Pulled Pork
This has been on our list of barbecue plans for quite a while now. We did some research, invited some friends round, bought a pork shoulder and got to work.
Pulled pork is traditional in some southern American states and the idea is that it is a slow-cooked pork shoulder that becomes so tender during its long, slow cooking that it can easily be pulled apart with a couple of forks and doesn’t need to be sliced. These “pulled” bits are traditionally mixed with a sauce and then served on a white roll to make a “pulled pork sandwich” which often also includes slaw. The pork is rubbed with a spice mixture before cooking to give it a bit of heat and flavour, and can be smoked when cooking.
These were the spices for our spice mixture, before being mixed together:
Being an American speciality, the recipes call for “pork butt” which is an American cut comprising the top part of the shoulder. We ended up with a whole shoulder though and just decided to cook the whole thing. So the day before, we skinned it and removed the fat cap and then rubbed it all over with a spice rub. (This skin became crackling with we served with seared scallops that night) We didn’t have a freezer bag big enough for the shoulder, so we wrapped it in cling film and put it into the fridge overnight for the rub to penetrate the meat.
Before begin rubbed, with a penny for size comparison:
In the morning, we popped it into the oven on a low temperature (140C) for about four hours before putting it onto the barbecue. This, the actual cooking of it, was the bit I was worried about, with regards to timings and temperatures, etc. Some recipes said to cook it in the oven covered, others said uncovered and of course there were the ones on the barbecue which interested us, but a lot of these were for special smokers and/or recommended using a remote thermometer to monitor the internal temperature. However, we needed a combination of these as in order to have it ready for 2pm, we needed to start quite early in the morning and didn’t think our neighbours would appreciate being greeted by barbecue smoke shortly after waking up. Also, very boringly, we had washing on the line that needed to dry and we didn’t want that to smell like barbecue.
So we started with it in the oven, covered, for four hours, and then planned to put it onto the barbecue with some wood chips and smoke it with the lid on for a further hour. However, it was still quite far from being done when we took it out of the oven and it needed at least two hours on the barbecue, during which time it become a little charred on the outside – too much heat. The result was that although some of it was easily to “pull” apart, other bits weren’t, but it tasted good, which is the main point. It did mean that our friends had to wait a bit for their lunch, but Kerri had made a large bowl of very good guacamole which we ate with corn chips while we waited.
Just out of the oven:
And on the barbecue, a little blacker than planned:
Then pulled and ready to be made into a sandwich:
Now there was the sauce to consider. There are two main schools of thought on this, which is mostly down to regionality – some people use a spicy, vinegar-based sauce whereas others use a sweeter, tomato-based sauce. We went for a simple vinegar-based sauce which we warmed up in a saucepan and added the shreds of pork to – it worked really well, moistening and adding flavour to the pork. We also made slaw, which was very simple to make and a good addition to the sandwich.
Also barbecued corn:
It tasted rather good and was successful in that department, but didn’t turn out quite as we’d hoped overall. We’ll just have to try again and try to perfect it!
Mint Juleps
While waiting for our pulled pork to cook, mint juleps seemed like a good drink to make, given that they are from a similar geographical area and also seeing as we had loads of rampantly growing mint. They are traditionally served at the Kentucky Derby, in silvery Julep cups, but we made do with highball glasses given the deplorable lack of Julep cups in our household.
The recipe is very simple:
2 tablespoons simple syrup*
90ml Bourbon
3 large mint sprigs for garnish
crushed ice
Pour the simple syrup into a Julep cup (or other suitable container, e.g. a glass) filled with crushed ice. Stir well, then add the bourbon and stir until a film of ice forms on the exterior of the cup. Garnish with mint sprigs.
Some recipes say to crush / muddle the mint, which we did afterwards to get a little more minty flavour and enjoyed it more than before crushing. It makes it a bit like a bourbon-based mojito. I ended up making simple syrup with golden caster sugar and the result was a dark brown syrup rather than the clear one that results from making it with white sugar. It made the drink look darker than it usually is, but I thought it looked pretty good. A little too sweet for our tastes though; if I make them again I’ll use less sugar syrup.
