Category: pork

Categories
apples pork potatoes squash

pork fillet with butternut squashti

butternut squashti

Mrs. Spud loves Autumn. The crisp mornings, cosy evenings, warm colours… she loves it. Me, I’m not so fussed. I see dark mornings, lights on earlier, long sleeves…

But one thing I do appreciate is the produce. As the bounty of Summer slows, the patient foods appear. The ones that take their time in the earth and develop deep, sumptuous flavours. This recipe is a celebration of those Autumnal flavours, sweet butternut squash, tumbling with sharp apple in a crisp rosti, topped with rich pork.

This is part of the Waitrose #AutumnWarmers campaign, celebrating these flavours. I’ve also selected produce from my corner of England, with Essex pork and Suffolk apples which are some of the best in the world. Check the Waitrose website for more details, including their competition.

The squash rosti – squashti! – is sweet and soft with a crisp skin, topped with delicious pork and drizzled with cider-rich pan juices.

I love a potato rosti and this is a great way to get more veg into your dinners.

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pork fillet with butternut squashti

Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 500 g pork fillet

For the rosti:

  • 1 butternut squash deseeded and peeled
  • 1 baking potato peeled
  • 2 sharp apples cored and peeled
  • 1 teaspoon dried sage

For the gravy:

  • A large splash of cider
  • 400 ml chicken stock

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 170C. Get a frying pan over a medium heat.
  • Lay out a clean teatowel. Grate the squash, potato and apple together and spread out over the teatowel. Season generously and scatter over the sage. Gather up the teatowel and squeeze out as much liquid as you can into a sink. The more juice you get out, the crisper it will be. Add a dash of oil to the pan and tip the grated veg into the pan. Squish down into the pan with a spatula and continue to cook for five minutes. After five minutes add a couple of knobs of butter to the edges of the pan. Using a large plate and a dash of confidence flip the rosti out and over. Tidy up the edges with your spatula and transfer to the oven to cook for fifteen minutes.
  • While that cooks get on with the pork. Get another pan over a high heat. Slice the pork into medallions, season with salt and pepper and add a tablespoon of oil. Cook in the pan for 8 - 10 minutes, flipping often until the internal temperature of the pork reaches 65C. Put on a board to rest for five minutes.
  • Add the cider to the pan to deglaze, and when reduced to nearly nothing add the stock and bubble away for a couple of minutes until slightly reduced. Check the rosti is done with a sharp knife - there should be no resistance. Serve with the pork on top and spooned over gravy.

This post was sponsored by Waitrose.

 

Want more Autumnal inspiration? I recommend…

Kavey’s easy butternut squash soup 

Helen’s squash salad

Katie’s pumpkin traybake

Categories
chorizo food paprika pork potatoes

roast suckling pig with chorizo roasted potatoes

When I told Mrs. Spud to expect a delivery of suckling pig, she wasn’t best pleased.

“What, with the head and everything?”

I wasn’t sure what Grey’s Fine Foods were going to send me. But she needn’t be worried, as what turned up was a boned and rolled suckling pig joint. Perfect for the squeamish! I was a little relieved myself, not because I had to stare a pig in the face but whether it would fit in my oven. The meat they sent was a regular roasting joint size.

How best to treat this lovely bit of pork? A roast with Spanish flavours to bring out the sweetness and juiciness. The paprika here lends it a smoky aroma and fennel seeds are simply the best thing to have with any pork dish.

To make sure your pork – or any meat for that matter – is completely cooked without drying it out, you should use a meat thermometer. I’ve always advocated this. I was sent an ETI SuperFast Thermapen to try, one of the best in the business. You’ll see them being used on lots of cooking shows and I spotted them on Great British Bake Off recently.

It really is a deluxe model, with rotating screen (like your phone!) and instantly turns on when you extend the probe. At the time of writing it’s
£36 on Amazon.

But I wasn’t done yet. Here’s my classic roast potatoes recipe taken to the next level with chunks of crumbly chorizo. I’d usually add more oil or fats to the baking tray but the chorizo will leak out penty of lovely juices to carry on the cooking. Perfect! Best served with chicken gravy swirled through with a mild chilli sauce.

