Pork chops and apple

Have you ever been really upset by something you have been watching on TV? We have been watching Breaking Bad (I know, I'm very late with it, but as it was such a phenomenon, now that I finally broke down and got us Netflix I thought I would check it out). And it has upset me to no end. I used to have quite a high tolerance of TV violence and cruelty. I don't know if it's just me getting older, or if it's because I didn't have a TV for many years and I wasn't exposed to any of it, but I find I get very upset by the violence these days. I keep bursting out in tears mid-show, and having terrible nightmares. I'm happy we only have one episode of the show to go, as it upsets me so badly. From now on I have decided to avoid TV as much as possible, apart from a few very gentle shows like Downton Abbey, Great British Bakeoff and such. I just think there is plenty of cruelty and violence in the world without having to expose myself to made up violence also. I'm just rather surprised at how strongly I have been reacting to it all. But it just seems so incredibly over-indulgent. 

Anyhow, amongst all of my emotional turmoil over made-up stories, it's nice that I have been treated to delicious food. Today's recipe is another Culinary Consultant original. Seems like it's mostly his cooking keeping this blog alive these days. I do cook a little bit, but he has been in charge of most of the everyday cooking. I mostly prepare salads for work lunch. They consist of pretty much the same thing every day - lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes and sweet peppers along with either chicken or eggs, and maybe some avocado if I'm really treating myself. That doesn't much of a blog post make. So luckily the Culinary Consultant has a newfound interest in creating new and exciting dishes so I can mostly focus on baking to keep feeding my carboholicism.

Pork chops with apple (serves 6):
6 pork chops
100 g (1/2 jar) sundried tomato paste
2 large cloves of garlic
1/3 cup olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup Henderson's Relish (or replace with Worcestershire sauce)
1/2 large cooking apple

The Howto:
Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Finely chop garlic and mix with tomato paste. Place pork chops in an oven proof dish. Spread the tomato and garlic paste onto the pork chops. Season with salt and pepper. Drizzle balsamic vinegar, relish and oil over the chops. Decoratively place sliced apple onto the chops (this is a direct quote from the Culinary Consultant). Cook in 180 degrees C for about 45-50 minutes until the pork chops are cooked through. 

The Verdict:
This was another Culinary Consultant success story. The combination of sundried tomatoes and the sweetness from the cooked, mushy apple go perfectly with the pork. If you caught the Culinary Consultant's Pork and Chorizo stew earlier, you know I'm not a huge fan of pork. However, as we have been trying to be sensible about our grocery shopping and grab onto a good deal when we find one, we have bought a pack of pork here and there. And just like the stew, I found this so delicious I didn't mind the fact that it was pork at all. It's so great when someone else is cooking, they come up with different flavour combinations than what you would use yourself, and food cooked by someone else always tastes better than if you cooked it yourself. Ok, that is not always true, but it is in this case.

Pork and chorizo stew

Culinary Consultant week continues here on the blog this week. This recipe was created and cooked by him with very little contribution from me, apart from taking the photos and typing up this post (although I do take credit for the suggestion of adding chorizo to it). This stew was waiting for me when I got home from work the other Friday. He is much better at cooking healthy food than I am, he seems to naturally gravitate towards rather wholesome home cooked basic food. I'm more about carbs and cheese and chocolate. To be honest, I do wish I didn't have all these crazy cravings all the time and would be happy to just eat basic healthy food. But don't worry, I will be back with some of my very unhealthy carb and sugar loaded recipes soon! To be honest, I may just extend Culinary Consultant week for one more post to show you he does cook puddings as well. 

Back to the star of the day. The combination of sweet and spicy paprika gives the stew just a little bit of a kick, without being too overpowering and the chorizo and red peppers bring lovely flavour. As it's about time to admit it's no longer summer, evenings are getting colder and darker a hearty stew is very appropriate. We enjoyed it with a glass of cider. This makes quite a big serving, but it can easily be frozen for later, and it only gets better when re-heated so a few days in the fridge will only improve it further.

