Pork with Paprika and Olives

For those of you who know us, you'll know that we received a special delivery on 26th of November 2011. The arrival of Olivia Rachel is the main reason why we haven't been posting for a while.
We've changed the way we're eating over the past month, depending a lot on one pot meals that can be prepared quickly, slow cooker meals or casseroles or things that will freeze well. The next few posts will be of the meals we've cooked that seem to freeze well, and are easy to prepare, the first of which is Pork with Paprika and Olives.

We spotted this recipe in the January edition of Good Food magazine and was an advertisement feature for Magners.

Recipe (taken straight from Good Food magazine) (as is the picture, due to my camera being police evidence following a break in, but that's another story)
Serves 4

500g/1lb 2oz diced pork leg or shoulder
1 red onion cut into thin wedges
2 garlic cloves, crushed
100g/4oz chorizo, cut into chunks
1 tsp smoked paprika
400g can chopped tomatoes
300ml/half pint chicken stock
400g can chickpeas
100g/4oz green olives, drained and rinsed
zest and juice of 1 lemon
small bunch parsley, chopped
crusty bread to serve

1. Heat oven to 150C/130C fan/gas 2. Season pork. heat a little olive oil in a large flameproof dish. add the pork and brown all over. Remove from dish and set aside. dd the onion and garlic to the dish, and cook until softened. Add the chorizo and paprika, and cook for 2 mins, then add the tomatoes and stock, along with the pork.
2. Cover with a lid, put in the oven and cook for 1 hour. Add the chickpeas and olives, and cook for 1 hour more. Stir in the lemon and parsley, and serve with crusty bread.

This dish is one of our current favourites. The flavour is rich with the tomatoes and chorizo, yet fresh and zingy with the addition of the olives and lemon. Plus being pork, it offers excellent value for money, especially when supermarkets have different offers on meat over the holidays! We serve it with a little rice, and sometimes a bit of green veg. We have found that is does freeze well, but don't really know how long it will keep in the freezer, as once we know it is in there, it doesn't stay there for long!

Florio's Pizzeria, Malton, North Yorkshire

Over Christmas on a visit to North Yorkshire we had an evening out with a friend to meet her new partner and reason for a forthcoming move to Australia.

We decided to go to perhaps the most popular restaurant in town, Florio's, after a couple of drinks at Suddaby's.

Whenever visiting Malton, I try to get to Florio's. The restaurant is always busy, full of couples, families, and parties. During a night there you are pretty much guaranteed to here the background music change to "Happy Birthday" and the whole restaurant joining in the singing, while a large desert of some nature complete with sparklers is carried across to the party table. My first visit there in fact was for a friend's birthday, and that was rather more years ago than I would like to mention as I'm sure it was for a 10th birthday party, or similar.

The menu has a large choice of pasta, pizza and meat and fish dishes as well as a generous selection of specials displayed on boards. Before my gluten/wheat free time I adored their baked pasta dish of Penne Alla Sbirraglia, only one time straying to try their lobster ravioli. And in fact this baked pasta was almost ordered by my friend. The staff in the restaurant are/speak Italian, and the kitchen is open, allowing you to see the fact that the pizzas are handmade, as the chefs toss the dough with flare! The food here seems to be consistently good, generous in size, and all made from scratch - making it far easier to cope when people like me come along asking for no gluten/wheat.

I ordered the mussels in a cream sauce from the specials board for a starter while the rest of the table shared a Rustica bread. This was a large pizzas-sized garlic bread with a tomato and herb sauce and anchovies and capers. If you weren't to know, you may order a garlic bread for one as a starter, but clearly, this would work for three! I had told the waitress about gluten/wheat free, and she instantly understood, saying that no bechamel would be added to anything I ordered and that most choices (outside of the pizza and pasta, obviously) would be fine for me.

The mussels were lovely. Very large and juicy, and the sauce beautiful. I did actually want to drink it from the bowl. The Rustica bread went down well too, delivering the right amount of saltiness to satisfy the cravings.

My main - to carry on the salty theme was Pork Puttanesca. Two generous pork steaks covered in a tomato sauce with capers and olives. This came served with rosemary and garlic potatoes and I chose the option of a side salad. The meal was very nice but there was no way I could finish it.

Tim ordered his normal for Italian restaurants of spicy meatballs. I think that is a rule. When meatballs in a spicy sauce are on the menu in whatever format, they have to be ordered.

