Carnitas or Pulled Pork in a Cubano/Sandwhich/whatever

This was made way back in February 2015 but I'm only posting it now. Better late than never right!

For a number of weeks now, my son has been asking if I could make Pulled Pork. We had tried the pulled pork burger in a kids meal when we had taken my inlaws out for dinner almost a year ago at Morgansfields. So over the weekend, I decided I would make some pulled pork!

At first I thought of just making my usual Pork Roast as the meat is so tender that I always serve it 'pulled' anyway. However, I thought I'd take the route of making a real pulled pork where the meat is served in a bowl - pulled away and ready to eat. Also, I figured I would slow cook the meat, kind of like braising it, so that it would absorb the juices and make it more tasty and flavourful.

While looking for inspiration on the web, I came across Carnitas - which basically means "little meats," and is a dish of Mexican origin. Carnitas are made by braising or simmering pork in oil or lard until tender. That caught my eye and I decided to combine a few recipes to make pulled pork simmered in beer and orange juice and also chillis for a bit of spice. So a variation of Carnitas it was.

Then came the decision of what to serve the pulled pork with. Fist thing that popped to my mind was a pulled pork burger. Then I thought of Cubanos! You see, A few weeks ago, we sat down as a family and watched Chef - the movie where a chef leaves his restaurant and starts up a food truck selling Cubanos. The kids seemed to think the Cubanos looked really good and I thought that was the end of it.

However, a recent trip to Fridays triggered their memory of Cubanos as it was on the menu. I mentioned that it didnt look very good though and thats when my little princess asked if I could maybe make it one day.

So with that request in mind, I decided I would make Cubanos.

So on Saturday, my little princess followed me to drop Michael off at band practice. Then we popped into the supermarket at Bangsar Village to get some pork shoulder - without the skin, together with lettuce and nice ripe tomatoes. My princess asked why I was getting Tomatoes and Lettuce and I explained they were for the Cubanos. "But Cubanos dont have lettuce and tomatoes Dads." She remarked. "So you're not really making Cubanos then...."

A Cake and a Meal for a Belated Birthday Celebration

Although we didnt celebrate my sons birthday on the day itself, I still wanted to make him a cake. I love Nutella and when I saw that Matt Preston had a recipe for a flourless Nutella cake that he had showcased on MasterChef Australia, I was rather intrigued. I planted the seed of suggestion in my kids but they didnt seem to enamoured by the thought of a flourless cake. I wasnt too sure either since the recipe called for only two ingredients - Nutella and Eggs.

I tossed about the idea of making him a decadent dessert cake but the more I looked at recipes, the more appealing the idea of the Nutella cake became. I asked The Lovely Wife to get me a bottle of Nutella when she went to the market but didnt check the amount required and told her that a small bottle would be enough. Actually, the small bottle held only 200g of Nutella whereas the recipe called for 240ml. I decided I would just add in some cocoa and also flour as I wanted the cake to be more like a cake rather than a pudding.

I decided I would use self raising flour so that there was some leavening agent.The eggs whipped up beautifully and then I added in some of the Nutella and then the flour and cocoa. The eggs started to deflate rapidly but I put it in to bake nonetheless. It was a disaster!

The cake didnt rise at all and was thick and rubbery. I let it cool and cut out a small piece. It tasted okay but the texture was just too rubbery. My daughter had a bit of a laugh and made a face at me. Was I crushed...

Slow Roasted Pork - Christmas 2011

So this post is really late. We've already finished one month of 2012 and I still haven't updated my Christmas Dinner post - so here goes.

Christmas Eve was held at our place this year and my Parents, my Brother and his two daughters and my Brother in Law, wife and son came over. Mom in law was in Australia with my niece so they couldn't make it while my eldest brother and his wife had another function on. So all in all, including the four of us, I had to make dinner for 12 people.

You've already seen the menu that I put up in my last post but as usual, planning the menu wasn't an easy task. The Lovely Wife and I spent many an hour pondering what to make. I wanted to go with something tried and tested as, after all, there were 12 people to cook for and I couldn't very well afford a disaster.

Funnily enough though, what we finally decided upon included quite a few new dishes - or at least new recipes. First up on the decision tree was Roast Pork. The Lovely Wife and I figured that we wanted something that could stand up on its own as a main meal. Now I've never made Roast Pork in my life before but as they say, there's always a first time for everything.