Pork and chorizo stew (serves 8):
2 parsnips
4 carrots
10 medium potatoes (we used Red Duke of York grown in our own potato patch)
1 kg (2.2 lb) pork steaks
1 tbsp olive oil
black pepper to taste
1/2 + 2 tsp sweet smoked paprika powder
1 + 2 tsp hot smoked paprika powder
about 100 g chorizo 
2 medium onions
3-4 cloves garlic
1 sweet pepper (eg. 1/2 green and 1/2 red)
1 sachet of Schwarz Summerset Pork Casserole spice mix (or some other spice mix you like)
1/2 cup dry apple cider 
2 apples

The howto:
Peel and slice the parsnips, carrots and potatoes. Cut the pork into slices. Heat the olive oil in a skillet and cook the pork on medium heat until cooked through. Add a grind of black pepper, about 1/2 tsp of sweet paprika and 1 tsp of hot paprika powder to the pork while it's cooking. When pork is cooked, transfer to a bowl and pour any juices in the pan into a jug. Slice the chorizo and sweet pepper, finely chop onions and garlic. Slowly heat chorizo in a pan until it starts to release fat into the pan, add the peppers, onion and garlic. Cook for a few minutes until the onion starts to soften a little. Preheat oven to 190 degrees C (375 F)

Layer the root veg, pork and chorizo/onion/pepper mix in a large oven proof dish (we used a 4.5 litre Pyrex casserole dish) with a lid. 

Boil a kettle with about 1 litre of water. Add the sachet of spice mix to the jug with the pork juices, and add 2 tsp sweet and 2 tsp spicy paprika powder. Add 500 ml of hot water and mix well. Pour the apple cider and spice mix over the casserole. Add hot water from the kettle until all ingredients in the casserole dish are covered. 

Cook in the middle of the oven at 190 degrees for about 2 hours with the lid on. Peel and slice the apples, layer on top of the casserole and return to oven for another 1/2 hour, again with the lid on.

The verdict:
The Culinary Consultant is a big fan of casseroles (not least because they make a large serving with no need for cooking for days) and he cooks them from time to time. Usually they are made with beef, but I think this is the first one with pork. I thought it was a really tasty and hearty casserole with very well balanced flavours. And I'm not a very big fan of pork, so that should tell you something. I think the sweetness from the apples and the sweet peppers compliment the lovely full flavours of the pork and chorizo very well. This is also turned out to be a rather frugal recipe, we got the pork on a great offer of £5 for a kilogram, the apples, onions and potatoes were from our own garden. The apple cider we used was a ridiculously expensive one (in my defence, I didn't buy it, my Mum did). If you used regular cider, that would take the cost down even more, but I worked it out that the total cost of ingredients (excluding what we got for free from the garden and the spices and olive oil), it came to a total of £9.66 or £1.20 per serving.

This little piggy

Another lazy Saturday after a hectic week at work. I am in such a motivational slump right now, I just keep wishing I didn't have to work. But unfortunately there are bills to pay and all that. At least I'm getting back to the gym routine again, I surprised myself yesterday with surviving a Pump and Attack back to back combo. Today I'll let my poor body have a break, and tomorrow it's Combat and Pump. I am looking forward to getting back into shape, I can't wait to get rid of all this muscle pain after every workout. Also, as soon as I'm back to the gym, I find it a bit easier to motivate myself to eat healthier. Next week hopefully I'll be able to stick to chicken and veg all the way. Maybe with a little cheeky biscuit or chocolate snuck in between at some point. I just need a bit of sugar to get me through the day at work. That's a bit sad, isn't it?

The Culinary Consultant is very fond of big chunks of meat. Any meat, and the bigger the better. For me that means I have had to learn how to cook said huge mountains of meat. Last weekend when we were grocery shopping, this huge chunk of pork shoulder joint somehow made it into our shopping basket. My plan was to cook it in my Le Creuset in the oven. However, turns out I have misplaced my beloved purple friend. I'm sure he is up somewhere in the loft as that is the only place left with some unopened moving boxes. So I had to device a plan B for the pork. Plan B is always google. I happened upon this recipe for 6 hour roasted pork shoulder from Jamie. I thought Jamie probably knows what he is talking about, so I went with this recipe. Unfortunately it was about 5pm before I had a chance to get the piggy into the oven so we had to settle for leftovers from the day before for dinner, and only got a chance to try the pork the next day. Note to self - if you are going to cook slow roast pork, get it going in the morning. Also note to self, if cooking pork, the house will smell disgusting for the next few days. 

Slow roast pork (serves many, or two people for a week...)

