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Pulled Pork

January 20, 2013 in Canada, Pork

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As I said in my previous post, the first thing I had for lunch in Canada was a pulled pork sandwich. Pulled pork is not a 30 minute meal; if that is what you are after, stop reading now. Pulled pork takes time, I suggest that you use a slow cooker if you have one, if not it will take you about 4 hours on the stove top, in the slow cooker about 8 hours plus 30 minutes for preparation and braising.

My first Lunch in Canada – Pulled Pork Sandwich

Ingredients:

2Kg pork shoulder Salt and pepper
2 Tbls oil 1 large onion finely chopped
4 to 5 cloves garlic very finely chopped 2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander ¼ tsp chili powder
¼ tsp cayenne pepper 2 tsp sweet paprika
1 tsp dried oregano ¾ cup tomato sauce
¾ cup barbeque sauce ¼ cup water
2 Tbls cider vinegar 2 Tbls brown sugar

 

 

 

 

 

Method:

Flavor the pork with salt and pepper. Heat the oil in a heavy bottomed sauce pan and brown the pork on all sides. Remove the pork from the sauce pan, and add the onions, garlic, chili powder, cumin, coriander, paprika, oregano and cayenne to the oil. Fry until the onions are soft and the spices darken. Add the water and deglaze the pan. Add the tomato and barbeque sauce, brown sugar and vinegar. Reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes.

Place the pork in a slow cooker and pour the sauce over the pork. Cover and cook on medium for about 8 hours. You should be able to pull the pork into strands with a fork.

Remove the meat from the slow cooker and set aside. Skim any access fat of the cooking liquid. Transfer the liquid to a sauce pan, and boil the sauce on a high heat to thicken the sauce.

Pull of the visible fat from the pork. With 2 forks pull the pork into strands, return the pork to the liquid and heat until steaming hot.

Pile the pork on the bottom of a bun, if you feel you have to have salad, add coleslaw on top, add the top of the bun and enjoy with a beer or two.

Bon appetite.

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Wild Boar Ribs and Testalonga Wines

November 25, 2012 in Braai, Pork, Venison, Wine

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Craig Hawkins was one of the first Swartland Independent Members to give a recipe to go with their wines, but it took me until now to find the ingredients for his recipe. As you will see from his email, he suggested warthog as we do not have wild boar in South Africa, I was unable to find any warthog in Cape Town but I did find wild boar, thanks to the efforts of Daniella of Franky Fenner Meats.

 Before I carry on with the recipe, I must tell you this story. When Daniella phoned me to say she did find some wild boar and I can come and fetch it I could not wait to get my hand on the ribs. As the day went on I realized that I was not going to be able to get away from work, so I asked the driver to go and fetch the meat for be at the butchery in Cape Town (I work in Montague Gardens) when the driver got there and she gave him the two pieces of ribs, he refused to believed that I would send him to town for two such small pieces of meat, he made them phone me to confirm that that is all he must pick up, and these where his words “ dit is ‘n groot bra daai, hy sal my nie al die pad stuur vir die twee stukkies vleis nie “ (that is a big guy that, he won’t send me all this way for these two small pieces of meat).

 

Back to the wines and the recipe, this is what Graig had to say about the wines:

 On the wines – they are both really different ( the El Bandito 2010 – French on label) is fermented with the skins for 2 years and has a completely gold/orange colour and a slight nutty finish. I had a group of sommeliers form overseas here the other day and they all said it would go well with wild meat, I know we don’t have wild boar in South Africa, but we do have warthog which I think would be perfect. As it needs something gamey and something oily to help balance the wine and complement the food.

The other wine is the El Bandito Cortez and is also Chenin blanc but made with no SO2 and it is purposefully slightly cloudy and also has a long lingering flavour, very different. Both have very high acidity and work well with something slightly “oily”. Think of these wines like white red wines, as contrary to what people think some white wines can go with game/red meat…

 The Recipe:

Ingredients
1 large warthog rib (Or wild boar)
1½ tablespoons cooking oil (sunflower is good)
4 large onions, peeled and sliced
1 small chilli, seeded and finely chopped (if you like hot, try, RC Hobby Stores spicy food, also look at, Digital Collage leave the seeds , Canoe Sailing in)
2 tablespoons curry powder (however mild or hot also look at, RC Robot Kits as you like)
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon turmeric
2 tablespoons smooth apricot or peach jam
2 cups dry white wine

Method

To make a marinade for your warthog, heat the cooking oil in a pan on the stove and fry the chopped onion until it is soft and translucent. Add the chilli and curry powder and fry gently, stirring. Add the rest of the ingredients, stir, and allow the mixture to simmer gently for about five minutes. Take the marinade off the stove and let it cool. Put the meat into a suitable dish and pour the marinade over it. Leave to marinate in a cool place overnight.

