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

Easy Meals - Roast Mushroom & Mangoes

Having bucketfuls of fresh mangoes has made me use them in ways I wouldn’t ordinarily, if I had to pay for them individually. This was one of those ways that is a bit different, but delicious. I bought a bag of mushrooms from The Nanna Shop with the intention of making a mushroom sauce for some roast lamb. I kept the same basic principle that I was going to – roast with some rosemary and garlic, but added chilli and mangoes for a fresher kick.
 The result was delicious. It lightened up the meal on a day when it was cool enough to serve the roast lamb with salad instead of vegetables. I had the leftovers on toast the next morning, which was also delicious. But it’s as simple as simple could be. Just chuck everything in a roasting pan, throw it in the oven and grab it out in half an hour. To make it even easier, I processed all the veges to save on chopping. Give it a go while there's still the last mangoes of summer floating around the shops.

Roast Mushroom & Mangoes
2 mangoes
500g mushrooms
2 shallots
4 garlic cloves
1 tbsp minced rosemary
2 tbsp butter
¼ cup lamb stock
2 red chillis
Generous black pepper grinding
Big handfuls parsley for serving.

Preheat the oven to 180C
 
Peel and de-seed the mango. Cut into cubes. Peel the shallots and garlic cloves, and put them into the processor. Pulse until finely chopped. Remove garlic and shallot and set aside. Add the mushrooms in batches and pulse until roughly chopped. Finely slice the chillis, mince the rosemary.


Put the mushrooms in a big roasting pan, stir through the mangoes, shallots, cloves, rosemary, lamb stock and chillis. Place the butter on top, seal with foil and place in the oven. 

After 20 minutes, take the foil off, stir, then roast for a further 10 minutes. Stir through chopped parsley.
 
Serve as a sauce with roast meat, or just some crusty fresh bread

Overcoming Kitchen Fears - Crispy Roast Duck with Orange, Honey and Mustard Glaze

I love duck. The crispy skin, the moist flavorsome meat that stands up to stronger flavours than chicken. If I see duck on a menu, I will invariably order it. In fact, my husband recently went out to dinner and came home and told me he had to take me there because it had my ideal dish. We went, less than a week later because he was so excited for me to have it and he couldn’t have been more right. It was roast duck breast, with ginger and pumpkin puree on scallops and beetroot salad. You couldn’t get a more perfect combination of my current favourite foods in the one dish! Especially the duck and scallops. Love!

When I saw that a supermarket had whole ducks on special, I knew that it was time to try cooking it. Now, as much as I love duck, I’ve also been served a fair few bad duck dishes. It seems that duck is really easy to over-cook. And so I left my whole duck in the freezer for a while before I got the courage to actually try it. I read the cooking instructions on the back of the packet and then a few more recipes from the duck supplier’s website, and it all seemed pretty straight-forward. And from this, and the process of cooking it I learnt a few important things about cooking duck that are important. Number 1. Duck has a lot of fat just below the skin. You want most of this to render out – both to make the finished meat less fatty and to help the skin get crispy, not soggy. The best way to do this is to pierce the skin, so it can come out as it roasts. Number 2. This fat can smoke/spatter/be just plain dangerous. The best way to deal with this is to add liquid to the roasting tray, and put the duck in a rack up out of it. Apart from that, roasting the duck is pretty much the same as roasting a chicken. So don’t be scared! The added bonus of roasting a duck this way is that it creates an awesome duck stock and duck fat. Just pour the fat/pan juices into a container and put it in the fridge. It’ll separate into duck jelly below, duck fat on top. To make stock out of the jelly just add hot water.

I saw a catalogue which had the cookbook associated with Jamie Oliver’s new show teaching you how to use leftovers to maximize the cost savings of using up everything you buy. This roast duck was a good example of how to do this. Served as a roast the first night, I then shredded the leftover meat and heated it up in the leftover glaze/sauce and served it with pancakes the next night. The following night I used the stock to make a buckwheat risotto, and the duck fat is in my fridge for making duck fat roast potatoes.

 

Crispy Roast Duck with Orange and Mustard Glaze

1 duck
1 cup red wine
1 cup water
4 cloves garlic, peeled and slightly crushed

Rub

1 tsp sumac
½ tsp caraway seeds
Generous amount of salt
1 tsp black pepper
4 sprigs thyme

Glaze

2 teaspoons seeded mustard
4 tsp honey
¼ cup orange juice
1 teaspoons caraway seeds
1 tsp sumac
½ tsp salt

Prick the duck all over. Try not to prick it through the meat, you just want to open up the skin so the fat underneath can render out.

