'purple pasta' bore some resemblance to vomit, tonight's dinner was really quite good. It started out with my Friday adult students telling me about the lunch they'd had at a Chinese restaurant - noodles with pork, sweet potato, onion and spinach. The day before we had bought purple sweet potatoes at Home Plus, and I was eager to cook with them. I was convinced that we had bought curled mallow (in fact, I still am convinced) but the hunt for it proved fruitless, so the spinach equivalent was missed. It was flavoursome but in an amazingly subtle way, with a kick from the chilli.

I also made myself a fragrant pumpkin risotto for lunch, which was delicious - I added pumpkin chunks between the adding rice and adding wine steps, and cinnamon as one of the spices. Nutmeg or ginger would have gone well too.

Anyway, the proper recipe:

Purple Pasta
Serves 2 with small second servings (more alliteration! I'm so happy)

200g pork, chopped into bite-sized pieces
2 purple sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped into small cubes
1 onion
1.5 garlic cloves (one of the cloves was smaller than my littlest fingernail)
2 servings spaghetti
400ml hot vegetable stock
Honey
Soy sauce
1 green chilli
100ml cream
Seasoning (including chilli powder)

The pork, potatoes, onion and garlic were chopped and fried in a hot pan for five minutes. The vegetable stock was added and the pan was brought to a boil before being put on a low heat to simmer. The spaghetti was also put on a low heat in a separate pan for fifteen minutes. The potatoes had turned the pale stock a pretty burgundy colour, to which roughly a tablespoon each of honey and soy sauce was added, along with the chopped green chilli. The nearly-cooked pasta was drained and added to the pork pan, along with the cream and seasoning, and heated through (about five minutes). Served, with the sauce now a pretty lilac colour.

Honey Mustard Pork

I've added a 'Pages' gadget on the left hand side, below 'Recipe Websites' and above 'About Me.' At the moment there is only one page, 'Oven Recipes', which will list recipes I come across and am desperate to cook but can't until we get an oven! The oven recipes page currently only has one link, which is irritating because I know I found a gorgeous, mouthwatering oven-baked meal yesterday but apparently I forgot to bookmark it. (Edit: ignore that! Recipe found and linked. I'm extremely pleased with myself.)

From this BBC Good Food recipe. Another stovetop meal.

Honey Mustard Pork with Mashed Potato
Serves 2

1 400g pack of pork
Lemon vinegar (or vinegar and lemon juice)
Wholegrain mustard
Honey
Chilli and cinnamon spices
Thyme
Seasoning

4 potatoes
Butter
Milk
Seasoning

Chopped the pork into chunks and marinaded in lemon vinegar, wholegrain mustard and honey for about twenty minutes. Peeled the potatoes, cut into chunks, and boiled in salted water until soft. Heated some oil in a pan and poured the pork with marinade in. Kept on a medium heat and stirred often. Added the chilli, cinnamon, thyme, and a spoonful of the potato water. Seasoned. Drained and mashed the potatoes with lots of milk and butter until creamy, seasoned. Served.

Sticky Pork with Lemon Risotto

Tonight's dinner was an odd one. I originally conceived of the idea whilst in a temple, so it's clearly a dish that God meant to exist. My plan was to marinade a large, flat piece of pork in soy sauce, honey and tomato sauce, cook it lightly, put a couple of spoonfuls of cooked rice with vegetables in the middle, wrap the pork around it, and seal it in the pan with some of the sauce draped over it. That way you could cut open a ball of pork and find rice inside! It would be like a giant inside-out rice ball.

Sadly, it turned out that the large, flat piece of pork we'd bought was mostly in little bits. I couldn't be bothered to make a million little inside-out rice balls. So I combined some recipes I vaguely know and steamrollered on: the pork marinade is mostly from my mother, who I think got it from Nigella, and the lemon risotto is from an amalgamation of risotto recipe titles I've glanced at in the past.

We both really enjoyed this meal. Even if the soy sauce-y pork didn't go brilliantly with the lemon risotto, the flavours were stunningly intense. I would be happy to eat this risotto on its own for a lunch, as well - it's the first time I've had a risotto that's been refreshing! It would be nice with chicken.

Sticky Pork with Lemon Risotto
Serves 2.5 (extra pork)

1 400g pack of pork
Soy sauce
Honey
Orange juice
Tomato sauce (passata)
1 tsp wheat flour
Chilli and cinnamon spices
Seasoning

Butter
Half an onion, chopped
2 handfuls of rice
Lemon vinegar
Chicken stock
Rosemary
Lemon juice
Broccoli
Seasoning

Chopped the pork into large bite-size pieces and put in a bowl with quantities of soy sauce, honey, orange juice and tomato sauce. I honestly don't know what these quantities were, although the soy and tomato sauces dominated - I added more honey to the pan at a later point after tasting the sauce. Added the flour, spices and seasoning to the sauce and mixed well. Covered and left for about twenty minutes.

Melted the butter on the stove on a low heat and cooked the onion till soft. Added the rice and stirred. Added lemon vinegar, probably about 1/4 of a cup, and stirred. Put a tablespoon of chicken stock powder and a sprinkling of rosemary into a jug, made chicken stock, and added bit by bit, stirring in between. After about ten minutes I put the pork and the marinade juices into another pan and left on a medium heat. Ten minutes later I added some broccoli stems to the risotto and continued to cook, tasting and adding lemon juice and seasoning periodically. Once cooked, I drained the risotto to get rid of some of the excess starch, served both the rice and pork, and ate with chopsticks.