Pork shoulder (about 2kg, Jamie's recipe says keep the bone in for added flavour, our chunk of meat was boneless but it still worked quite well)

sea salt

black pepper

The howto:

Preheat oven to 220 degrees C. First you are supposed to make incisions into the skin to have somewhere to rub the salt into. I'm very glad our porky already had some incisions made into the skin, as none of my knifes would cut into the skin. Apparently you need a scalpel or something similar to be able to make the incisions. You can also get your butcher to do it if you buy from a butcher's shop. Rub salt and pepper all over the meat and transfer into a roasting tray. Roast for half an hour to get the skin all crispy, then reduce oven to 190 degrees C, cover the dish with foil and roast for 4.5 hours. At this point, Jamie suggests to add veggies and roast for another hour. I skipped this last bit as it was past 10pm. The pork still turned out very juicy and tender. For the last 15 minutes, I upped the temperature back to 220 degrees C and removed the foil to crisp up the skin a bit more.

The verdict:

I probably should have written this part after having the pork for the first time, not after having eaten nothing but pork for a week. But the pork turned out nice and tender, although I have to admit pork is not my favourite meat because of the flavour of the pork fat. However, if you are a fan of pork, this is a really great way to cook it for juicy and very tender meat. We made some really delicious sandwiches with cole slaw, pickled cucumber and tomatoes. The Culinary Consultant also thoroughly enjoyed the crackle, I had a taste and it was nice and crisp, although a bit too porky for my taste.

Card(s) of the day:

These cards have been around for a while, but I never got around to blogging about them. The idea is based on a card from Darlene Design I found on Pinterest which I think is gorgeous. I was also inspired by many amazing cards using distress ink backgrounds.

For the foreground I used the Kanban clear stamp (Its a set with two floral stamps, unfortunately it doesn't seem to have any name. I bought mine from Hobbycraft) on white cardstock. I stamped using Tim Holtz embossing ink and embossed with clear embossing powder. I applied Tim Holtz distress inks for the background using a foam applicator. I then spritzed with PefectPearls mixed in water from a MiniMister. For the background panels I used the Tim Holtz Old Script stamp and repeated it as many times as needed to cover the panels using Black Soot or Walnut Stain distress inks. Again, I used distress inks with a foam applicator to colour the panels, adding some Vintage photo around the edges for an aged look. For matting, I used random scraps of leftover paper, many of the ones you see are actually gift wrapping paper (used) that I recycled for this project. To finish, I used my Fiskars butterfly stamp to add some butterflies, and some rhinestones for a bit of bling. My definite favourite is the blue-pink-green colour combo, I think it turned out nicest. For the card on the separate photo, I made an origami bow using instructions here.

Sweet and fruity pork

It's funny where ideas for recipes come from. Sometimes you stumble upon a recipe online which looks so great that you just go out and buy all ingredients that are needed to make it. Some other time you have things at home you need to use up, and try to think of ways to combine them in a way that won't make a disgusting mess. Other times you run across something you know you really want to use in a recipe but have no idea how but go ahead and buy it anyways because you assume you will think of some way of using it up at some point. Today's recipe is a bit of a combination of all of those. And one more very important element, the financial factor. This is the very detailed (and probably very boring) story of how today's food came to be. And yes, it's another Crockpot recipe. I won't apologise for that anymore, what can I say, I heart my Crockpot. I know it will lose it's appeal at some point, but until then, I'm a Crockpot gal.

It all started a few weeks ago with some sort of fair at Parker's Piece. There was a petting zoo for kids, some local crafts and a huge tent with all sorts of food. Me and Best Friend went to have a nose around, obviously aiming for all the foodie goodies. And you know when you walk among a display of all sorts of food from baked goods to cheese, from meats to alcohol and from candy to all sorts of strange condiments that you won't walk away with all your hard earned money intact. And it's great when there are usually samples available of everything, so you have the chance to try things out ahead of buing. We took our time strolling down the lines of stalls craving pretty much anything they had on sale. We also strolled around having a look at the animals, and made a few new friends.

The most interesting thing I ended up buying was two jars of pachadi, an onion one and a garlic one. They are made by a company called Manjira from West Sussex. Wikipedia tells us that pachadi is "refers to a traditional South Indian side-dish. Broadly translated, it refers to food which has been pounded." On the jar, it says use as a chutney or like a pesto. Stir into pasta or rice. Basically it's an oil based paste with onion or garlic and some other flavouring stuff in it. I used the garlic one for stir frying prawns in, and that turned out delicious. But I wasn't sure what to do with the onion one.

