The Apple Diaries 2015 - Normandy Pork

Much as we love the classic Delia dish of Pork with Apples and Cider, it does require a) quite a lot of preparation by way of chopping ingredients, and  b) a fair amount of forward planning as it has to cook for 3 hours.  The previous recipe in the book  (Delia's Complete Cookery Course) is just as nice (possibly even nicer?), but much simpler and quicker to cook.  Once again, as you can see in the photo below it's no beauty in terms of looks, but it's rich and delicious, hearty and warming for an Autumnal evening.   We like it with rice a green veg, but it would also be lovely with some crusty bread to mop up the cidery juices.

Normandy Pork with Cream and Apples

4 medium sized pork chops or steaks
50g butter
1 medium cooking apple and 1 large Cox's apple (I just use 2 medium Bramleys)
1 large onion, cut into rings
1 clove garlic, crushed
3/4 tsp dried thyme (I actually prefer to substitute a tsp of fennel seeds here)
1/2 pint dry cider (or a whole can  - we buy cans of cider just for cooking)
3 tbsp double cream
1 tsp sugar
Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/gas 5.

Melt half the butter in a frying pan and fry the pork on both sides to a nice crusty golden colour.  Then transfer them to a lidded casserole dish and sprinkle with the thyme (or fennel if using).

Add the remaining butter to the pan and fry the onion and garlic for a few minutes to soften.  Meanwhile core the apples and slice them into rings (or chunks), leaving on the peel as this gives extra flavour.  Transfer the onion and garlic to the casserole with the pork, then fry the apple in the same fat just for a few seconds on each side then put them in the casserole too, sprinkling on the tsp of sugar.

Spoon off any fat still left in the pan (although if you use lean pork steaks you won't need to do this) then pour in the cider. Bring it up to simmering  point, stirring to loosen any tasty bits stuck to the pan, then pour into the casserole and season with salt and pepper.

Put the lid on and place the casserole into the oven and cook for 30-40 minutes until the meat is cooked (I often leave it for up to an hour, it doesn't hurt and makes the meat even more tender).  Then to finish off stir in the cream.  Serve immediately.

The Apple Diaries 2015 - Delia Smith's Pork with Apples and Cider

I couldn't possibly begin to count the times we have made and eaten this dish, it's become such a standby that we barely even need the recipe to make it.  It's from an ancient and battered 1983 edition of Delia's Complete Cookery Course.  It's a great shove-it-in-the-oven-and-forget-about-it kind of meal that incorporates meat, some veg, sauce and potatoes, so only needs a simple veg accompaniment (we favour sweetheart cabbage) and dinnerl is complete.  It's not exactly much of a 'looker' as a dish (and quite frankly I only remembered to take a photograph for the blog as I was about to raise the first forkful to my mouth!) but what it lacks in attractiveness it certainly makes up for in flavour.

Pork with Apples and Cider
(serves 4)

4 lean pork chops or steaks  (Delia says pork belly or spare rib chops, we prefer steaks)
6 rashers of bacon, chopped (Delia says unsmoked streaky, we use whatever we have)
1 large cooking apple, peeled, cored and sliced (we use 2 if we are mid-apple-glut)
2 medium onions, chopped small
1/4 pint/150ml dry cider (we use a whole can)
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
6 juniper berries crushed with the back of a spoon (optional)
1.5lb/700g potatoes, peeled and thickly sliced
Olive Oil
A little butter
Salt and pepper

Pre-heat the oven to 140C/275F/gas 1.

Heat oil in a frying pan and brown the pork on both sides, then transfer to a wide shallow casserole with a lid.  Next, in the same pan, brown the bacon then place on top of the pork and season. 

Now sprinkle over the garlic and juniper berries (if using), then the apple and onion.  Add the cider and cover with a layer of overlapping potatoes.  Finally put some dabs of butter onto the potatoes, cover the dish with foil or greaseproof paper, then with a close-fitting lid.

Transfer the dish to the oven and cook for 3 hours.

Towards the end of the cooking time preheat the grill to a high setting, then place the dish uncovered under the grill to brown the potatoes.  (We don't always bother with this step.  It leaves the potatoes a little anaemic, but doesn't affect the taste).

Pork with Long Beans and Chives

One of the delights of living in a foreign country - well, for me anyway - is the food shopping.  I particularly enjoy browsing the produce sections of the supermarkets, or the roadside stalls selling fruit and veg where I often stop on the way home from work.  We've taken the opportunity to sample lots of new and exciting fruit and vegetables, although there are still many that we would have no idea of how to use so have shied away from.  Cowardly I suppose, but never mind.

