Marcus Wareing’s Pork Chops

- Alex 2 Comments

Pork Chops & Cabbage

I get a bit annoyed when people go on about pork being dry. It’s only dry if you overcook it.

Modern pork can also be a bit lean (and sometimes it is sold without rind – I’m convinced that’s a sign of the decline of civilisation), and, of course, fat helps keep anything moist.

This excellent way of cooking pork chops comes from Marcus Wareing’s How to Cook the Perfect…. I’m a huge fan of Wareing’s books – I’ve had very few failures and even bothered to make his Gâteau Opéra more than once.

Wareing credits his mum with this recipe. I say, my goodness, these Lancastrians have no fear of fat. If you are on a diet of some sort … don’t bother reading further!

Preheat your oven to 160°C (fan, 180°C conventional).

Take your pork chops – I used three (one each for everyone, including the baby). If they have rind on them, remove it with a sharp knife and keep it for later.

Lay the pork chops in a baking dish that will fit them reasonably snugly. You need a dish with a close fitting lid, or you will need plenty of tin foil. You don’t need to grease the pan.

Cover the chops with finely sliced (brown) onions. For our three chops I used 2 small-medium onions – I would argue in this case that more is better. Grab some fresh thyme and spread it across the onions, a sprinkling of dried sage and then dot generously with unsalted butter.

Now you need to seal it up. As I wouldn’t describe my lid as ‘tight fitting’, I used a layer of tin foil followed by the lid. Cook for an hour and a half (yes, you read that correctly!) and baste with pan juices (butter and fat!) during cooking (I basted every half hour). Always ensure that you lift the lid/foil so that it opens away from you, because it will all be hot!

Erm, that’s it – how easy is that? The chops will look a bit anaemic but they taste fantastic and they are moist! However, this doesn’t reheat well, so I’d recommend only cooking what you need and ensuring you have plenty of sides for topping up extra hungry tummies.

Serve with vegetables – for extra porcine goodness, try my favourite way of dealing with white cabbage!

Perfect White Cabbage Recipe

- Alex 3 Comments

Pork Chops & Cabbage

I can’t grow brassicas to save my life but I love eating them. I don’t think I’ve met a brassica I don’t like. Happily they are also super good for you. I grew up in a household which didn’t eat much cabbage – which means that at least one of my parents doesn’t like it. That’s a shame, because, in addition to being much loved by those enjoying cabbage soup diets, cabbage is rich in all sorts of nutritional goodies, such as beta carotene, vitamin C and, of course, fibre. It will also provide you with a few B group vitamins and plenty of trace minerals.

My cabbage recipe shows you how to turn the humble white cabbage into a tasty side dish (that’s if you don’t like eating it raw, which I do). Having just eaten the leftovers as a snack, I can also vouch for it cold!

White cabbage is also insanely cheap at the moment – I picked up the quarter I used in this dish for just $1.

Begin by heating a small amount of olive oil in a large frying pan – preferably one for which you have a lid. Add two rashers of bacon, chopped into reasonable, yet still bite sized, pieces. Fry the bacon – there’s not much point in letting it get crispy because you are effectively going to steam the cabbage – so just fry it off until it just starts to catch in the pan.

Add a teaspoon of caraway seeds* and fry for 30 seconds or so before adding a quarter of a white cabbage, finely shredded. There will probably be a couple of very thick pieces of cabbage – I take those out (and eat them) because they take just a little too long to soften.

Now add a splash of water, scrape up the bacon (and any tasty brown bits on the pan), turn the cabbage over a couple of times and then cover to allow the cabbage to steam.

Don’t allow it to cook for too long – you don’t want it all mushy and lifeless.

Serve with, well, whatever you fancy really. I’d eat it by itself, most recently we had it pork chops.

* Technically they are fruits. If you haven’t used caraway before, it is quite strongly anise flavoured (and scented) so consider starting with half a teaspoon if that’s not normally your thing.

Chilli Con Carne

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Apologies for yet another Mexican themed post … but this time it’s home cooking, so if you’re not in Adelaide (or you can’t get yourself to one of the many places popping up) you can replicate a bit of Mexico in your own kitchen. Well, it might not be Mexico, but it’s Paul Merrett’s take on Mexico.

What I really liked about this chilli con carne recipe is that it doesn’t feature any hard to track down ingredients. In fact, the chances are that you’ll have most of them in your cupboard so your shopping list will be slim. What’s also novel is that Merrett serves the chilli in tortillas with all the extras. This was something we both really loved and it makes a diverting change from fajitas.

As this dish is based on beef mince, it’s important to choose a time to cook this when you can give it a good, long, slow cook. Any dish like this (think things like Bolognese sauce) needs time to mesh all the flavours together and to make sure that any raw beef or tomato flavours are fully cooked out.

Naturally, I departed from the original recipe a little …

Heat a little oil in a large saucepan, and fry off a finely sliced onion and four cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped. Add 700g (I think I actually had 680g but you get the idea) of minced beef and cook this for a bit. I didn’t bother waiting for it all to start going brown (I would have been there all afternoon) but I did wait for it to start to look a bit cooked. I then added 1 tsp ground coriander, 1 tsp paprika and chilli powder to taste (I used hot ground chillis and used somewhere between ¼ and ½ tsp and it was warmer than I expected). I then added 250mL of open rosé that I had hanging around, a generous splash of Worcestershire sauce, 1 tin of crushed tomatoes, and one concentrated beef stock jelly thing.

At this point, you need to give the pot a stir and judge whether or not you need to add a bit more water.

Rinse (and drain) a tin of red kidney beans and add these, stir everything and leave it to tick over for a good couple of hours. I didn’t need to add any salt but you may wish to adjust the seasoning.

When it comes to serving, spoon some of the chilli onto a warmed tortilla and add some sour cream, grated cheese, shredded lettuce, and some sliced onion and spring onion. Wrap and eat.

Of course, the chilli works perfectly well outside the tortilla (and, indeed, I had leftovers for lunch a couple of times) so you could always serve with whatever you normally have as a Mexican accompaniment.

I loved the fact that this recipe is based around readily available ingredients – the only things I had to buy were the beef and the kidney beans. So often Mexican recipes need 3 different types of chillis that can only be bought at Mexican specialist shops. It was super quick to put together (letting something sit on the stove is not work!) and it was tasty. Having it in tortillas was great, and something that will definitely work over summer, but if you’re making it in the depths of winter, it’s hearty and warming.

Definitely something I’ll be making again.