Part two on the journey to get to today's recipe: I was browsing crockpot recipes online and came across this recipe for ribs and pineapple. Basically you just mix mustard and smoked paprika, smear that over the ribs, put the ribs in the slow cooker and put the pineapple on top and cook for eight hours. That was what I was going to cook, the only problem was that I was too lazy to head out to the big supermarket and the smaller grocery store downtown didn't have rack of ribs, so I had to skip the whole rib idea. However, they did have pork loin steaks on sale for half price, and as we are close to the end of the month and I'm trying to budget to make the last pennies go as far as possible, that sounded like a good deal to me. Pork ribs or pork loin, it's all pork anyways. I'm not a great connoisseur of meats, but I have learned that you can throw pretty much any piece of meat in the Crockpot. Slow cooking will make anything taste delicious. I'm pretty sure I could trow in a pair of my old shoes if I get really tight for money, cooking them slowly for eight hours should produce something perfectly edible. Although thankfully I'm not quite broke enough yet to test that idea.

When I came home from the grocery store and was going to start mixing the Dijon and smoked paprika, I thought why not add some of the onion pachadi to the Dijon. And I thought Tandoori curry would go better with the flavours of the pachadi than paprika. And I added a bit of warmth with a pinch of Cayenne. While I was preparing the pork I was snacking on a raisins. After adding the pineapple on top of the pork steaks I thought why not throw in a bit of raisins as well, as I have to use up the whole pack today anyways (otherwise I will just end up eating all the raisins in one go, I think I might have mentioned my raisin addition a few times before as well. I just can't let them be if I have any at home). So that was the long and winding road that gave rise to this particular recipe.

Sweet pork with fruit (serves 6):

1 kg pork loin steaks (6 steaks)

2 tbsp onion Pachadi 

2 tsp Dijon mustard

2 tsp Tandoori curry poweder

1/2 tsp Cayenne pepper

432 g tin of pineapple in juice

1/2 cup raisins

1 tbsp cider vinegar

The howto:

Mix the onion with the mustard, curry and Cayenne. Coat the steaks with the paste, and place at the bottom of the Crockpot. Add the pineapple (including the juice), raisins and vinegar. Cook on low for 7-8 hours. Serve with a nice fresh green salad.

The verdict:
To be honest, I'm not a big fan of pork. Or to be more accurate, I wasn't a big fan of pork before the Crockpot. I have cooked pork a few times now, because they have been good value for money buys at the time. And I have liked it every time. The difference between pork and beef is that the fat on pork is easier to remove whereas in beef it's between the muscle fibres so you can't remove it. In case you wanted to that is. I'm still sticking to the bootcamp mantra "Fat doesn't make you fat, sugar makes you fat". Well of course that's fat in moderation, but still.

Fat or no fat (and I do think a thin little strip of that fat makes the meat all the more delicious), this pork turned out perfect. The slow cooking made it amazingly tender and I'm a huge fan of fruit with meat, here I love the sweetness from the pineapple juice. The mustard and onion pachadi gives the dish great flavour but it's subtile enough not to overpower the pineapple. Once again the Crockpot produced a winner. With about two minutes of prepping time, this is another recipe for anyone who is super busy and thinks they don't have time to cook. The only thing that could have been done better is that I think the dish would have been even better with fresh pineapple. Unfortunately I couldn't find any decent looking pineapples in the grocery store today. And I tend to pile on the tinned food, so it's good to try to use it all up every once in a while. I'm pretty sure I would survive a nuclear winter with the amount of food I stockpile in my kitchen. With such a tiny kitchen I should really try to avoid to buy anything beyond the groceries I know I will need that week, but I just can't live without having some basic stuff in my kitchen. But I do feel slightly relieved that I was able to use up the last of my Dijon for this dish, that's one less half filled jar of stuff in my fridge as well as one less tin of pineapple. Now if I could only figure out what to do with the ten packs of chickpeas I have accumulated in the recesses of my food cupboard... I guess next week will be hummus week!

