Pot-Roasted Pork in White Wine with Garlic, Fennel and Rosemary

This lovely, simple and delicious recipe is courtesy of Jamie Oliver’s “Happy Days with the Naked Chef” book. 

This recipe literally takes 5 minutes to throw together. It’s all in one pot and it tastes like heaven.

Serve with roasted potatoes.

(CW - yes, you have had this before.)

1 - 3 1/2lb loin of pork, off the bone and skin removed

salt and freshly ground pepper

1 tbsp fennel seeds (I didn’t have fennel seeds - I used Caraway Seeds instead)

2-3 large pats of butter

olive oil

8 cloves of garlic, skin left on 

1 handful of fresh rosemary, leaves picked

4 bay leaves

1 fennel bulb, sliced

1/2 bottle of Chardonnay, your choice

1. Preheat the oven to 400F
2. With 2 or 3 bits of string, tie up your pork loin - do this anyway you like. It doesn’t have to be fussy, you just want to keep the meat in a snug shape while it’s cooking. Season generously, then roll the meat in the fennel seeds until covered. In a casserole pan or roasting pan, fry the meat for a couple of minutes in half the butter and little olive oil, until nice and golden.
3. Throw in the garlic, herbs, fennel and wine, then cover the pan loosely and place in oven for 1 1/4 hours. As the pork loin is off the bone it cooks very quickly. Remove from the oven and allow the meat to rest on a plate. Then without using any more heat, finish off your sauce in the pan, scraping any goodness off the bottom and adding the rest of the butter. Remove any large bits of rosemary stalk if you prefer. Correct the seasoning and squash open a couple of the garlic cloves - when cooked they go nice and sweet and add a lovely taste to the sauce.

Serves 6

Ricotta Fritta Con Piccola Insalata Di Pomodori

(Fried Ricotta with a Little Tomato Salad)

This recipe is from Jamie Oliver “Jamie’s Italy” (2006).

This is seriously light, fresh, fluffy and silky. I loved it. I could it eat it everyday. I really don’t know what else to say about it. So yummy. A must try!

1lb good crumbly ricotta cheese

2 tbsp freshly grated parmesan cheese, plus extra for serving

1 1/2 tbsp flour

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 large egg

a handful of mixed ripe tomatoes

2 sprigs of fresh basil

1 fresh red chili, deseeded and finely chopped

extra virgin olive oil

good red wine vinegar

olive oil

nutmeg, for serving

1. Mix the ricotta with the parmesan, flour, a good pinch of salt, and the egg. Season with a little freshly ground black pepper and place in the fridge.
2. Halve the tomatoes, squeeze out the seeds, and discard them. Chop the flesh up into small chunks and drain off excess liquid. Chop the stems of the basil finely and tear the leaves up roughly, then add to the tomatoes with the chili. Season with salt and pepper, a glug of good extra virgin olive oil, and a small swig of good red wine vinegar.
3. Put a nonstick pan on medium heat and add a splash of olive oil. Drop a few spoonfuls of the ricotta mix into the pan - make sure not to overcrowd it; the pieces shouldn’t be touching. Fry the ricotta cakes for a couple of minutes or until golden brown, then carefully turn them using a broad, flat knife or a fish server and fry them on the other side for a further minute.
4. Serve at once, with a light sprinkling of sea salt, a little nutmeg (grated from height), and a good spoonful of the chopped tomatoes on the side. Drizzle over a little peppery extra virgin olive oil and grate over some parmesan. Eat while crisp and warm!

Rolled Pork Stuffed with Plums

The original title of this recipe from Jamie Oliver’s Happy Days cookbook was really long and so I decided to shorten it. Despite it’s name, this dish tastes amazing. So amazing in fact, that I’ve decided to call it one of my favourites. The pork is steamed so there is no fat. The sweetness of the plum sauce and the flavour of the anise go perfectly with fresh, thinly sliced spring onions and the neutral succulent pork. The combination of flavours are beautiful and it looks so lovely on the plate that it’s dinner party respectable. Just double or triple the recipe.