* to make this, simply take equal measures of water and sugar and heat and stir until all the sugar is dissolved, then leave it to cool before using
Scallops with Truffle Sauce and Crackling, and Herb-Crusted Rack of Lamb
Every now and then, we decide to cook something special just for ourselves and lay the table properly and almost pretend that we’re eating out, except of course for the fact that we’re cooking the food ourselves. It makes it a bit more special in many ways, but it does make photography a little more difficult having the table set with things that get in the way. Doing this is also a good excuse to cook scallops.
So… the starter was of course scallops. Kerri had found a “salad of truffle-dressed scallops” recipe by Gordon Ramsay, which we stole the dressing from. The dressing emulsified really thickly, becoming almost like a truffle mayonnaise. The scallops themselves we just seasoned and pan-fried quickly as usual. The interesting bit of this dish was pork crackling, which was an afterthought of Kerri’s that worked really well. We had rather a lot of pig skin left over from skinning a shoulder (for a recipe today…), we decided it would be a crime not to put it to good use and make it into crackling. The crackling did go well with the scallops; many pork-related things go well with scallops… chorizo, black pudding, pork belly and now crackling.
We had a lovely rack of Dorset lamb, which we cooked with a herb crust, which looked really good presented as a half guard of honour. We seared the lamb fat side down for a few minutes, then on the other side for a bit, then coated the fat side with Dijon mustard. We made the crust by adding chopped parsley, thyme, hazelnuts and garlic to breadcrumbs (salt and pepper too of course) and then pressing this into the mustard. This went into the oven for almost 20 minutes, then rested for a few while we sauteed some spring greens in garlic butter. The lamb turned out brilliantly. We were concerned that if we didn’t eat the fat, then we wouldn’t get any of the crust, but ended up scraping the crust off the fat bits and eating it with the meat and it was very tasty indeed. Served with the aforementioned spring greens and sauteed potatoes.
After this we found a little space for some cheese. A lovely ripe, earthy Brie, a delicious ewe’s milk cheese from Swaledale and Blacksticks Blue (which was a little old as we’ve had it for a while now). It struck me how the ewe’s milk cheese, tasted a little like roast lamb – I suppose the fattiness in the milk is quite similar to actual sheep fat.
Steak with Asparagus and Cherry Tomatoes
This evening, Kerri and I went to my sister’s to babysit for them while they went out for her birthday. As a thank you, they bought us some ingredients to make dinner with while we were babysitting: some rather nice steak from their local butcher, cherry tomatoes, asparagus and new potatoes.
We ended up cooking most things on the griddle pan – first the cherry tomatoes, then the steak and while the steak was resting, we finished off the previously blanched asparagus on the griddle too. The potatoes were of course just boiled rather then griddled.
It all turned out rather well except for the asparagus which we’d overcooked a bit.
Spaghetti with Salsa Romesco
As Stephen mentioned yesterday, I made rather a lot of romesco sauce to go with our swordfish and thought it would make a good lunch with some spaghetti. The flavours worked very well but the actual ‘sauce’ was too dry really. It’s given me an idea for a fresh sauce made with similar flavours though so not all was lost.
Swordfish with Salsa Romesco
Kerri recently bought a book by Diana Henry called Crazy Water Pickled Lemons and it has many, many interesting Mediterranean, North Africa and Middle Eastern recipes in it. Kerri went through the book and tagged the pages that had recipes that she thought were worth looking at, and there are now hundreds of little coloured tags sticking out of the book. Okay I exaggerate a bit – there aren’t quite hundreds, but there are certainly a lot of them.
Today we tried swordfish with salsa romesco. We have tried a few stews with romesco before, but then it was cooked into the dish rather than being served as a sauce. It is a Catalan speciality which is very adaptable to serving with different sorts of fish, meat or vegetables.
I was out having my hair cut for a while, and while that was going on, Kerri prepared dinner. When I got home, the salsa romesco was made, new potatoes were steaming, beans were ready to be steamed and the swordfish was oiled and seasoned and ready to be griddled.
We griddled the swordfish for just a couple of minutes on each side and they turned out very well – cooked through but moist and succulent. The romesco sauce was spicer than we remembered the previous versions being, so it was good that we had the fairly robust swordfish to stand up to it. It all turned out rather well and we have a fair amount of the salsa romesco left over, so we’ll be looking for interesting uses for it over the next few days!