We decided against desert as we simply had no more room, but the range on offer always includes fresh fruit and Italian ice cream as well as other specials. The bill came to around £30 per couple including a bottle of wine (our first bottle had been paid for by a friend who didn't eat with us).

Florio's is definitely recommended, and I'm sure we'll continue to visit every time we're in Malton. Just make sure you're very hungry before you go!

Langdale Chase Hotel

Langdale Chase Hotel

On the rare occasion that was a night in December without the band having a concert or a caroling job, coinciding with it being a Friday, both of us being able to take it off work and also my birthday, we decided to go away for the night. The Langdale Chase Hotel is situated directly on the shores of Lake Windermere between Ambleside and Windermere in the beautiful Lake District. As a child I remember visiting the hotel for afternoon tea with my family and remember being completely in awe of the place. The wood panelled entrance hall with dramatic staircases (above), the drawing room complete with piano, and most of all its stunning location all stuck in my mind. We had booked the hotel via one of their special offers which gave us dinner, bed and breakfast, with a bottle of wine in the room for a very reasonable price. 

Wine in the room

After a hike around the village of Coniston - more like a heavy going trudge through the snow, we arrived and checked into our room (a room which had its own private balcony overlooking the lake!) and got ready for dinner.

We ordered a drink at the bar to sip while we looked at the menu. The menu was a reduced version of what was on offer on the full menu since we had booked with the offer, but still all the options looked delicious. Although I had rather hoped to be sampling the pheasant that was on the full menu. I had called ahead to say that I needed gluten free, and asked the waiter what were my options - at 2 choices per course I wasn't that hopeful! But he came back and said the chef could do all of it gluten free. I did wonder what they would do with the cous cous part of the fish dish though. 

Menu

Together we ordered the soup, the chicken liver parfait, the pork, the pavlova and the mulled wine jelly. And we finished the meal with a rather lovely 2009 Chablis in the bar.

The soup I thought needed a little salt was was good and a good texture, but the most notable thing for me was the fact that they had gone to the trouble in providing gluten free bread on the side and gluten free croutons! I have never seen that before. Normally I have found that places just leave out the bread, but not substitute it. I am told that the parfait was tasty and the plum chutney that came with it, fantastic. But Tim is a chutney fan generally!

The pork was very nice. A nice bit of crispy, salty crackling, along with the orange roast parsnip and cabbage gave enough variety on the plate to make it balanced, and for me, there was plenty of sauce - yes I am the sauce fan of us two!

I think the pavlova roulade wasn't quite what was expected as the meringue was soft throughout, but altogether was good. And the mulled wine jelly itself was great, it a little too much. It came with raspberry coulis which was divine and orange ice cream which I was a bit puzzled over as it didn't seem to match in my mind. But maybe that's because of the whole orange ice cream idea. Orange and cream mixed together, really?

Morning view of the gardens and lake from our balcony

The next morning at the buffet-style breakfast, I obviously steered clear from the sausage products to be safe, but I was presented with gluten free toast! Again, a first for me.

I suspect they bought in a loaf of Genius bread (which is the only gluten free bread worth eating in my opinion until maybe when the new Warburton's range comes out), which in itself is not a hard thing to do, but goes very much appreciated. And yes, I have told everyone I know about this!

We spent the morning wandering round Ambleside where we discovered the fantastic Lucy's of Ambleside where we bought a few goodies including gluten free quiche (yes fresh, home-made gluten free quiche!), gluten free baking powder and a massive slab of pork pie with piccalilli. We also found a local butcher who did gluten free sausages, and bought all his stock! All in all, Ambleside seems to be the place to be if you need gluten free food.

We will hopefully return to Langdale Chase as it truly is a beautiful hotel, and the service we received was excellent, and not just because of the bread! We were lucky enough to take advantage of a special offer, but would say that for a special occasion it would be well worth the money anyway.

The hotel

Chinese Slow-Cooked Pork

Thanks to a fantastic half-price offer at Morrisons I did something which is quite rare and bought a joint of meat.  Pork shoulder is a cut I love cooking as it tenderises so well when you have a few hours spare and at £2 something a kilo I thought I would treat Fran to something special ;)

Chinese Slow-Cooked Pork

When we are not talking about food we are generally talking about our fast-approaching little soiree to Switzerland (hence the curiously placed guide book above).   In a few weeks we will be no doubt trying to cook a cheese fondue or something but for now - back to the pork....