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roast suckling pig with chorizo roasted potatoes

Course Main Dish
Cuisine English
Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 1.5 kg suckling pig joint boned and rolled
  • 1 tablespoon fennel seeds
  • 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
  • 1 teaspoon dried rosemary

For the roast potatoes:

  • 1 kg Maris Piper potatoes peeled and diced
  • 1 chorizo Sausage approx 150g broken into chunks
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 2 garlic cloves bashed
  • 1 red onion sliced

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 220C.
  • Using a pestle and mortar bash up the fennel, rosemary and paprika with a pinch of sea salt toa powder. Add a tablspoon of olive oil and smother all over the pork. Place into a baking tray and roast for 20 minutes at this temperature toget everything started, then turn the temperatrue down to 1670C.
  • Cook for another 40 - 50 mins until the centre of the pork is 65C.
  • For the potatoes,boil in salted water for 15 minutes. Drain really well and preheat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a heavy based baking tray. Roast for 20 minutes,then add the remaining ingredients. Cook for another 20 - 30 minutes until golden brown, tossing occasionally. Check for seasoning before serving.

Thanks to ETI for the Thermapen and Grey’s Fine Foods for the pork.

 

Categories
food pork tortilla

bbq pulled pork burrito

Pulled pork seems to be everywhere. From high end places to fast food joints, plenty have a pulled pork option on the menu.

There are plenty of recipes out there with smokers and barbecuing required. My recipe uses a slow cooker (AKA crock pot) and can be left unattended for most of the day. Even the cooking part is just “dump in the pot” and the ingredients are standard stuff. A word on the balsamic vinegar though, use the cheap stuff. You won’t get any benefit by the time it’s cooked down.

Pork shoulder after 12 hours in the slow cooker

The pulled pork is great on it’s own, but this recipe wraps it in a crisp burrito shell for the contrast of crunch tortilla and tender meat. Perfect for dinner or lunch.

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bbq pulled pork burrito

Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 1 kg boneless pork shoulder
  • 250 ml balsamic vinegar
  • 250 ml tomato ketchup
  • 250 ml light soy sauce
  • 250 ml honey
  • 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano
  • 1 tin red kidney beans
  • Flour tortillas and salad to serve

Instructions

  • Combine all the ingredients in the slow cooker and cooker for at least 12 hours.
  • When ready, shred the meat with forks. If the sauce is a little thin, pour the remaining sauce into a sauce pan and boil rapidly until thickened.
  • Scatter the pork 'n' beans in a tortilla and drizzle with extra sauce. Fold both sides in and the top and bottom over. Put seam side down into a hot pan until browned, flip and cook on the other side. Serve with salad.

PS. Quick horn toot: pleased to be included in this list of top food blogs.

Categories
food mussels pancetta parsley pasta

moules carboniere

Spud Jr has got the cooking bug. In his Summer holidays I’ve managed to get him some work experience in a professional kitchen and he’s having a whale of a time. He’s gaining loads of interesting skills and learning some new swearwords into the bargain too. He’s also had the chance to cook some things he’s never used before because I don’t tend to have them around, such as sea bass, salmon, and mussels.

He enjoyed mussels so much I thought we’d have some for dinner. We had already planned to have penne carbonara so I figured we could combine the two somehow.

I kept the silky, eggy sauce of carbonara, with the booze and fresh parsley of moules marinere. And it was a hit! Franco-Italian relations are preserved once again.

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moules carboniere

Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 100 g pancetta diced
  • 1 leek finely sliced into strips
  • White wine
  • 200 g mussels
  • 150 ml single cream
  • 1 egg yolk
  • A little grating of parmesan
  • Small bunch of parsley chopped

Instructions

  • Get a large frying pan over a high heat and a large saucepan filled with salted water on the boil. Cook your pasta according to the packet instructions while you do everything else.
  • In the pan fry the pancetta until browned and then add the leeks. Stir fry until softened, then add the water and mussels. Add a lid and cook for 4 minutes.
  • While the mussels steam, combine the cream, egg and parmesan. Season with plenty of black pepper. Remove the frying pan from the heat and add the cream mix and the pasta, stirring and tossing the whole time. Discard any mussels that have not opened up and serve in bowls with a sprinkling of parsley.
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