Lunchtime Panini

I started this meal with this recipe for caramelized onion, apple and blue cheese panini, and immediately made some changes to it because we don't have any apples and my boyfriend doesn't like blue cheese.

I fried two thin pork steaks (escalopes?) in oil on a high heat for two minutes, and then on a medium-high heat for a further five, flipping once. Flipped them again at the end to get some colour on each side. Sliced two smallish onions. Removed pork from pan, added onions along with a little bit of vinegar to deglaze. Once the onions were soft, I added a few splashes of balsamic vinegar and a teaspoon of sugar. Turned heat down to low.

Placed pork on toast. Cut to fit (eating a few bits along the way). Dolloped lots of caramelized onions on top, with a couple of handfuls of grated mozzarella and six to seven teaspoon-carved bits of blue cheese on top of that, and the other slice of toast on the very top. Put sandwich in a non-preheated oven at 180 degrees C for about five minutes till the cheese went melty. Then had to add more caramelized onions as there were tons left over.

Tom put some pork on each slice of toast, covered each with half a slice of cheese (Emmentaaler, I believe) and put them in the oven for five minutes. Removed, added a handful of mozzarella to each, replaced in oven for another five minutes. Removed, caramelized onions added, the whole thing squashed together and eaten.

It was a brilliant messy lunchtime, with one pan used for all the cooking. Tom insisted that the sandwich would have been improved with the addition of mayonnaise, but that opinion is to be rejected as he is obsessed with mayonnaise and thinks that everything would be better with it. I foresee home-made mayonnaise in my future...

Sunday meal for 9.5: lemony pork

We are finally eight again! As much as I miss my friends, I do not miss the hefty amount of work that goes into cooking for so many. I'd finally gotten used to eight when the number was suddenly raised. Also, my dad is away for a couple of days, so dinner is ONLY for seven tonight. I'm excited.

Anyway, I cooked dinner on Sunday for 10, although one guest hadn't tried pork before and didn't want to start then. The potatoes I have made twice before, and I think this was the best batch yet.

Based on this recipe for lemon picatta pork, served along with Nigella's Hasselback potatoes (which were mentioned last time).

I sliced the potatoes in a wooden spoon, as recommended, and covered them in oil, salt and pepper. I believe there were a little over 2kg worth of potatoes. They went in the oven at 180 degrees C, and sat there for forty minutes (while I had fun with my friends) before I started on the pork.

16 pork steaks, sliced lengthways into three strips each. Dredged in flour before being put on the stove on a high heat (with oil) for 10 minutes. At this point they were almost entirely cooked through, with some slightly pink still. Pork was put to one side; 2 finely chopped onions and 2 minced garlic cloves went in the pan with some more oil. The recipe suggests to season the shallot so I added garlic pepper and ginger. When soft, I added a cup of lemon juice, half a bottle of white wine, and roughly a litre of chicken stock. Once it began simmering, on a medium heat, I put the pork back in and let it cook for about half an hour.

On tasting, the sauce was too sour and lemony for me, so I added about half a cup of cream. This made the sauce tangy rather than sour.

At the 1 hour mark for the potatoes, I put the temperature down to 150 degrees C - there were other factors to serving up (we were using the table for an intricate card game - I won!) and I was worried that the potatoes would burn if left at 180. As it turned out, they would probably have been fine, but still.

Also served with spinach, carrots, and some leftover broccoli/cauliflower bits, which were boiled in salted water for about 10 minutes.

Overall the potatoes spent about an hour and a half in the oven, although smaller or fewer potatoes or a full-size working oven should cut that time. My boyfriend prefers them crispy, too, so that is another factor which ups cooking time. There were about 3-5 per person, including the non-pork-eating friend, which is enough for a normal serving but not enough considering how delicious they are! The pork was moist, for pork, probably due to the flour-dredge - which is something I shall have to start doing more often.

Stroganoff

Cooked for 10.

Based on pork & mushroom stroganoff with crispy garlic & rosemary slices.

Sliced 1 bag (2kg or 2.5kg, not sure) of potatoes into thin-ish discs, and put in salted boiling water for about 10 minutes. Drained and mixed with copious amounts of oil (rapeseed, I think), 4 minced garlic cloves, salt, garlic pepper, and ground rosemary. (I used fresh from the garden before, but the rosemary plant needs to do some replenishing!) Put in the oven at 180 degrees C.
Sliced 15 pork steaks lengthwise into four strips each, and fried on a high heat for five minutes in a mixture of butter and oil. Tossed with a couple of tablespoons of sweet paprika, salt and pepper. Poured in about half a bottle of sherry, half a bottle of red wine, and 500g passata. Simmered on a low heat for forty minutes.
Potatoes turned up to 200 degrees C after about forty five minutes, which they stayed under for about ten minutes.
Added 2 small bottles of cooking cream, more red wine, and 500g of white beans to the pork. Simmered for another five minutes while the potatoes were being served.

I have done these potatoes before and loved them; however, they were not as crispy this time - I feel like I should have had the temperature up high to begin with and turned it down once crispiness began to happen. The sauce was unusual and quite tasty. There was more than enough to go around. Also served with vegetables provided by my mother.