To complement the Pork and to cater for anyone that may have wanted something else as well as a safeguard in case the pork went awry, I decided to make my Chicken Cacciatore - very delicious and something tried and tested.

So the two main meals were chosen. Mashed Potatoes would go with both the chicken and the pork so the potatoes would be the carbohydrates. The Lovely Wife would make a nice salad and it looked like we were done.

However, I felt that there wasn't enough food to serve. It was Christmas after all! That's when I decided on Crostini and also Corn Muffins. I've made corn muffins before but those were sweetish muffins. I wanted these to be savoury to complement the pork and/or chicken.

Finally, Dessert was chosen and the menu was complete.

So lets start with the Slow Roasted Pork.




As I said before, I've never made Roast Pork before. In deciding how to make the pork, I remembered an episode of Jamie Oliver where he made this Pork Roast with crackling. I did a search on the web and found his recipe for Slow Roasted Pork. The recipe looked just great and I decided I would serve it with my own Applesauce recipe.

The more I looked at the recipe though, the more I got intimidated. I worried that the pork wouldn't be tender or that it would be undercooked. The most intimidating part was not knowing what cut of pork to use. A quick trip to my Pork Butcher quickly solved that.

Now allow me to digress a little. When I was young, and I mean really young, I used to follow Mom to the market in town - the Central Market. In those days, the Central Market was really quite a mess - all wet and smelly. These days, the Central Market has been transformed into an Art and Craft centre and has become a tourist attraction.

So anyway, back in those days, each section of the market had a whole range of different vendors and Mom had her favourites. The Chicken Lady was the second stall on the left in the chicken area while her Vegetable Man was on the third or fourth row of vegetable sellers.

And then there was Jimmy. He was her Pork Man and he was a really friendly chap. Sometimes, Mom would preorder pork from him and send me in to pick up the meat while she waited outside in the car. He would always smile when he saw me and call out in a loud jovial voice "Ah! Teacher's Son!"

Once the Central Market closed down, Jimmy moved to the Taman Tun Market and I have paid him a visit there every once in a while over the years. So that is where I went, one week before Christmas, to make an order for the pork.

Just like days of yore, I waited in line but this time with my son in tow. When I reached the head of the line, I smiled at the bubbly pork seller in front of me. "Jimmy. Remember me?"
His eyes scanned my face and then the face of my son. Suddenly his eyes lit up and he yelled out. "Ah! Teacher's Son! How's your mother? What you want? What you want to make?"

I explained to him that I wanted to do a Roast Pork - western style and that I wanted a loin or shoulder. Jimmy proceeded to explain that the best part would be the shoulder - deboned and tied up as the shoulder had a lot of fat. "When you want it? You want it now?"


I arranged to pick it up from him on Christmas Eve and when I did, it was a lovely cut, just under 2kg and with the skin scored nicely. I was beginning to get really excited about the Roast Pork.

Ingredients
about 2kg shoulder of pork, skin on
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 Large onion, halved
2 carrots, peeled and halved lengthways
1 bulb of garlic, skin on, broken into cloves
4-6 fresh bay leaves
600ml water or vegetable stock

Applesauce
4 Granny Smith apples, pared and cubed
2 tbsp brown sugar
1-2 cinnamon stems (or 1-2 tsp cinammon powder)

Method
Preheat your oven to 220°C/425°F/gas 7.

Place your pork on a clean work surface, skin-side up. Get yourself a small sharp knife and make scores about a centimetre apart through the skin into the fat, but not so deep that you cut into the meat. If the joint is tied, try not to cut through the string. Rub salt right into all the scores you’ve just made, pulling the skin apart a little if you need to.

Brush any excess salt off the surface then turn it over. Season the underside of the meat with a few pinches of salt and pepper. Place your pork, skin-side up, in a roasting tray and pop in the preheated oven. Roast for 30 minutes, until the skin of the pork has started to puff up and you can see it turning into crackling. At this point, turn the heat down to 170°C/325 F/gas 3, cover the pork snugly with a double layer of tinfoil, pop back in the oven and roast for a further 4 and a half hours.

Take out of the oven, take the foil off, and baste the meat with the fat in the bottom of the tray. Carefully lift the pork up and transfer to a chopping board. Spoon all but a couple of tablespoons of fat out (save it for roast potatoes!).

Add all the veg, garlic and bay leaves to the tray and stir them into the fat. Place the pork back on top of everything and return to the stove without the foil to roast for another hour. By this time the meat should be meltingly soft and tender.