I can't really attribute this recipe to anyone as I looked at a few, pinched some ideas but changed quantities, missed some things out and added some others so I guess this is my own creation.  With slow-cooker recipes you don't need to be too accurate on cooking time and we find we often go to the pub until we are hungry.  In this case it added about 3 hours to the planned cooking time so we were left with a "pulled pork" type of consistency which was fantastic actually!  The sauce was very rich but the meat could take it and had we not served it with crackling then it would have been a healthy dish too.

Such a very simple dish done this way:

lkg Pork Shoulder Joint
1 teaspoon Chinese 5spice
1 teaspoon salt

Remove the fat from the pork, rub meat with the 5spice and salt and leave in fridge for 2 hours




For the cooking sauce:

1 Tablespoon Molasses
4 Tablespoons Soy Sauce (Gluten-free)
1 Tablespoon Fish Sauce
1 Teaspoon Crushed Dried Chilli
5 Spring Onions
1 Large Knob of Ginger (unpeeled and finely sliced)
6 Cloves of garlic (peeled but left whole)
600 ml of Chicken Stock (Gluten-free)
Cornflour

In a pan dissolve the molasses into the soy and fish sauce.  Add the stock and vegetables and bring to a simmer.

Put the slow-cooker to high and place the meat in the middle.  Pour over the sauce, cover and leave for 4 hours.  Turn the meat and cook on low for at least another 2 hours.

When cooked, remove the meat, cover with foil and leave to rest for 20 minutes while you prepare the sauce.

Pour the sauce from the slow-cooker into a pan through a sieve.









Turn up the heat and thicken with cornflour until at the required consistency.

Shred the meat and scatter it over stir-fried veg, then drizzle over some sauce.  We also had scratchings (done separately) but they were a bit of a disaster so we won't go there. 

We thought it tasty great.  The sauce was rich and spicy but the meat could handle it.  It was nice to have the stir-fry crunch too.  We plan to buy some more pork while it is still on offer so you may see some more slow-cooked pork ideas (or perhaps you could suggest one!?)

Asian Pork and Aubergine Hotpot

Why is it that whenever we want ideas for a recipe we go straight to google?  We have probably 200 cookbooks at home (in a very small house) and we don't really make use of them.  The good thing about going to google though is that very often the kind of dish you are looking for is on the BBC Good Food website.  A favourite from the website became tea for the last 2 nights running.

Asian Pork and Aubergine Hotpot with Rice

Now there is not much point in me explaining the full details as I changed very little from the original recipe, so think of this more as a recipe review.  The full details can be found here.

The first time we made it Fran felt there was too much Star Anise so this time I just used 3 (but this is personal taste as I quite liked the aniseed kick).  We didn't have Muscavado sugar so used molasses instead.  Also, we chose pork shoulder steaks rather than pork belly which we have found to be too fatty in the past.

Here is how we did it:

Brown the meat in batches and put aside (I used a colander to lose some excess fat -but then used it anyway while cooking the aubergine!)

Brown the aubergine in batches (adding a little of the pork fat as above) and put aside

Heat up the sugar till beginning to caramelise and add the pork and aubergine and coat

Add the chopped ginger, chilli and onion and cook for a few minutes

Then add the star anise and cinnamon stick with a splash of fish sauce and coriander stalks (chopped)

Add water to about a third of the dish, cover and cook undisturbed for 1 hour (200c)



When ready to serve, add lime juice, some more fish sauce, chilli and coriander

mmmm










One of the most important ingredients in this dish I think is the lime juice at the end - the flavours just dance in your mouth.  Also, although it needs about an hour to cook the pork, don't over-do it as the aubergine will become mushy.  The recipe says large chunks of aubergine - so you want to keep the shape if possible. 

Often with a stew it gets better if it is left for a while - we definitely found this as we had it two days in a row.  On the night we made it - it tasted great but had perhaps a little too much water (so be careful).  But left in the Le Creuset over night - the flavours really combined without over-cooking, the sauce thickened a little and then after heating on a medium temperature for 20 minutes was yummy the next day.  Perhaps this dish would work better if cooked in the morning - left to settle then re-heated in the evening (just a thought).

Anyway - we love this recipe - the proportions made 5 good sized helpings and will freeze.  Plus this is Gluten-Free so happy days!