Serves 2

3 Ripe Plums

2 tablespoons of olive oil

2 Star Anise
2 thumb-sized pieces of ginger, peeled and finely grated

2 cloves

2 heaping tablespoons of brown sugar

2 Pork Cutlets

salt and ground pepper

1 small handful of parsley or cilantro, washed and chopped

Spring onions

Soy Sauce

Wash the plums, then run a knife around them, twist them and remove the pits. Cut into halves and then into 1/2 inch dice. Heat the oil in a pan and fry the star anise, ginger and cloves for 1 minute. Add the plums and sugar with a couple tablespoons for water, place a lid on, and simmer slowly for about 20 minutes until chunky and pulpy. Allow to cool in the fridge.

Take you pork, trim off any fat and bash it between 2 pieces of plastic wrap. When each piece is the thickness of about 2 beer coasters, lay it on a pan.

Season the plum sauce and stir in half the parsley. Smear the sauce in the middle of each piece of pork. Spread it out slightly so that the sauce covers about three-quarters of each slice and roll each one up like a jelly roll. Put the rolls in your steamer (or like me, my enamel colander over a pot of simmering water) and cover with aluminum foil. Steam over simmering water for about 10 to 15 minutes until the meat is just cooked. Remove from the steamer and serve the pork rolls on a bed of finely sliced spring onions, sprinkled with the rest of the parsley and doused with soy sauce and any left over plum sauce.

Japanese Daikon Salad with Watercress, Creme Fraiche and Grilled Lemon Dressing

This salad uses an Asian Daikon, which is an asian radish. They are available at some Farmer’s Market (Hamilton Farmer’s Market has them) and some grocery stores. My step-mother uses them all the time at family dinners, so when I came across this recipe I thought I’d know what it would taste like. I must have gotten a good one because my Daikon had a very strong radish taste to it. It was a fun salad to put together and you should give it a go.

Peel your daikon and thinly slice it (long thin slices, like linguine) I used the potato peeler to get the long thin strips.

Mix the strips with your watercress and dress with the following dressing:

Creme Fraiche & Grilled Lemon Dressing:

1 large lemon halved

3 tablespoons olive oil

3 tablespoons creme fraiche or mayo

2 heaping teaspoons Dijon mustard

sea salt, pepper, soy sauce

Broil the lemon halves for 5 minutes until soft and charred. Squeeze the juice into a bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients, mix together and season to taste. 

Saturday Night Dinner

This was Sat night dinner. It looks messy, but it was good.

Tonight’s dinner is a “Flour and Water Crust Chicken” with “Braised Greens” and Mashed Potatoes.

The “Flour and Water Crust Chicken” is exactly what it sounds like. You make a flour and water dough and wrap it around the chicken. It’s messy as hell and if you could see the mess I made making the dough you’d understand why I said it’s messy as hell. 

The recipe calls for a lemon rind, sage, thyme and garlic marinade, which smelled fantastic as I was bashing the ingredients together in the mortar and pestle. The recipe says that this marinade works great for all kinds of meat. It is exactly what I said above, rind from 1 lemon, 2 handfuls of fresh sage, 1 handful of fresh thyme, and 8 gloves of garlic. I love garlic and once you start bashing it together, you will start to smell something wonderful.  When you are done, you add a whole bunch of olive oil and salt and pepper and rub the marinade all over the chicken. 

I’m still not entirely sure I should post the recipe from the book due to copyrights but if you own the book and have looked at the recipe and thought, “What the hell is that?”. Then, this is what the hell it is!

Anyway, I then rolled out the dough and wrapped it around the chicken. I baked it at 425deg F for well over an hour. Of course you need a meat thermometer to tell if it’s done. I don’t have a meat thermometer. I had to guess. Guessing isn’t fun sometimes. Especially if your meat is wrapped in dough and you can’t poke it. I should buy a meat thermometer. X-mas stocking stuffer, perhaps? :)

When I thought it was done, I let it sit for 5 minutes, and then cracked that dough shell and put it on the greens. The recipe says to use individual spring chickens. Well, I got to the farmer’s market too late this morning and didn’t get little individual spring chickens. Instead I picked up 1 good sized chicken for D and I to eat. However I could see how awesome this recipe would be with individual chickens for each person. Like a cornish hen perhaps, at a dinner party. Imagine you serve this cooked dough package to each person at a table? Don’t eat the crust! Just crack ‘er open and eat it. The chicken is basically steamed in the dough package. 