Carefully move the meat to a serving dish, cover again with tinfoil and leave to rest while you make your gravy. Spoon away any fat in the tray, then add the water or stock and place the tray on the hob. Bring to the boil and simmer for a few minutes, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon to scrape up all those lovely sticky tasty bits on the bottom of the tray. When you’ve got a nice, dark gravy, pour it through a sieve into a bowl or gravy boat, using your spoon to really push all the goodness of the veg through the sieve. Add a little more salt and pepper if it needs it.

Serve the pork and crackling with your jug of gravy

Applesauce
Combine the apples, sugar, cinammon and 1 cup water in a heavy saucepan.
Cook for 20 minutes until apples are soft. Mash up or process the apples in food processor till smooth. Set aside. Add more sugar or cinnamon as needed.

Now the beauty about this recipe is that there really isn't a whole lot for you to do. You season the underside with salt and pepper and then rub the skin generously with salt before throwing it in the oven. One key factor is to make sure the skin is dried properly after washing and before seasoning.




The pork sits in the oven for an hour on high, high heat. I expected to see the skin crackling at this point but it just kind of dries out and puffs up a little. The heat is then reduced to 170C and the pork covered with foil. The meat is left to slow cook now for around four hours. Then the foil is removed and the pork is basted with its own juices. You throw in some vegetables at this point and place the pork on top of all the veges. It's then returned to the oven without the foil to roast for another hour.

When I took the roast out, it was just amazing. The skin was nice and crackly and almost separated from the meat as the layer of fat underneath the skin was all gooey and melted goodness. I let the meat rest and made a gravy like the recipe said - adding water to the juices and vegetables and then reducing it. The whole kitchen was filled with the lovely aroma of roasted meat.

When I served the pork roast, the meat was very, very tender and fell away with the slightest of prodding. Fabulous, simply fabulous! It went really, really well with mustard and the applesauce that I made and to say that the Roast Pork was a hit would be an understatement. It was simply sensational! The gravy was very tasty as well and not at all overpowering like some gravy can be.




This is definitely something that I would make again especially when there are a lot of mouths to feed. Thankyou Jamie Oliver for this lovely recipe!

BBQ Ribs - a definite favourite!

My son loves BBQ Ribs. He first had them when we went to Chillis some time, a long time ago and almost in a galaxy far, far away. The Lovely Wife decided on ordering some BBQ Beef Ribs and my son ended up devouring half of it.

The Lovely Wife seems to have caught my 'disease' of wanting to try to make something that the kids have eaten and enjoyed outside. I'm all for that so when she declared she was going to try and make Pork BBQ Ribs, I clapped my hands in glee!





The recipe is loosely based on Texan Barbecued Ribs from the book A Cooks Tour by Sarah Gates. This is what The Lovely Wife did:

Ingredients
1 kg Pork Spare Ribs
1 onion - chopped
3 cloves garlic - crushed and chopped
1/2 cup Tomato Sauce
2 tbsp orange juice
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
1-2 tsp mustard
2 tsp honey
2 Tbsp brown sugar
dash of worcestershire sauce
2 tbsp vegetable oil
salt
black pepper
Brandy to deglaze
Method
Preheat oven to 200C. Place the ribs in a roasting pan and bake uncovered for about 20 minutes. Meanwhile mix together all the other ingredients in a pan. Bring to the boil and then simmer gently for about 5 minutes. Remove ribs from oven and reduve temperature to 175C. Spoon over half the sauce, covering the ribs well and bake for 20 minutes. Turn the ribs over and baste with remaining sauce and cook for a further 25 minutes. Remove the ribs and pour into a large wok or saucepan. Deglaze the pan with a dash of brandy (or more!) and add into the pan. Stir fry until the sauce is thick and coats the ribs nicely.

The sauce is loosely based on the recipe as The Lovely Wife added more mustard, honey, vinegar and Tomato Sauce till she got a flavour that she wanted. Its all about your own taste buds really so if you try this out, keep testing the sauce till you get what you like. The ribs also let out quite a bit of juices and there was also quite a bit of caramelisation, so the idea to deglaze with brandy and then stir fry again till thick was our own addition to this recipe.




To say that my son liked the ribs would be an understatement. He absolutely loved them!! My son promptly declared them as one of his favourite dishes, if not his alltime favourite!!

These ribs were extremely delicious and it has become a firm favourite in our household. The Lovely Wife sometimes uses the same recipe for BBQ Chicken Wings too.



