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Crispy Parmesan Pork

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Crispy parmesan pork

Apologies for the colour issues in this photo! I’ll stop taking pictures with a camera phone!

Another foray into a rogue cooking magazine, another quick supper.

This time it’s the April 2011 UK Delicious, brought as a present by my best mate when she visited for a couple of weeks earlier in the year. The recipe comes from the “Shortcut suppers” section, which makes use of various store cupboard standbys and ready made bits and pieces.

This recipe is so simple I’d suggest that only the laziest of cooks would need to resort to store bought mash or sauce.

Now, the recipe calls for “pork loin medallions”. I wasn’t sure what this translated to in Australian (although I have found Australian recipes using the same terminology), but my butcher sells what he calls “pork schnitzels” which are vaguely round, reasonable thin pieces of pork (they’ve not been put through the tenderiser or crumbed). Basically, you’re looking for a piece of meat that will cook quickly, that is lean and is without bone.

To cook the pork, dip the medallions in egg and then crumb with a mixture of breadcrumbs, finely grated parmesan cheese, pepper and herb of your choice (sage, thyme or oregano will all work well). Pan fry (in plenty of hot oil) until cooked and the topping is golden and crispy.

Remove the meat from the pan and keep warm.

As there’s no Waitrose for any of us to nip to for the cider and mustard sauce you have to make your own. Fortunately, this isn’t difficult: remove the pork from the pan and deglaze with either dry cider or white wine. Add a teaspoon of grainy or Dijon mustard (I prefer grainy, as I find Dijon can be a little too vinaigery), stir well and finish with some cream. Allow it to thicken a little and … sauce done!

Serve with a quick colcannon. In advance, pan fry a finely sliced leek and some finely sliced white cabbage until soft. Make mash your usual way and mix through the greens. This is great way of making mash a bit more interesting, as well as getting a few extra veggies on your plate.

All too easy and this makes an interesting meal out of relatively simple ingredients. Just remembering to add some parmesan cheese to breadcrumbs is enough to jazz up pretty much anything you end up crumbing in future!

Chicken and Green Onion Fried Rice

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chicken & green onion rice

I’ve recently had a shuffle around of my cookery magazine collection which has been a great opportunity to try out some new recipes. Looking for something relatively quick for a mid week supper, I came across this recipe in the March 2003 Australian Gourmet Traveller.

This is really a slightly glorified fried rice dish but, as is always the case with these things, it’s a pleasant change to follow a recipe and not dump absolutely everything from the spice drawer in the dish!

I adapted the method a little, so that I could prep the chicken in advance and, when it came time to eat, I just cooked the rice and dealt with the vegetables.

Begin by making the marinade for the chicken. In a pan, heat some peanut oil (any flavourless oil will do) and half an onion, thinly sliced. Cook until the onion is soft. Then add some chicken stock. Now, following the recipe, this would be 50mL of chicken stock. However, we have a tendency to buy stock in the 1L containers and not use it which is rather wasteful so instead I bought some sachets of stock paste and I just used one sachet.

Add your chicken stock of choice, followed by a generous teaspoon of ginger paste, chilli to taste (I used chilli flakes, but finely sliced fresh chilli would be lovely), 50mL of white wine vinegar, 1 tsp of caster sugar and ⅛ cup of soy sauce (this is about 30mL, if you prefer). Give this all a stir and bring to the boil. Once boiling, remove from the heat and allow to cool.

There are two approaches to cooking the chicken. I pan fried my chicken breast in one piece which I think was a mistake because it was so huge. Being huge, it was also very uneven in thickness. Of course, had a chopped it into bite size chunks first, I’d have run the risk of over cooking the chunks. So it’s up to you – season your chicken breast and pan fry until cooked and golden. This is the only bit where the chicken gets cooked so you do need to make sure it’s done properly.

Once the chicken is cooked, if it’s in one piece, allow to cool for a few minutes before chopping into bite size chunks. Add the chicken to the onion marinade, coat well and allow to stand for at least an hour.

When you’re ready to eat, cook your rice. Heat a little oil in a wok and fry coarsely sliced spring onions (a whole bunch). As the spring onions start to take on some colour, add the leaves from two bok choy and fry until they start to wilt. Finish by adding the chicken and onion mixture (include the marinade) and mix through the rice.

Ensure everything is hot and serve.

This was great – perfect food as the weather starts changing (in either hemisphere). You may need to adjust the sugar/vinegar balance. I’m naturally very miserly with sugar in recipes and Andy felt that a touch extra sugar would have helped balance out the tartness of the vinegar much better. I’m inclined to agree and so I suggest that you taste the marinade and adjust as you see fit.

To drink – serve with Riesling. If you’ve been generous with the chilli a slightly off dry Riesling would be perfect. My current favourite is the Greywacke, from New Zealand.

Osso Buco

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osso buco

I thought I’d make the most of what I hoped was the last of the cooler weather and cook up an osso buco. Our butcher sells the pieces of shank quite cheaply and I figured that the leftovers would make a good freezer standby.

I started to look around for recipes and turned first to The Silver Spoon, the Bible of Italian cooking.

This is a very practical book: the recipes are usually brief (sometimes to the point of appearing boring) and I view it as much more of a reference manual than a step by step instruction guide. In this case, it offered two variations on a theme: Milanese osso buco and veal osso buco with peas. Well, no chance of me making anything with peas!

I ended up combining the two recipes to come up with my own version.

Melt some butter and olive oil in a large pan and sauté off a finely chopped onion, two diced carrots and one large clove of garlic (also finely chopped). With the heat medium high, add three pieces of shank (around 1kg worth), dredged in flour, and fry until they start to take on some colour.

Pour in a generous splash of red wine and continue to cook until the wine all but evaporates. Then add 150mL of good quality beef stock, a 400g tin of crushed tomatoes and large slices on the rind of half a lemon.

Reduce the heat, cover with a lid and cook slowly until the meat begins too fall apart (let’s say a good hour or two – this is not a dish for those in a hurry). Once the meat is tender, you may wish to cook for a little longer with the lid off to thicken the gravy.

When you’re ready to serve, stir through a simple gremolata made from the grated rind of half a lemon and a generous half cup or so of chopped parsley.

Serve with your favourite starchy side … we had polenta, made with cream, butter and parmesan cheese (what was in the fridge), but mashed potatoes, risotto or even pasta would do just as well.

Easy AND delicious!