Category: peppers

sweet and sour pork

I’ve been trying video recipes again. Sadly not at the luxurious Food@52 kitchens but in my own.

Freedom Food are asking for people to come up with a video recipe featuring Freedom Food ingredients and Fairtrade produce, so I’ve gone with pork and pineapple to recreate that Chinese takeaway classic, sweet and sour pork. It takes around ten minutes to cook and is really versatile – you can swap out the pork for chicken or fish, or even skip meat all together. Cubed tofu would be a tasty substitute. You can also serve it with the carb of your choice. I’ve gone with rice but it would be just as tasty with boiled noodles or even better, crispy noodles.

You can find this video for sweet and sour pork on my YouTube channel. If you’d like to vote for it in the competition, or enter yourself, go to the Freedom Food page.

sweet and sour pork

Prep Time 5

Cook Time 10

Total Time 15

Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

250 g rice
1 vegetable stock cube
2 Freedom Food boneless pork chops cubed
1 teaspoon five spice
Pinch chilli powder
1 tin Fairtrade pineapple chunks
1 red pepper diced
1 red onion sliced
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon cornflour

Instructions

Add the rice to a hot saucepan, and add twice the amount of boiling water and the stock cube. Cover and simmer.
Heat a pan over a medium heat. Toss the pork in the five spice and chilli, add a little oil to the pan and chuck in the pork. Stir fry for a minute or two until coloured all over, then remove the pork to a plate while you cook the everything else.
Add the peppers and onions to the frying pan and cook until tender. Add the pineapple and all it's juices, along with the balsamic vinegar. Add a splash of water to the cornflour, mix well and add to the pan. Bring to the boil then add the pork back in. Check for seasoning and keep cooking until the pork is cooked through. Serve with the rice.

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food marsala pasta peppers pork

pork primavera

Sometimes, dinner gets later and later. It was just one of those evenings of putting children to bed, getting haircuts and other chores. I didn’t get started on this until 8.30pm, but we were eating by 8.45pm. You gotta love dinners like this, but it all starts from the storecupboard. If the basics aren’t there, you’re on to a loser.

This one massively favours substitution: swap pork for any other meat, the peppers for any firm veg, and Comté cheese is not essential. As luck would have it the Comté people got in touch and sent me some samples so I was more than happy to include it here. Heston’s a big fan of Comté, so is Raymond Blanc (he comes from that region) so it’s in good company.

Pork primavera (serves 2):

2 frozen pork loin steaks

150g frozen peppers

2 tablespoons Marsala wine

300ml creme fraiche

70g comte cheese, shaved

Get a large pan of salted water on to boil, and a frying pan over a high heat. Add the pasta to the water and cook according to the packet instructions.

Season the pork on both sides with salt and pepper and fry in the pan until browned on one side. Flip and cook for another minute and then remove to one side. Add the peppers to the pan and fry briskly, then add the Marsala wine. Allow to bubble for a minute.

Slice the pork into thin strips, then add back to the pan with the peppers. When cooked on all sides turn the heat down low and add the creme fraiche. Stir thoroughly to combine and season with salt and pepper as required.

Scoop out a little pasta water to a mug. If your resulting source is a little thick, you can let it down with this water. By this time the pasta should be done, so drain and add to the pork ‘n’ pepper pan. Turn off the heat, add most of the cheese and toss really well to combine. Serve and garnish with the remaining cheese.

food mushroom peppers pork

bbq pork wraps

I’m a massive convert to FarmFoods. I’ve been packing my freezer once a month with a whole bunch of things, like burger buns, ice cream, frozen mince and other bits and bobs. I’m also a big fan of their dried noodles and wraps. They’re really helping to pad out my weekly shop with backbone ingredients that are always on hand. Reaching for a bag of frozen onions is so useful on a weeknight to shave time off that midweek meal.

I’m well aware this reads like a sponsored post, but I swear it isn’t!

And this recipe is packed with things from my freezer. The BBQ sauce isn’t; but it’s a great standby which you probably have the ingredients knocking about for anyway. It’s super-rich though, you don’t need much of it. With a turn of speed you can knock this out in under 15 minutes, serving with coconut rice.

BBQ Pork Wraps (serves 4):

For the BBQ sauce:

75ml tomato ketchup

75ml soy sauce

75ml balsamic vinegar

75ml honey

For the wraps:

4 frozen pork loin steaks

50g frozen onions

50g frozen mushrooms

50g frozen peppers

4 flour tortillas

For the BBQ sauce, combine the ingredients in a sauce pan over a high heat. Allow to bubble until thick and gloopy and then remove from the heat.

In a frying pan over a high heat fry the mushrooms, onions and peppers. When tender remove to one side and add the pork steaks. When golden on one side flip over. After a couple of minutes cooking remove from the pan and slice into strips. Return the pork, mushrooms, onions and peppers to the pan and continue to stir fry for a couple more minutes until the pork is cooked through. Ladle in a quarter of the BBQ sauce and stir to coat, then spoon into wraps. Serve with rice and more sauce on the side.

food peppers yoghurt

green pepper raita

When I started food blogging, I didn’t really appreciate the wide universe of other food bloggers out there. I was writing for myself and completely underestimated how many other people were doing the same thing. Eventually, via Twitter and other foodie feeds, I found lots of like-minded obssessives.

One of these blogs was Stone Soup; a blog devoted to pared-back no-fuss cooking. The freshness and purity of the recipes was appealing, and it certainly doesn’t hurt that the photography is achingly gorgeous.

To celebrate the launch of Jules’ book Five Ingredients, Ten Minutes, she’s going on a “blog tour”. There’s a banner over there > somewhere describing all the places she’s visiting. As part of the blog tour she’s offering cooking advice for troublesome ingredients. I didn’t give her too much of a curve ball but I do look down on the green pepper. When you get one of those pepper multipacks, I use the red one first, then the yellow or orange ones, then invent excuses not to use the green one. So here’s what she said:

GREEN PEPPERS
When Gary asked me to give some suggestions for green peppers, I loved that he described them as ‘the red pepper’s more bitter cousin’. Normally I’m a fan of bitterness but there’s something unripe and green about our friend the green pepper that I’m just not attracted to. So while I use red peppers all the time (there’s even a photo of one on the cover of my book), I hardly ever bother withgreen. Even though they tend to be cheaper.

But if someone were to give me a crate of green peppers from their garden, I wouldn’t throw them out. I’d probably use them raw so at least they provide something in the form of freshness and crunch.

I’d slice them into long fingers to use instead of green beans as a side or salad. Or I’d use a vegetable peeler to shave them into the finest strips possible then toss in lemon juice and a little olive oil for a super crunchy side salad.

They also have enough similarities with cucumber that you can substitute green peppers in most places. I haven’t yet tried it but I imagine grated green pepper mixed with natural yoghurt may make an interesting alternative to raita to serve as a cooling side to curries. Especially for people, like my Irish fiancé who are allergic or intolerant to cucumber.

It’s nice to know I’m not the only one who struggles to love the green pepper. But I was game for the green pepper raita – I wasn’t convinced that cucumber have that many similar properties but there’s something in that.

And it was very pleasant. Fresh and zingy, with a crunch that went well with a chickpea curry. Thanks Jules!

Green pepper raita:

150ml natural yoghurt

½ green pepper

Squeeze of lemon juice

Pinch of chopped coriander

Grate the pepper into the yoghurt and add salt, sugar and lemon juice to taste. Garnish with coriander.

Tags jules clancy