This dish gives the phrase 'Finger Licking Good' a whole new meaning!!!

Spicy Pork Patties and 'The Look'

I have to admit that both The Lovely Wife and I both love cookbooks. I'm more partial toward dessert cookbooks while The Lovely Wife likes them any which way. I did put on a sour face and a scowl however, when she insisted on buying this particular book - an Indian Cookbook. I looked at her and gave her The (well perfected) Look. It's the kind of look where I kind of either frown or raise my eyebrows. My face takes on a really dumbfounded cum haughty expression and if you look hard enough, you can see steam coming out of my fairly large nostrils. If you cant picture it, just think of it as a "you really, seriously, must be joking" kind of look.
I mean seriously, why on earth would either of us need an Indian cookbook? I think we both cook Indian food bloody well!

Despite being on the receiving end of 'The Look', The Lovely Wife still bought the book and later that night I thumbed through it and hummed and hawed that there was nothing really special in there that neither of us couldn't do. The Lovely Wife tried to defend herself and said that it was a nice book nonetheless and there WERE some nice recipes in there and it didn't matter if we could already make some or even all of the dishes. There was nothing wrong in getting a fresh take on recipes. In a final attempt at justifying her purchase, she said that at the very least the book had some nice pictures and maybe I could learn a thing or two about taking nice food shots... okay, not said in such a vicious manner but that was kind of the point. I'll remind her of that the next time I get my hands on a Playboy Magazine...



Anyway, one day she decided to follow one of the recipes from the book and made these Spicy Pork Patties. I tell you, they were delicious! They were so delicious that The Lovely Wife decided to make them again when we hosted Naomi for lunch back in August last year. Everyone thought they were delicious too!

The recipe comes from 30-minute Indian by Suni Vijayakar, a book The Lovely Wife found at one of our local bookstores (either MPH or Borders, can't quite remember). This is the recipe

450g minced pork
3 tsps hot curry paste (she used a mix of curry powder and chilli powder instead)
3 Tbs fresh bradcrumbs
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 Tbs lime juice
2 Tbs finely chopped coriander leaves
1 red chilli, finely chopped
2 tsp brown sugar
salt and pepper

Method
Put the pork, curry paste, breadcrumbs, onion, lime juice, coriander, chilli and sugar in a large bowl and, using your hands, mix until thoroughly blended. Season with salt and pepper. cover and chill for 30mins or until ready to cook

Divide the mixture into 12 portions and shape each one into a flat, round patty.

Heat the oil in a large nonstick fryingpan and cook the patties over a medium heat for 3-4 minuts on each side or until cooked through.


These patties make excellent appetisers and are great with drinks too! The Lovely Wife usually bakes these instead of frying them and they are equally delicious that way.

So maybe it's not such a bad idea having an Indian cookbook in our collection after all....

Savoury Glutinous Rice

This recipe was featured in the food section of one of our local newspapers and The Lovely Wife wanted to try it. The recipe is from Amy Beh - one of Malaysia's well known cooks and author of many cookbooks.




The Lovely Wife made two versions of this - one with Chicken and one with Pork. It turned out really well indeed and tasted a little like the Fried Rice in Lotus Leaf that is served at Chinese Restaurants - especially during Weddings. It also tasted very much like Loh Ma Kai! That's why I photographed it just like how Loh Ma Kai is served.




This is the recipe as per Amy Beh.

Ingredients
400g glutinous rice, soaked overnight and drained dry
2 tbsp oil
2 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp chopped shallots
1 tbsp chopped garlic
2 tbsp dried prawns, soaked and chopped
150g pork belly, diced
3 dried Chinese mushrooms, soaked and shredded

Seasoning
2 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tsp light soy sauce
Salt to taste
1 tbsp sugar
1½ tbsp thick soy sauce
½ tsp pepper
80-90ml water

Garnishing
Some fried shallot crisps


Method
Wash and drain glutinous rice, then steam for 35-40 minutes.
Heat oil and sesame oil in a wok. Fry shallots, garlic and dried prawns until fragrant. Add pork belly and mushrooms and fry well.
Add the steamed glutinous rice and seasoning to mix. Toss and fry until the rice is dry. Dish out and serve with a sprinkling of shallot crisps.





The Lovely Wife's parents came over when we served this and no one could believe that it was home made. I wouldn't have either if I hadn't had seen her make it herself - it was that good!

This is now a favourite of The Lovely Wife's to make and of course a favourite of ours to all enjoy!