Christmas in July - Cloudy Mulled Apple Cider

This mulled apple cider is all Lance’s design. Traditionally we’ve made a mulled wine for Christmas in July, but having had mulled cider a few times over the last couple of winters, and loving it, Lance decided he wanted to give that a go. He wanted it to be a delicious cloudy cider and achieved this by adding apple puree. The spices are the same traditional mulled wine spices, but with more emphasis on the ginger and vanilla. I used homemade vanilla vodka, but use whatever you have at hand. Or, in a pinch, you can use vanilla extract (or add a vanilla bean in the mulling spices). Choose a drier style cider so it's not overpoweringly sweet.

I like this as the first drink of the night. It’s quite sweet, but it is a very warming welcome in to your home for a Christmas in July party. If you reheat it or make it in the slow cooker and keep it warm, it also makes a good end-of-the-night, most people have gone home, sit on-the-couch warming your hands in a mug and chat til 4am drink.

 

 

Mulled Cloudy Apple Cider

(serves 8-10 depending on glass size)
1 pink lady apple (or granny smith), peeled, cored and finely diced
90mL vanilla vodka (3 shots)
1 cup + 2 tbsp sugar (divided)
juice and peel 1 lemon
juice and peel 2 oranges
2 cinnamon sticks
5 cloves
2 bay leaves
thumb size piece of ginger, peeled and sliced
1 tsp whole allspice berries
8x 330mL bottles apple cider

Put the apple pieces, vanilla vodka, citrus juices and sugar into a small pot and bring to the boil. Simmer for 20 minutes until the apple has completely softened. Carefully blend this mixture to a puree in your blender. You can leave it to cool first if you want it to be safer to blend.

In a large pot, add I cup sugar, peel, cinnamon sticks, cloves, bay leaves, ginger, all spice berries and one bottle of cider. Stir over a medium-high heat until the sugar dissolves, then simmer on low until the mixture becomes syrupy and all of the spices infuse – around 20 minutes. Stir through the puree and remaining apple cider and keep on the low heat until the drink is warm. Serve in mugs, with cinnamon sticks for swizzle sticks. Try avoiding the spices when ladeling into mugs.

For an extra kick, try adding a shot of spiced rum such as Coruba or Captain Morgan!

This can also be made in a slow cooker. Follow the above stages with the insert on burners and at the stage of adding the puree and extra cider, put the insert into the slow cooker and leave it on low for the duration of the party to keep it warm.

Christmas in July - Roast Pork and Apple Sauce

This is my go-to way to cook a roast pork. The spices and herbs might get mixed up a little bit (you'll maybe recognise the sage and cider from my cider braised pork), but the method is always the same. It guarantees a moist meat, crispy crackling and it makes it's own sauce all in the one roasting pan! How perfect is that?

A pork like this will easily feed around 10 people with sides.

Roast Pork and Apple Sauce

approx 4kg pork leg

1 tbsp + 1 tsp sea salt

1 1/2 tsp dried sage

1 tsp smokey paprika
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar

5 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and diced

1 brown onions, diced

2 cloves garlic, peeled and squashed
330mL apple cider

Preheat the oven to 150C. Cut through the skin and into the fat of the pork and rub with the vinegar and 1 tsp salt deep into the cuts. Combine the remaining salt, sage and paprika. Rub all over the rest of the pork.

Mix the diced apples and onions together in the base of a large roasting pan. Add the garlic cloves. Gently place the pork roast, skin side up, on top of the apple mix. Pour the cider into the base of the pan.

Roast for 1 hour. Remove from the oven and lower the temperature to 120C, cover with foil and return to the oven for another 2 hours.

Remove from the oven and take off the foil. Turn the oven up to 200C. If the meat has collapsed in such a way as to submerge the skin, turn upright and place back in the oven, uncovered, so the skin will crispy up and turn into crackling. About 30 minutes.

Remove from oven, put the pork on a plate to rest. Meanwhile, use a fork to mash the apple and onion together into an apple sauce. Put this into a serving platter. Carve the pork, and serve!

Slow Cooker Love - Cider Braised Pork

There’s a quote from a butcher in the Recipes and Ramblings 2 Cookbook that states “slow cooking is a path to someone's heart”. I couldn’t agree more. And neither could Lance. If he had his way, there would always be pulled pork in the house for when he wants it. Which is always. He’s even taken to looking at the ads when he reads the newspaper and comes home with legs of pork when they’re on special for me to cook.

The most common way I do it is Puerco Pibil, but for something a bit different and a bit subtler in flavour, I thought I would braise it in cider. Pork and apples is a classic combination, but for this batch I used one of Rekorderlig’s flavoured ciders – Apricot and Peach. Partly because I thought it’d go really well with the pork. Partly because I had a bottle left in the fridge. Sage and mustard seeds round out the flavours.

Because it’s a subtler flavour, it lends itself to being eaten in so many different ways. Either simply, or dressed right up with extra flavours.

The first night we ate this with steam buns which I made using the Momofuku recipe (but feel free to buy frozen ones from your local Asian grocer). Then we ate it with waffles and eggs for breakfast. Then in Kaiser buns with hickory BBQ sauce and coleslaw. Then we ate the remainder in tacos with mandarin segments fresh from our tree.

Cider Braised Pork

1 tbsp sage
3 tbsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 tbsp mustard seeds
500mL cider (such as Rekorderlig Apricot and Peach)
2 dried bay leaves
1 pork leg roast

Carefully cut the skin and fat layer off the bottom of the pork leg with a very sharp knife. Discard. (Or if making your own steam buns, put the skin in a frypan on medium high heat to render the fat out).

Mix the sage, salt, pepper and mustard seeds together, and rub generously all over the pork leg. You may not need it all. Leave for an hour or so. Place in the base of your slow cooker, pour 400mL of the cider over the leg and add the bay leaves. Cover and cook on high for around 4-5 hours, or until the pork is falling off the bone. Remove the bay leaves

Peel the skin off the top of the roast, and remove the bones. Using two forks, shred the pork. I usually do this in the base of the slow cooker in the cooking juices still but if you want you can pull it out, shred it and put it back in the juices. Mix through the liquid and cook for a further 20 minutes or so to soak up these juices and make the pork super moist.

When ready to serve, pour the remaining 100mL of cider into a small saucepan and simmer over a low heat for 10 minutes until reduced and syrupy.

Serve pork with the reduced cider drizzled over the top, either in steamed buns, or normal bread buns with you choice of accompaniments, such as coleslaw or pickled beetroot and onions