This is the recipe… it serves four. We only did swordfish for two but made the four-person serving of salsa, which is why we have so much left over.
Ingredients:
4 swordfish steaks
olive oil
salt and pepper
For the salsa:
1 1/2 dried ancho chillies (or nora chillies – we actually just used dried finger chillies and we couldn’t find either at short notice)
3 garlic cloves
olive oil
1 slice bread
30g shelled hazelnuts
30g blanched almonds
2 plums tomatoes
1 tsp soft, dark brown sugar
1/2 red pepper, de-seeded
1/2 medium red chilli, de-seeded and chopped
1/2 tsp sweet, smoked paprika
12ml sherry vinegar
80ml extra virgin olive oil
Method:
Cover the dried chillies in very hot water and leave them to soak and plump up. Saute two of the garlic cloves in a couple of tablespoons of pol until pale fold and reserve them. Discard the crusts, tear the bread into pieces and saute it in the garlicky olive oil until well coloured. Toast the nuts in a dry pan until just browning. Set these aside.
Halve the tomatoes and sprinkle with the brown sugar. Brush the pepper with a little olive oil, then grill it with the tomatoes until the latter have caramelised on top and the pepper is blistered and black in patches. When the pepper is cool enough to handle, peel the skin off and put the flesh into a food processor with the tomatoes, bread and both the raw and the sauteed garlic.
Drain the dried chillies, reserving a little of the soaking liquid. Cut them open and remove and discard the seeds. Put them and 30ml of the soaking liquid into the food processor, then add all the other salsa ingredients, except the extra virgin olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Turn the machine on and gradually add the oil in s steady stream. Taste for seasoning – you may want a little more sherry vinegar or salt.
Brush the swordfish with olive oil and season. Cook on a very hot griddle pan, colouring both sides and then turn the heat down so that the fish can cook in the centre. Serve with the salsa.
As it turned out, our swordfish steaks were quite thin, so we didn’t need to turn it down and leave it; they were done after just a couple of minutes at relatively high heat on either side.
Stir Fried Chicken with Cashew Nuts
A quick almost-all-store-cupboard dinner for Tuesday evening. We defrosted some chicken breasts overnight, then sliced them thinly. We heated up some oil in a wok, then added finely chopped garlic for about 30 seconds before adding the chicken. At this point I added a little freshly ground black pepper and enjoyed the aroma of it cooking so much that I added a whole load more even though this sort of recipe doesn’t generally call for it (it turned out well though).
When the chicken was almost done, it went onto a plate and into the wok went a little more oil and then thinly sliced onions. After a minute, thinly sliced red pepper and baby corn joined the onions (the baby corn was the not-store-cupboard ingredient, which I bought on the way home – it’s not essential but works well in these sorts of dishes as the rough texture absorbs the sauce well).
Then in went a tablespoon or so each of soy sauce, oyster sauce and Chinese cooking wine, followed by a little chicken stock and some cornflour mixed in water. After cooking for a couple of minutes, we added chopped spring onions and cashew nuts and returned the cooked chicken to the pan to heat back up, then served with rice and topped with some more chopped spring onions.
Quick and very tasty and it gave us a chance to use the lovely chopsticks that a friend had brought for us from her recent trip to Malaysia.
Quinoa and Red Rice Salad
One of the things I really like about Whole Foods is that you can buy a small amount of rice, grains, pulses etc. from their self-service section. We don’t have a lot of cupboard space so are limited in what we can store, a selection of rice, pasta, lentils and beans are of course essential but with more unusual items, it’s good to be able to buy a small amount at a time.
Not knowing whether quinoa was going to make it on to the “must have” list, I just bought enough for one meal and cooked it this evening as part of an Ottolenghi recipe. Despite the widespread love for Ottolenghi, I’ve never cooked any of his recipes before. I find it difficult to get excited by meat-free dishes and his long lists of ingredients are somewhat off-putting for someone who doesn’t like following recipes. This seemed like a very manageable dish though and I had everything I needed. Or so I thought. I wasn’t intending to use apricots or oranges but I forgot that I needed rocket so what we ended up with was a considerably watered-down version of the original.
We both enjoyed the flavours; the contrast between the cooked onion and the raw, spring onion was particularly good and perhaps the missing ingredients would have improved the flavour but I couldn’t help thinking it would have been infinitely better if served up with some barbecued lamb. I’d make a rubbish vegetarian wouldn’t I?
