Category: pork

Categories
bacon food mayonnaise onion potatoes

garlic and bacon potato gratin

We get through buckets of mayonnaise in this house. I kinda like it – particularly with store-bought pizza for reasons I don’t understand – but the rest of the family demolish it. If my son was asked the legendary question: “you’re handed a sausage sandwich. Will it be red sauce, brown sauce, or no sauce at all?” he’d reply mayonnaise in a heartbeat.

So to receive some samples from Hellman’s of their flavoured mayonnaises was set upon by the family quite quickly. First the packaging – there’s much made on TV of their no-mess resealing cap. And sure enough it works a treat. As long as you don’t mind sacrificing a third of the bottle. By the time you work your way down there the rest refuses to come out. I took a knife to it to free the captive condiment. But what about the taste?

There was a black pepper one which I found nice and prickly, and worked really well in a ham salad wrap. But the garlic one was disappointing – slightly tangy but not flavoured with garlic at all. So that’s why it ended up in this gratin.

This type of recipe works great as a side dish, or can be had with a simple salad on the side.

Garlic and potato gratin (serves 2):

5 – 6 medium sized floury potatoes, cut into thick coins. Peeling optional

1 onion, sliced (I used frozen ready-sliced onions)

2 rashers smoked streaky bacon, chopped

5 tablespoons garlic mayonnaise

Milk

A little grated parmesan

  1. Preheat the grill to high. Get a large pan of salted water on to boil and add the potatoes. Simmer for 10 minutes or until just tender.
  2. While the potatoes cook, fry the onions and bacon in a pan with a little oil until the bacon has coloured and onions softening.
  3. Drain the potatoes and add to the onion and bacon pan, seasoning as you go. In a shallow dish mix the mayonnaise with a little milk until you get a creamy dressing, and then stir the onion, bacon and potatoes through it until well coated. Grate a little parmesan over the top and put under the grill until golden.
Categories
bacon cookies food jelly beans sweets

full english breakfast cookies

I love the Great British Menu. There’s plenty wrong with it – enforced friction between the chefs, pointless “out and about” sections, and we all know it should be 1 x 1 hour show a week but the chance to see the top tier of British chefs cooking their guts out is always fascinating. This year’s show has a Comic Relief theme.

One chef was new to my radar this year, Mary-Ellen McTague. A Fat Duck graduate, her influences were clear to see. I found her bath of beans particularly amusing, and am sad to see it won’t feature at the final banquet.

When Sainsbury’s asked me to come up with a Red Nose Day cookie, this playful starter was at the forefront of my mind. Picking up a recipe for “bacon and banana cookies” from her mentor’s book Heston Blumenthal at Home the idea of a play on a Full English was there.

Topped with sweets this is a silly biscuit – that’s the point – but the bacon element is genuinely interesting. Go for a sweet cure bacon and it’s not so jarring, but it’s really worth a go.

Full English breakfast cookies (makes about 20):

5 rashers smoked bacon

120g butter, diced

260g caster sugar

220g plain flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

2 large eggs

Fried egg sweets and orange jelly beans, for decoration

  1. Preheat the oven to 190°C. Line a baking tray with baking paper and lay the bacon on top. Bake for 10 minutes, then pat dry with kitchen paper. When cool cut into tiny pieces.
  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Sift in the flour, baking powder and soda with a pinch of salt until mix until a smooth dough is formed. Mix in 1 egg at a time, then stir in the bacon pieces.
  3. On a greased tray spoon out small blobs 10cm apart and bake for 8 – 10mins or until the the cookies are browned. As soon as they are out of the oven press a fried egg and a few jelly beans into the surface to melt in. Leave to firm up on the tray for a couple of minutes then transfer to a cooling rack.
Categories
food gammon ham

salted caramel ham

Yes, yes, salted caramel is uber-ubiquitous. But I love a sweet glaze on my ham, such as honey or maple syrup, so why not salted caramel?

It’s not a fully developed caramel, more a syrup. But the flavours are there, and you get a salty-sweet kick with every bite. Make sure you hold back some glaze and baste the freshly-carved slices. After five minutes cooling it settles into a sticky sauce. If you can’t bothered making a caramel, golden syrup will work just fine.

Salted caramel ham:

450g gammon ham joint

2 carrots, broken up

1 onion, quartered

2 bay leaves

1 tablespoon black peppercorns

1 star anise

For the glaze:

75g sugar

50ml water

40g butter

A large pinch of smoked sea salt

  1. Put the gammon and other ingredients in a large pan and cover with cold water. Bring to the boil and reduce to a simmer. Cook for two hours or until a knife inserted into the middle slides in easily. Turn off the heat and allow to relax in the warm juices.
  2. Preheat the oven to 200°C. In a small pan melt the sugar and water together until golden brown. Take off the heat and swirl in the butter. Simmer for a further three minutes and turn off the heat.
  3. Remove the meat from the stock and drain for a minute. Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper and place the meat on it. Baste with the caramel, adding a splash of stock if it’s too gooey.
  4. Bake for 15 minutes, then baste with more caramel.
  5. After a further 15 minutes remove from the oven and put the meat to one side to rest, sprinkling on the salt. Meanwhile add a trickle of stock to the baking tray to bring together the sauce and pour off into a bowl. Carve the meat, serving with the reserved caramel.
Categories
food lemon olives pork

lemon and black pepper olive pork

My family can’t get enough of olives. So when Olives from Spain sent me a bunch of ingredients to try to create a marinade for olives I set to it right away. There was an almost embarrassing selection of things to try, but I kept going back to, of all things, the lemon. Paired with it’s old friend, black pepper and just a hint of clove to reinforce the spice this works lovely with fatty pork. If you try it, make sure the sugar is on hand to help round out the flavours.

Lemon and black pepper pork steaks (serves 2):

Zest and juice of ½ a lemon

1 teaspoon black peppercorns

Pinch of sugar

About 10 Spanish black olives, halved

1 clove

2 pork shoulder steaks

  1. Put the lemon, sugar and peppercorns in a pestle and mortar and crush lightly so the peppercorns are coarse. Mix well with the olives and clove and taste – depending on your olives you may need a pinch of salt and / or sugar to balance it out. Add a dash of olive oil and leave to stand for an hour uncovered.
  2. Heat a griddle pan to pretty darn hot and the oven on to 200°C. Lay your pork steaks on a chopping board and slice most of the way through horizontally, so you have a meaty book. Discarding the clove, stuff the pork with the olive mix, press down firmly with your hand and add a pinch of salt to the surface of the pork. Put on to the hot griddle.
  3. After 4 minutes one side should be cooked, so turn over and put into the oven. After 8 minutes turn the oven off and leave for a further 5 minutes, then serve. Great with potato gratin and some greens.
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