Pour a kettle of boiling water over the duck to tighten up the skin. Pat the duck as dry as possible using paper towels, then put it on a rack and stick it in the fridge for at least 1 hour.
 

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C. Pat the duck dry again with paper towels. Rub a few tablespoons of salt on the inside and outside of the bird. Mix the rub ingredients together, and rub all over the duck and a little inside the cavity. Fill the cavity with the remainder of the thyme sprigs and the garlic cloves.

Pour 1 cup of water and 1 cup wine in the bottom of a roasting pan with a wire rack and place the duck on the rack, breast-side up. You want the duck high in the pan so it doesn’t sit in the fat that renders out of it. Roast for about an hour. After an hour, when the bird has about 30 minutes left to go, make the glaze.

Add all of the ingredients to a small pot and simmer until reduced down to a sticky sauce. Baste the duck with the sauce, then return to the oven. Roast for a further 15 minutes, then baste again. After the remaining 15 minutes it should be ready, but prick the bird in  a thick part meat and if the juices run clear, it’s cooked through. Serve immediately so the skin stays crispy.

Comfort Food - Traffic Light Soup

Last weekend was spent raiding family members' gardens for herbs. Well, technically, we were visiting family, but as a happy offshoot of these visits, I came home with a nice swag of chillis, parsley, spring onions, basil, thyme and oregano. The basil, thyme and oregano was stored in the one bag and when I opened it up it smelt like pasta. Or pizza. It was crying out for tomatoes and garlic. I thought it only fair that I complied.

Sitting at work, looking out the window, the sky got steadily greyer, and heavier, and wetter. Summer is officially over, with this storm and the temperatures dropping. Ok, so it's still not super cold, but it's cooler. And it's been a while since we've had such snuggle-worthy, soup and bread weather. So I decided to just go with it. A steaming bowl of hot soup and some crunchy pizza bread to dip into it. Some of the positive aspects of winter! My husband isn't the hugest fan of "just" tomato soup, so as I drove home in the rain, I contemplated what I should add. Sitting at the lights and going through the vegetables I had at home, I decided to go with those colours. Red, orange and green. I know, I know, kinda lame. But it turned out delicious! Red tomatoes and chilli, orange pumpkin, sweet potato and carrots and lots and lots of green herbs.

I then followed through again with the garnish. Red bacon bits, orange soup and green parsley. I already had some cooked bacon bits in the fridge, but if you don't, dice up some bacon very finely, then fry for a few minutes until crispy.

Technically, a roast vegetable soup - but I'm calling it Traffic Light Soup.

 

Traffic Light Soup
1 medium butternut pumpkin
2 medium sweet potatoes
4 small carrots
2 tbsp olive oil
a few sprigs of thyme
4 ripe tomatoes
2 cans diced tomato
big handful basil
big handful oregano
salt & pepper
1 brown onion
1 red chilli
4 cloves garlic
5 cans of water/stock
parsley
cream (or sour cream)
bacon bits

Preheat oven to 180C

Cut the pumpkin in half and scoop out the seeds. Lightly oil and place cut side down on baking tray, with a thyme sprig in the cavity. Slice the sweet potatoes and carrots in half length-wise, lightly oil and sprinkle in thyme leaves. Roast for 40 minutes or so until soft.

Mix the chopped herbs, salt, pepper into the tinned tomatoes, put in an oven proof dish and add the fresh tomatoes on top. Roast for 30 minutes or so, until the whole tomatoes fall apart when you touch them.

About 10 minutes before the vegetables are done roasting, saute the onion, chilli and garlic in a tbsp or so of olive oil until translucent. Fill the tomato cans with water to rinse out and add the liquid to the pot. All up I used 5 cans of liquid (3 water, 2 stock). Bring to the boil, then turn down to a simmer. Take the vegetables out of the oven. Add the tomatoes (carefully!!) into the pot. Allow the pumpkin and sweet potato to cool slightly, then skin and tip into the pot as well, along with the carrots. Stir it all around, then whizz it up until smooth with a stick blender. This can also be done in batches in a normal blender. Check for seasoning.

Swirl some cream over the top, sprinkle on some bacon bits and parsley.

Serve with your favourite bread. This pizza bread is just Lebanese loaves, garlic olive oil, parsley and parmesan, chucked in the oven for a few minutes.