As for the question of whether quinoa is going to be making a regular appearance, I’m not sure. The nutty flavour was interesting and I would like to try it again but, for now, I’m glad I didn’t commit to a whole bag.
Barbecued Beef Rib
We discussed a variety of options when deciding on something particularly English to cook as a St George’s day celebration. Roast beef is always pretty high on the list in these sorts of situations, and as the weather was forecast to be good, we decided to cook it on the barbecue instead of doing a traditional Sunday roast. We bought ourselves an impressive-looking air dried rib from our local butcher that had been aged for 21 days – we’ve used this partcular cut a couple of times before and always been pleased with the results but don’t remember having one that looked quite so dark from the ageing process. The clouds came and went and the wind was a little chilly when the sun was obscured, but overall it was good barbecuing weather especially for this time of year.
Having put a couple of foil-wrapped potatoes in amongst the coals for about an hour or so, we finally seasoned the beef with salt and pepper, rubbed it with a little oil and laid it onto the barbecue. Dripping fat caused numerous flare-ups, so we moved the coals to the sides and put the lid onto the barbecue so that the meat wasn’t over a direct heat. This worked well and meant the meat was well seared on the outside and cooked evenly. The initial high heat meant that a brilliant crust formed on the outside of the rib and the smoky flavour from the barbecuing ran all the way through the meat which was tender and sliced like butter. The air drying and aging provided a really deep, beefy flavour which meant it didn’t take us long to devour what was on our plates and go back for seconds.
Served with the aforementioned potatoes, mixed salad, some left-over salsa verde and of course mustard, both English and Dijon:
Foolishly, we forgot to buy any English wine so made do with some interesting England’s Gold ale from Badger instead. Like every summer, we resolved to have as many barbecues as possible, even if the weather isn’t great… we’ll see how that works out 🙂
Bobotie and a Couple of Cape Wines
I’ve lived in London for a number of years now, but I was born in Cape Town in South Africa and lived there until I was 25. Last Wednesday, someone asked me how long it was since I’d moved away from South Africa, and I worked it out – it was ten years and one day. So having reached the ten year mark, it seemed like I should do something to mark the occasion. Also, having St George’s day last week to meant that we planned an English-South African crossover weekend – more on that tomorrow.
So today we cooked bobotie, which is a traditional dish from the Cape, which originated from the Cape Malay community. It’s hard to explain what it is, but to break it down objectively it is a dish of curried minced lamb topped with an eggy sauce (aka savoury custard). I remember my mum cooking a fish version and a lentil version, but I don’t remember when I last had a traditional lamb version and I don’t remember ever having cooked it myself. This recipe is one that my sister sent to Kerri recently, and it worked out rather well:
450g lamb mince
1tbsp oil
1 garlic clove, peeled and chopped
1 onion, peeled and chopped
1 tbsp curry powder / paste
1tbsp garam masala
2 slices white bread, crusts removed and soaked in milk
1 apple, peeled, cored, finely chopped
1tbsp mango or peach chutney
Salt and pepper
1 chilli, finely chopped
2tbsp cider vinegar
1tsp lemon juice
1tspbrown sugar
1 bay leaf
2 eggs
200ml milk
Heat oil in large pan and cook onion, garlic and spices for 3 mins. Add mince and cook for further 3 minutes.
Add bread, which will fall to pieces as you stir it in and all the other ingredients except for the egg and milk. Cook for a few more minutes, then put into a large casserole dish.
Beat the eggs slightly, then add to the milk and pour over the mince.
Place the dish uncovered in a preheated oven at 170degrees for 30 – 40 minutes.
Served with some rice and some chutney. In South Africa, dishes like this are often served with accompaniments called “sambals” which would include chutney but also simple things such as grated coconut or sliced banana, or relishes made from tomatoes, onions, etc.
We drank a couple of South African wines before, during and after eating it. The first was Chamonix Blanc, which is a white blend which curiously was stoppered with a glass stopper:
And then a Boekenhoutskloof Semillon, which was rather good and had a really brilliant label depicting some old fashioned Cape chairs. The label was a bit rough around the edges as if it was a picture that had been clipped from an old book or magazine:
