Pork and Paprika Casserole

This was a Spanish-inspired dish, but not made from any particular recipe. Winter has very definitely set in and we have been craving all sorts of comfort stodge, which is unfortunately at odds with our attempts at eating healthily. This dish seemed like it would give us the comfort factor without the calorie-high and vitamin-light qualities of something like sausage (mmmmmmm sausages…) and buttery, mustardy mash (mmmmmmmmm mash…).

What we did was: Browned some diced pork, then removed it from the pan and then put in a large sliced onion, sliced red pepper and two crushed cloves of garlic. After letting these cook down for a while, we added rosemary, bay, parsely stalks and paprika (a whole teaspoon of rather hot paprika which gave it quite a warm kick) and cooked it some more. Then we returned the browned pork to the pan and added chicken stock, tomatoes and olives and put it in the oven at 180 degrees for an hour or so. Ten minutes before the end, we added chopped parsley.

Served with brown rice, this was warm and filling and the flavours had combined very well, but the pork was a bit dry. The pork was diced leg, so if we do it again we’ll try it with a different cut or vary the cooking time. It was lean though and definitely in the healthy eating half of the spectrum. So something to try again with some tweaks.