So when we discover a recipe that uses something new and exciting we leap upon it.  And this Madhur Jaffrey recipe - Pork with Long Beans and Chives - fit the bill perfectly.  I had been eyeing up these bizarre looking veg for a while:

They are labelled in Malay, so I had no idea what they were, but they are long stalks with what appear to be flower-buds on the end.  I'm not entirely sure that they are what Madhur Jaffrey means when she calls for 'Chinese Chives'  (and I notice that Tesco have substituted regular chives in this published version of the recipe) but these garlicky lovelies were a perfect ingredient for the dish.  They're strong-tasting and pungent whiich makes them a real feature of the meal, rather than 'just' an accompanying vegetable.

Long beans are always a favourite here.  Just like French beans... but very long!  The clue's in the name.

Madhur Jaffrey says this is a Cantonese dish, from Hong Kong.  It had a lovely savoury sauce, but one with no heat so perfect for the chilli-haters (neither of us fall into this category - far from it - but we have friends and family who don't partake).

Definitely a 'keeper' of a dish.

Laab

We have always eaten quite a lot of Thai food even back in the UK; it's a cuisine we both enjoy.  Here in Brunei of course the necessary ingredients are much easier to find, so we're able to cook and eat Thai meals more often.

Laab is one of our favourite Thai dishes, but it requires no special or unusual ingredients, so is simple to prepare in whatever country you find yourself cooking!

I say there are no 'unusual' ingredients, but perhaps the addition of toasted and ground uncooked rice might seem odd to many!  It does give the finished dish a somewhat gritty texture, but that's not something we object to.  Try it and see.  I think of the toasted rice as giving the finished dish a slightly 'nutty' taste.

We serve it in one of two ways - either with some crisp lettuce leaves (Little Gem work well) or wedges of steamed white cabbage.  You spoon some Laab onto the leaf and then use the leaf like a sort of shovel to transport the Laab mouthwards!  Not the most elegant way of eating perhaps, but extremely satisfying.

Ingredients

half a pound of pork or chicken mince
4 tbsp water (or stock, or water with chicken stock from concentrate)
1 bunch of spring onions, chopped - we like to cut them into approximately 2cm lengths, cut on the diagonal
large handful of mint leaves
1 chopped red chili (Thai birdseye)
small handful of uncooked rice, toasted and pulverised in a blender or food processor
glug of fish sauce, to taste
1 lime - juice of half a lime to go into the laab, and serve the other half cut into wedges on each plate to squeeze over as you wish

To serve - crisp lettuce, or wedges of steamed cabbage

Toast the uncooked rice in a dry frying pan until medium-brown.  Let it cool then blitz in a blender or food processor until well-ground.

Put the mince into a pan - no need to add oil, just add the water (or stock).  Simmer until cooked through and the liquid mostly evaporated.  You don't need the mince to brown at all.

Turn off the heat.  Add all the other ingredients and stir well.  The mint leaves will wilt and the spring onion soften slightly though still retain most of its crispness.  You could also add coriander leaves if you wish, although I prefer to let the flavour of the mint come through unimpeded by other herbs.

Taste to see if you have the right balance of lime juice and fish sauce, then serve with a wedge of lime on the plate and a bottle of fish sauce on the table.

As this is so quick to cook you need to start steaming the wedges of cabbage (if you serve that instead of lettuce) at about the same time as you start cooking the meat.

This could be made a little in advance, but we have learnt from experience that the toasted rice mustn't be added until the very end of the preparation, as it goes very stodgy as it absorbs the liquid in the dish.

As you can see, it's a pretty healthy dish with no fat other than what is in the meat.  I always feel quite virtuous eating it - and yet it doesn't feel like you're doing without, it's so tasty and zingy.

A similar recipe can be found here at the excellent Thaitable.com website.

Excuse the slightly too-dark photos, the lighting in our kitchen isn't great, and I was keen to get the Laab to the table so we could eat!  I can't be doing with 'styling' my food when I'm that hungry.  :-)

Apples Galore

The house that we own is called 'Bramley Cottage'. Sweet eh? With a name like that, you'd obviously expect it to have an orchard, or perhaps a stand of ancient apple trees? But no, Bramley Cottage has one teeny tiny apple tree. The trunk is so thin that I can encircle it with one hand, and it's barely taller than my head. In Autumn 2005 it produced 3 apples. Admittedly we have been away for a couple of years, and we're not living there now either, but I think I may have to wait several more years before I can harvest a bumper crop.

But actually I don't think this is a problem. You see, it seems that anyone with an apple tree can't seem to give away enough apples! Everywhere we drive or cycle in the local area, we see boxes, buckets, wheelbarrows of apples sitting on people's driveways, with handwritten notices imploring passers by to 'Please take some apples!' And I don't need telling twice.

We have one particularly great supplier, a lady in nearby Wendover who has 20 - yes TWENTY - Bramley trees. It takes me ten minutes to cycle out to her house... but rather long to cycle back, my handlebar-bag bulging with fruit, so heavy that it's scraping on the front wheel. Here's just some of our latest haul:

I love to eat seaonally, and part of this is the challenge of making the very most of whatever is ripe and ready - a glut of produce is so often the result. Although there are times when I think that I will never want to eat another apple dish again, I know that many apple-free months will follow, and I will appreciate the fact that I made the very most of the apples when they were so plentiful.

Our favourite savoury apple dish is one from Delia Smith's classic 'Complete Cookery Course' entitled 'Pork with Apples and Cider' (p197-8 for those of you with the same attractively brown-covered edition that I have. These pages arae well-spattered in my book, attesting to the number of times that we have made this dish). It involves the long, slow cooking of pork chops, bacon, onions, apples and garlic. They are cooked in dry cider, with a topping of sliced potatoes. It's not something that I have ever taken a photo of, but at we are currently eating this once a week, so perhaps I should?

Last weekend's roast dinner was a leg of pork. We did eat pork in Canada, but rarely (if ever?) managed to buy a joint with the skin still on, thereby depriving us of the best part of the meal - crackling. This was reason enough to roast the pork last Saturday, but it had the added bonus of using up three large apples for a pan of apple sauce to accompany the meat - and make some amazing sandwiches with pork, apple sauce and sage & onion stuffing during the following week!

Still on the savoury theme, I have stocked our cupboards with two types of apple chutney - perfect with cheese sandwiches - and apple and mint jelly - perfect with roast lamb.

I know many people dislike using fruit in savoury dishes. This is fortunately not a problem in our household (I love it!), but it is in sweet dishes that I find it easiest to use up the apples. In recent weeks I have experimented with some new recipes involving apples - not all of them meant to be involving apples, but...

Many of my friends rave about a recipe for Plum Torte, published in the New York Times (you can find it here). I had long intended to make this, but when I managed to pick up a large bowl of deliciously ripe plums at a local market I had no excuse. I added 2 finely chopped apples to the batter, which made it much more of a pudding than a cake, beautifully moist and squidgy.

I also made a wonderful Apple Cake, the recipe for which was posted by the aptly named 'Mary Apple'! I think it originated from Patricia Wells, but to me it will always be Mary Apple's Cake. Sadly I can't produce a picture for this one. This cake was fabulous - again rather more of a pudding, with a batter-like cake barely enveloping the sliced apples. It was devoured by the two of us in an embarrassingly short time - half went with our afternoon cuppa, and the other half warmed for a post-supper pudding. I daren't make it again... If you feel like risking it, here's the simple recipe:

Mary Apple's Cake

In a pie pan (I used a 20cm springform) peel and slice 4 apples.

In a bowl mix 1/2 cup plain flour, 1/3 cup sugar, 2 tbsp milk (or cream), 1 tsp vanilla, a pinch of salt, 1 tbsp baking powder, 2 eggs.

Mix and pour over apples.

Bake at 350F/180C for about. 20-25 min till light brown.

Take out and top with 3 Tablespoons softened butter, 1/3 c. sugar, 1 egg.

Put back in the oven till browned - about 10-15 minutes.

And finally, last week I wanted to bake cupcakes. I don't do this often, but I had been given a wonderful box of 'Heavenly Cakes' mix (bought almost entirely for the beautiful packaging!) which I had been meaning to make for months. This is no ordinary cake-mix, it's produced by Rose Levy Berenbaum, author of The Cake Bible. It included Green & Blacks cocoa, and Madagascan vanilla -all top-quality ingredients. I also added two finely chopped apples to the mix (because did I mention we have lots of apples to use up?!), and the combination of chocolate cake and the tartness of the cooked apple pieces worked incredibly well.

I topped the cupcakes with a Swiss Buttercream icing (which I had been dying to try since reading about Project Wedding Cake in the Smitten Kitchen!), and scattered with milk-chocolate chips, for that 'kids'-birthday-party' feel. Cake, apples, buttercream, chocolate chips = perfection in a cupcake case.