When your fire is ready it should be a mass of glowing coals with no flames at all, remove the meat from the dish and pat it dry with paper towel. Grill on a BBQ rid for about 30 minutes, using the marinade as baste. Turn it several times while you are cooking.

Wild boar does not taste like our own game, but also not like normal pork, but it definitely have a pork consistency, if you ever does come across it try it, and if you can have one of Craig Hawkins wines with it, so much the better.

Bon appetite

Potjie.

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Pork and Pineapple Stirfry

October 18, 2012 in Pork, Vegetables

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This is as close as what I will ever come to a quick weekday meal post, but even this is not a home at 5:30 eat at 6:00 recipe, I guess it could be, but then someone will have to marinate the pork in the soya sauce for you so long.

After seeing what uproar it caused that Ruben cooks with dry spices, I’m almost to afraid to post the blog, as I’m going to suggest that you use frozen stir fry vegetables, yes fresh will be better, it always is, but sometime we just don’t feel like peeling and cutting vegetables in that half hour that the meat will marinate in the soya sauce, tonight I thought it a better idea to sit and relax with a glass of wine.

Ingredients:

500g pork meat cubed

1 cup soya sauce

Corn flour to dust

Cup Vegetable oil

500g frozen stir fry vegetables

2.5g Chinese 5 spice

227g Rhodes Pineapple Pieces

Oil for frying.

Method:

Marinate the meat in the soya sauce for 30 minutes. As we are using frozen vegetables, this is a good time to pour your self a glass of wine, sit back and relax.

Heat 1 cup of oil over high heat. Remove the meat from the soya sauce and dust with the corn flour. Fry in the hot oil until golden brown; remove and drain on kitchen paper. Fry the meat in batches to make sure the oil stay very hot.

When all the meat if done, heat a little oil in a wok over high heat, stir fry the vegetables for 2 or 3 minutes, add the meat and fry another minute or two. Add the Chinese 5 spice. Add the pineapple including the syrup and fry until the pineapple are hot.

Tip: The idea is that the vegetables sty crispy, to make sure that the frozen vegetables don’t create a lot of water in the wok, rinse with cold water and press dry with a kitchen cloth.

Pour your self another glass of wine and enjoy.

Bon appetite.

Potjie

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Asian Inspired Pork Chops

September 6, 2012 in Pork

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It must have been those beautiful spring rolls on lifeisazoobiscuit that inspired me to cook something Asian tonight, but being a bit of a meat man (some will say that’s a bit of an understatement) myself, I decided on pork chops with a side dish of vegetable stir fry with deep fried vermicelli.

 

Asian Inspired Pork Chops

4 Pork Chops

For Marinade:

1 thumb sized piece of ginger finely grated

5 cloves garlic crushed

2 Tbls sesame oil

4 Tbls soya sauce

Juice of 1 lemon

1 star anise crushed to powder

Mix all of the marinade ingredients together. Marinade the meat for at least an hour.

Heat some oil in a cast iron frying pan to very hot. Remove the meat from the marinade, and brown in the hot pan.

In an oven proof dish, arrange the pork chops in a single layer, pour the marinade over the chops and cook until just done under a hot grill.

Serve with the stir fry, and a glass of wine.

Bon appetite

Potjie

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The Whole Beast

September 5, 2012 in Chicken, Pork, Stew

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“Fergus Henderson’s The Whole Beast is an astounding cookbook. This is food that might very well restore our plaintive spirits during a difficult time in world history. Anyone who loves cooking and doesn’t buy this book should seek extensive therapy” – Jim Harrison

I saw The Whole Beast – nose to tail eating, the first time at Thomas Maxwells a couple of years ago, and then the search started, and eventually Exclusive Books phoned me last week to tell me my copy has arrived. I have not seen this book in the years between Thomas Maxwells and the phone call at any of my friends or family, a bit odd if you take the amount of cookbooks we own as a group, but the following part taken from the introduction by Anthony Bourdain might explain it. “A few lucky chefs would return from their pilgrimages to The Restaurant, glassy-eyed, like new converts, smiling serenely. They wouldn’t brag about their find. (They might then be asked to lend their copies.) They didn’t show them around – as The Book might become damaged or smudged.”

Reading the above you might not find it surprising that I immediately cooked something out of the book, I decided that even though I don’t normally cook out of recipe books I will stay true to the great man and follow his recipe step by step, ingredient by ingredient, but as always, I started to cook and find that I don’t have everything in any case, so there goes that novel idea, but I did stick to most of the ingredients.

My first attempt at imitating a Fergus Henderson recipe was his Chicken and Pig’s Trotter, a dish I will definitely do again, and next time I might even remember to buy leeks.