Love at first sight

There is something I really want to share with you all. Because, between friends, you share these things. And it finally happened to me. I'm in love, there's no doubt about it. It took 32 years, but I finally experienced love at first sight. Well actually, when I'm thinking about it, I guess this has been a long time coming. It started on Pinterest. I had never heard of Crockpots before I started craving pulled pork. When I was browsing for recipes, I kept stumbling on this mysterious Crockpot thing. I had to look it up. Slow cooker. Yes, I had heard about them, seen them on the home shopping networks... And laughed at them. Warm food when you get home from work. How uncool, definitely something for middle aged spinsters, right? Ok, well, I guess I'm officially a middle aged spinster. But I don't care, yesterday I marched into John Lewis and got me one of those magic pots. And now that baby is purring away with a big hunk of meat inside... And the smell in my tiny little hole of an apartment has been tormenting me for hours. Definitely not a device for those wanting to lose weight. Because I've eaten everything I could get my hands on while sniffing the heavenly scents of onions, white wine, vinegar and meat. There is another hour left to go before my juicy and tender pulled pork is done bathing in it's hot bubbling jacuzzi, but I have to admit I have already sneaked a taste or two. And it sure is tender, it almost falls to pieces at the sight of a fork. I have pinned so many recipes to try out. I guess my diet will be slightly meat heavy the next few weeks months. Which should be better than chocolate heavy, which it has been for the last few weeks. And boy am I feeling it, I have gained so much fat I am having trouble moving around. I really have to go cold turkey on all goodies before I explode. Whoever says chocolate is not an addictive drug should be shot. 

To try to get my mind off goodies for a bit, let me just tell you about something else that has been occupying my thoughts lately. I went to BodyPump the other day, and it was not my usual instructor as I'm trying out another gym as I'm thinking about changing. Anyways, I have been doing Pump on and off for the last ten years or so, and even if I don't know all of the releases very well, I usually recognise the tracks when I hear them, at least I should know the music. However, this time we did a bicep track that I just couldn't place. And after class I really wanted to look it up, as I liked the song a lot. However, doing almost five minutes of bicep curls resulted in my brain blocking out every aspect of the song, all I could remember was the pain. So, I spent half a day going through old releases to find the track. It was kind of like that feeling when you have a song going on in your head, and you just can't get rid of it. Except this time I couldn't even remember which song it was! It was driving me crazy. Anyways, this is the song in case you were wondering. Been listening to it on repeat for half a day now. I think I have been musing about this previously, but it's so strange how some songs you would never think much of if you just heard them become absolutely spell-binding when you come across them when doing sports. I have a long list of my favourite Combat and Pump tracks which I use as my running playlist. There are a few tracks that always get me to pick up speed, no matter how tired I am, they just have that something that will keep you going. Such as this one, or this (my favourite Muay Thai ever, and my Combat instructor always delivers it with such amazing energy!!). And I really should go out for a run, haven't been since the one unlucky run I did during my holiday which ended up giving me a blister the size of a small continent on my right foot. I had blood smeared all over my foot, socks and absorbed into my running shoes. Goes without saying, those running shoes went to where running shoes go to die.

Well, talk about going off on a tangent. So back to the love of my life now. Porky loin, bubbling away for eight hours in white wine and vinegar. Actually, I would have loved to make traditional pulled pork, but all recipes I found had loads of sugar, both in the form of actual sugar as well as various barbecue sauces or soda and as I have ingested about ten years worth of sugar in the last few weeks, I came up with my own version of slow cooked pork.

My precious!!

First ever slow cooked pork loin (serves 5-6):
1.25 kg pork loin
salt, pepper, chilli flakes, dijon mustard
1/2 cup white wine
1/4 cup honey vinegar or cider vinegar (I used half and half)
1 tbsp agave syrup
three onions

The howto:
Rub the meat with salt, pepper, chilli and mustard. Place in crock pot, pour liquids and syrup on top, slice onions and place on top of pork. Cook on low for 8 hours. Remove pork, shred the meat. Not very hard to do as it almost fell apart by itself! Add the shredded meat back into the pot and mix with the juices and onions. Serve with baked sweet potatoes or in a sandwich with some mayo and mustard. Or like I did, in sweet peppers to keep it low carb. Which was pointless as I followed up the meal with chocolate. I'm hopeless, and I will repent. Some day. Maybe.

My big (c)hunk-o-meat

The verdict:
I realise me and the Crockpot are still in the honeymoon phase, so my review of this food might not be totally unbiased. But oh my how wonderful the pork turned out. Juicy and oh so tender. It's actually kind of funny that I have been craving pork for so long, as I actually don't even like pork in general. Well, apart from bacon. But bacon should be it's own food group anyways. I had a hard time stopping myself from snacking on the meat all through the evening, had to put most of it into the freezer. I have a feeling this is the start of something beautiful between me and my Crockpot. Talk about having inappropriate feelings towards inanimate objects.