The chicken was incredibly moist. It has a wonderful lemony garlicky taste to it. Admittedly the dough thing was messy and annoying, but it cooked a great chicken. I will definitely add this to my recipe stash. 

The “Braised Greens” is a super simple dish that anyone and everyone can do. Swiss chard, spinach, garlic, salt and pepper and arugula with lemon juice. Easy, right?

Instead of spinach you could use anything, chicory, cabbage, mustard greens, beet sprouts, sprouting broccoli etc. 

Half fill a large pot with salted water, bring to a boil and add the Swiss Chard and spinach. Cook for only a few minutes until greens are tender, then drain. To the empty pan pour in olive oil and garlic, fry this up until lightly coloured and then throw in the spinach and chard. Season, stir around to coat and after 1 minute remove from the heat. Add the arugula and lemon juice from 1/2 a lemon. Now eat.

I’d never had swiss chard before I cooked this recipe. I did not like it. First of all, I think I over-cooked the garlic and it tasted slightly bitter and add to that the bitter taste of the chard..  the entire dish was.. bitter. I might try this recipe again to see if I can do it better, but it won’t be for a little while.

Mashed Potatoes. Personally, I think that this meal is complete with the chicken and braised greens. However, D believes that a meal isn’t complete without a starch. He’s a meat and potatoes kind of guy and would be just as happy without the veg. Whereas I’m ok without the starch. So we compromise. I make both veg and starch. He’s a very lucky man! The mashed potatoes are just simple mashed potatoes. I use skim milk and low calorie margarine and mash it together. Simple, easy and done like dinner.

After a very disappointing green side, the mashed potatoes were a god send. I think I may have gone hungry without them. 

All in all, it was fun creating this dinner. It took over an hour and half and we ate it in 15 minutes. It almost seems silly to put so much work into something and then it’s gone so quickly. But it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey. Right?? 

Sunday Night Dinner

Well, it’s Sunday night and time to cook something from the Jamie Oliver cookbook. Tonights dinner is starting with “A Tuscan Raw Artichoke, Arugula and Parmesan Salad” along with “Parsnip and Pancetta Tagliatelle with Parmesan and Butter”.

(I won’t be posting the recipes from this cookbook because I’m sure there is a copyright thingy on doing that.) 

D and I have eaten the Tuscan salad before and I’m re-making it tonight because the few remaining salads we have left to cook would not go well with the pasta dish. This salad tastes very fresh, light and somewhat bitter. D likes this salad more than I do. Raw artichoke is an acquired taste, plus the amount of work to prepare the stupid things i.e. getting pricked by the leaves the whole time, is a pain in the ass. Maybe if D had to spend 15 minutes preparing each artichoke, he wouldn’t enjoy the salad as much either.

When I prepared the salad this time, I used more lemon and it took out some of the bitterness. Which sounds strange, but it’s true. Again, the salad was fresh and light and a perfect compliment to the pasta dish.

The pasta dish was fabulous. The parsnips disappeared into into the pasta and were a surprisingly delicious combination. Bacon, rosemary, butter and Pecorino Romano/Parmesan cheese (The recipe called for Parmesan only but I added the Pecorino Romano because I had a large chunk of it and wanted to use it up) made up the sauce. It was not a healthy dinner, but it was a luxurious, creamy, silky treat. This recipe would have also tasted great with thyme instead of rosemary. Either way it was a terrific dinner. 

We opened up a bottle of 2007 Black Cab from EastDell Estates Winery (Baco Nior & Cabernet Blend)  to go with dinner and we enjoyed it immensely. I love this wine and find it goes great with everything. This is definitely one of my favourite wines. Now it’s time to relax and get ready for work tomorrow. 

Ciao.