This is not the type of dish you cook quickly after work on a week night, the pork trotters together with a bottle of wine, carrots, garlic, onions, herbs, bay leaves, celery, leeks, peppercorns and chicken stock goes in the oven for 3 hours, the meat and skin will cook together with the strained juices for another hour, and then you still have to brown the chicken, the everything goes together in the oven for a further 50 minutes all together, so as you can see, you will spend a bit of time on this dish, but it is time well spend.

Bon appetite

Potjie

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Pan-fried pork chops with a caper and cider butter sauce

November 30, 2011 in Pork

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 Ingredients:

4 thick pork chops              2 teaspoon dark soy sauce      Salt

1 large galic clove              2 tablespoons cider vinegar     Pepper

2 tablespoons olive oil     2 teaspoons capers                   Potatoes for roasting

 

 Pre-heat your oven to 180°C.

 Slice the garlic very thinly. Make a few incisions into each pork chop and push in some of the garlic and season both sides with salt and pepper.

 Heat the olive oil in an ovenproof frying pan until smoking hot, lower the heat and fry the pork chops for 2 to 3 minutes on each side until nicely colored on both sides.

Transfer the frying pan to the oven and roast for another 10 minutes.

Remove the chops from the oven, transfer to a plate, cover them with foil and keep in a warm place. (Turn of the oven and keep them there)

Place the frying pan back over high heat and add the vinegar and soy sauce, rub the base of the frying pan with a wooden spoon to loosen all the sticky bits. Whisk in the butter and add the capers a couple of second before removing it from the heat.

Spoon the sauce over the pork chop, and serve with some multi colored roast potatoes. (Rick Stein suggests pureed potatoes, but these multi potatoes looked so good I had to try them.

This recipe is based on a recipe in Rick Stein’s French Odyssey

Bon apetite

Potjie

 

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Pork – France and South Africa

September 25, 2011 in Braai, Pork

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About two months ago my sister and her husband that’s living in Canada Invited my wife and I to join them on a trip on a barge on Canal du Midi in the south of France; she said “We have already booked and paid the boat, we supply the air tickets, all you need to do is to get off at work.” Traveling on a Canadian passport means you don’t have to deal with the French Embassy, so she said nothing about how difficult the French Embassy personal can be, but that little inconvenience is soon forgotten when you sit with a glass of rosé on a boat in the south of France surrounded by people you love.

The Boat – Moulin Rouge                                         The View – Canal du Midi

Alice (My Wife) and Gidius (Brother in Law)          Hannelie (My sister) Gidius and Myself

We have been back for a week, and I could not get myself to write about it, it is if writing about it will really end the trip, it’s like if I don’t write about it I can extend the trip even if only in my mind for another couple of days, but at some stage one must face reality, the trip is over, but the memory will last a life time, thanks Hannelie and Gidius for a holiday in paradise.

On the boat we had a little gas braai, and as good South Africans we used it once or twice, and yesterday on national braaiday, I recreated the pork chops we braaied one afternoon on the boat.

The Braai on the boat                                            First Braai in France – Pork Chops

Pork and Tomatoes on the vine                            Pork with peach, melon and tomatoes

Firstly I rubbed the chops with Worchestire sauce; I then spiced it with salt, pepper and herbs de provence. For a basting sauce I mixed Dijon mustard with honey and a little olive oil, in France I used a honey made from lavender flowers, yesterday I used honey from Goudini.

Honey and mustard basting Sauce                           South African Pork Chop

                                               South African Braaied Pork Chops

Braai the chops over high heat and baste it with the honey and mustard sauce, please don’t over cook, a pork chop that’s done to much is really not a nice piece of meat.

I will soon post more photos of the food we had there, and the stories that goes with it, until then…

Bon appetite

Potjie

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Curry Pork chops and braai potatoes

August 11, 2011 in Braai, Pork

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I thought of making mash with my pork chops, but after yesterdays post nobody will believe me that the mash is not in fact smash, so I decided to do boiled potatoes and finish them of over the coals.

Start by making the curry sauce, mix together:

1/2 finely chopped onion (I must be careful with the word finely chopped, the other night I watched some cooking program and the woman’s recipe then called for finely chopped onions, I don’t have a grater or food processor that can cut onions as finely as she did, so I will stick with chopped onions.)

3 to 4 cloves chopped garlic

75ml apple vinegar

2 to 3 tsp mild curry powder

2 Tbls tomato sauce

2 Tbls apricot jam

Enough sugar (you will have to taste) to balance out the vinegar

Heat the sauce until the apricot jam is completely dissolved, taste and adjust seasoning if needed.

Marinade a couple of pork chops in the curry sauce, you can now make the fire, or maybe have a drink first, the chops need to marinade for a while after all.

Cook your potatoes untill almost done but still firm. Cut into quarters, grind some tomato and olive Khoisan Sea salt and black pepper over them, spray with olive oil and keep until needed.

Braai your pork chops over medium coals, keep basting with the sauce, I know you don’t want to eat raw pork, but be careful of overcooking the pork, crisp up the fat by putting the chop on its fat side coals down for a minute or two.

Finish the potatoes over the coals; make sure that you get then nice and crispy on all 3 sides.

I guess you can do a salad with the pork and the potatoes, but pork is close enough to salad for me.

Bon appetite

Potjie

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What men want – 3 cheese and pepper burger

July 24, 2011 in Beef, Burger, Mince Meat, Pork

19 Comments »

I’m not big on cooking competitions, but when I saw the burger competition on food24 I thought what the hell, let’s give it a go. I know that the competition will have fabulous looking burgers, and interesting ingredients will show up in some recipes, but burgers is man food, and I know what men want; meat, lots of meat is what men want, and that my burger have.

This recipe is enough for 6 man size burger patties, when you read through the ingredients list you might ask yourself if I did not omit a binding agent, but no, I have not, the pork mince is quite sticky, and it binds everything together, so I don’t need anything else to bind the burger.

Ingredients:

500g pork mince

500g beef mince

4 red chilies finely chopped

1 medium red onion finely chopped.

30g coriander finely chopped

1 heaped tsp dry coriander

1 heaped tsp cumin

1 heaped tsp paprika

Salt

Pepper

2 red peppers

3 paprika peppers or yellow peppers

6 large brown mushrooms

Cheddar cheese

Mozzarella cheese

Cream cheese

Rocket

Tomato slices

Burger buns

Method:

Mix the first ten ingredients together, make sure that everything is mixed through. Form into 6 burger patties.

Cut the red peppers in 4 pieces each, and split the paprika peppers lengthwise in half, brush with olive oil and grill until the skin turns black, remove from oven and remove the skins, set aside. Remove the stem from the mushrooms and brush with olive oil, grill for a couple of minutes.

In a hot griddle pan fry the burger patties until nice and brown on both sides, but remove before they are done. Put the burger patties in an oven tray, put a mushroom on top, then a slice of mozzarella cheese on top of the mushroom, put the red pepper on top of the mozzarella cheese, then add a slice of cheddar cheese and then the paprika pepper, or yellow pepper if you did not use the paprika pepper. Put in a 180°C pre-heated oven; remove when the cheese has melted.

Butter a burger roll, put a couple of slices of tomato on top of the bun, and add some rocket leaves and then the burger patty with the toppings finish of by putting some cream cheese on top of the paprika pepper.

There you go, a decent man size burger, not the type of burger you can eat while driving, but a burger like this ask for a glass of wine in any case, so sit back and enjoy your burger.

Bon appetite

Potjie

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Pork Fillet with Mushroom Sauce and Truffle Mash

June 20, 2011 in Pork

7 Comments »

Nobody wants to eat raw pork, but over cooked it can be very dry. You can always cook meat a little longer, but if over done you can do nothing about it, rather take the pork out a little earlier than what you think is necessary, the time given in this recipe should be enough to ensure you will not eat raw pork.

You will need 2 medium pork fillets.

For the marinate you will need:

3 Cloves garlic finely chopped

1 tsp dried thyme

1 tsp dried sage

1 tsp crushed black pepper

Juice of one lemon

2 Tbls extra virgin olive oil.

Mix all of the ingredients together, roll the meat in the marinate until it is well covered, let it marinate for at least half an hour.

For the sauce you will need:

1 large carrot chopped

1 medium onion chopped

2 cloves garlic chopped

150ml red wine

150ml chicken stock

125g coarsely chopped mushrooms

125g finely chopped mushrooms

1 tsp corn flour mixed with a little water

Olive oil for frying.

Butter for frying the mushrooms

Fry the onion, carrots and coarsely chopped mushrooms in a little olive oil until the onions are soft, add the garlic and fry another minute or two. Add the red wine and chicken stock, bring to the boil, reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.

Strain the sauce through a fine sieve into another pan, bring back to the boil and reduce to about half the original quantity, add the corn flour and cook until the sauce have the desired consistency. Fry the finely chopped mushrooms in a little butter until brown, add to the sauce.

Now sear the pork fillets in a very hot pan in a little olive oil. Put in an oven proof dish and place in a 180°C pre-heated oven for 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from oven and cut into slices and serve with truffle mash and the mushroom sauce.

(For truffle mash, make mash as you always do, add a tsp of truffle oil and mix through.)

The idea for this recipe comes from http://www.cutting-edge-mediterranean-recipes.com

Bon appetite

Potjie

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