Pork & Pepper stir-fry : yes, the one that wasn't, until it was!

I've talked about the menu list that I post up on our fridge every Tuesday, which tells the family what will be for dinner on each night that week.  I've also, very recently, talked about what I call various dishes, in order that the name doesn't set up a resistance with either son (or his Dad, sometimes!).

Well, this is the stir-fry that wasn't a stir-fry, until suddenly I was rumbled and it was.

I hadn't done a stir-fry for ages - and I really like them.  I have to admit that I much prefer stir-fries that contain more veggies than this, but I was attempting to strike a compromise with the veggie-haters amongst us.

I used the pork steaks from our butcher and trimmed off the excess fat.  I didn't give the fat to the dogs this time, but saved it until the next time I was using the oven, whereupon I roasted the bits to extract the fat for roast potatoes.  The roasted and crunchy pieces then went in the dog's dinner.  Better that they rest on their waistlines, than on mine, but I will admit to shedding a wee tear, at the time.

It was, interestingly, the first time I had dabbled with Jasmine rice.  It's really quite nice, isn't it?  Not a huge difference between that and ordinary white rice, but its fragrance is inviting and the grains are a nice size.


Something else that I hadn't done before, was to toast sesame seeds.  It's weird but sometimes I think that I've watched so much cooking t.v., that I think I've done something that it turns out I haven't - and toasting sesame seeds is one such.  It took longer than I was anticipating, but the fragrance they give off as they toast is mouthwatering.


The dish has a lovely (well, hubby and I both thought it was lovely) sweet and sour flavour that is down to the lime juice and honey.  The chilli gives it that nice back of the throat warmth, without blowing your head off.


It'll probably be some time, but I'm definitely doing this one again!


PORK & PEPPER STIR-FRY (serves 3)


Ingredients :


150g Thai Jasmine rice
1.5 tbsp sesame seeds
1.5 tsp sunflower oil
6 pork steaks or 400g pork fillet, sliced into finger width strips
1 red and 1 yellow pepper, sliced into fine strips
1 leek, cut into rounds
3 tsp cornflour
3 tsp soy sauce
juice of 1.5 limes
1.5 tbsp clear honey
1 red chilli, seeds removed and sliced.


Method :


1.  Place the rice in a saucepan with 450ml boiling water.  Bring back to the boil, stir once, cover with a lid and reduce the heat to low (or "just on").


2.  Cook for 15 mins, stirring from time to time, by which time the rice should have absorbed the liquid and be perfectly cooked.


3.  Dry-fry the sesame seeds until toasted golden, then set aside to cool.


4.  Heat the oil in a non-stick frying pan or wok.  Add the pork (in instalments if needs be) and stir-fry for 5-6 mins over a high heat until the pork is lightly browned and cooked through.  Reserve to keep warm.


5.  Cook the peppers until they reach your favourite consistency - we prefer around 10 minutes or so.


6.  Mix the cornflour and soy sauce together in a bowl, then add the lime juice, honey, chilli and sesame seeds, plus 8 tbsp of cold water.


7.  Pour into the wok and immediately stir well, cooking until the sauce has thickened.


8.  Add the pork and stir or toss to ensure everything is coated in sauce.


Serve.


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Bournemouth Echo blog "Jenny's Week" : The stir-fry that isn't a stir-fry, until it is!

The following blog entry can be seen in situ here. 

The stir-fry that isn't a stir-fry, until it is!

All of which is because my son is vehemently anti stir fries.  Mind you, he appears to be becoming anti anything remotely sweet and sour too, which is a great shame.

Being a just-on-the-verge-of-teenage lad, he’s developing a nice line in vegetable avoidance.  He’s decided he doesn’t like casseroles (which have vegetables in the mix), or the said stir fries (which have vegetables cooked with the meat, that are ~horrors~ still crunchy) and will visibly blanche when faced with a salad.

He much prefers non-vegetable meals like chilli con carne, or spaghetti Bolognese.  Which is a shame, really, as his Mum is as vehemently pro-vegetables as he is vehemently agin them.

However, we persevere.  I figure that if I keep on serving up the right portions of vegetables, he’ll get used to seeing them on his plate and teenage hunger might win over teenage pickiness.  I do try to avoid things that I know he just can’t countenance, like mushrooms, cooked tomatoes or aubergine, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t appear in certain recipes.  Take, for instance, the absolutely gorgeous Greek Lamb & Orzo Bake that we had for dinner last night.

The recipe involves lamb mince cooked with onion, garlic & aubergine, then with stock, tinned tomatoes and mint.  You then mix in some cooked orzo (which is rice-shaped tiny pasta, for those who were wondering) and put the mixture into a dish to bake, topped off with an egg/greek yoghurt mixture that sets and creates a lovely tangy topping.

There are two things in this recipe that son doesn’t like – aubergines and tomatoes.  Neither is avoidable, as they’re both fundamental ingredients.  However, the tomatoes will cook down and become part of the general saucy melange, whereas the aubergine will stay in chunks.  So, when I was adding it to the baking dish, I just chased most of the aubergine away into the other three quarters of the dish.  I served it with baby sweetcorn and sugar snap peas, and the lot disappeared.  Job done.

I reckon that one of my jobs as a parent, is to broaden my son’s horizons on as many different subjects as possible.  Hence, I refuse to be cowed by his likes and dislikes where food is concerned and I also refuse to cater just for him, while his Dad and I eat something else.  Case in point is son’s new friend, who was in the house when lunchtime struck.  Hubby offered him a sandwich, and he asked for chocolate spread.  Now, although I have nothing against chocolate spread and indeed we have some in the house which is brought out at breakfast time and stays with breakfast time, a lunchtime sandwich for boys consists of something savoury, accompanied by cucumber and tomato and maybe a packet of crisps.  So we went through all the choices : cheese (no), marmite (no), fish paste (no), ham?  We suspect he just accepted ham out of a desperate desire to please rather than anything else, as his sandwich came back with two bites taken out of it, no cucumber eaten, or tomato – and even the crisps came back “because they’re beef”.

I just couldn’t imagine my son doing the same thing to someone else.  Plus, the thought that this little lad (who was the size of a whippet – and is it any wonder?) would only eat chocolate spread in a sandwich, left me feeling really quite sad.

When hubby mentioned how glad he was that our son wasn’t like that, I just had to say that it’s because we’ve trained him that way.

So, to get back to the stir-fry that isn’t, until it is, this refers to a Pork & Pepper stir fry that we had one day last week.

I knew that if I wrote “Pork & Pepper stir-fry” up on the menu list for the week, I’d set up a resistance in our son’s mind.  That resistance would manifest in a large case of the “I don’t like <insert name of foodstuff>”.  So, I called it just “Pork steaks & pepper”.  All was calm.  Right up until he came into the kitchen and spotted the Fish Sauce, Soy Sauce, sesame seeds and sliced red & yellow peppers.  “Oh”, he said.  “It’s a Chinese something then?” sounding really disappointed.

“Marginally”, was my reply, hedging my bets.

The end result was that he ate the pork, about a third of the peppers and all of the jasmine rice.  He did declare that he “didn’t like the sweet and sour flavour, because of the vinegar”.  I just couldn’t resist informing him that there was no vinegar involved in this one – just soy sauce, fish sauce, lime juice and honey.

I wouldn’t say it was a win:win situation, but hey – he got fed and hubby and I think the recipe has got to be one of the nicest stir fry recipes we’ve tried in a very long time.

Now, I’ve just got to work out how to try to get some of the lovely watercress salads past him.

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The latest menu plan & a fit of pique

First of all, I shall admit something that probably nobody noticed - but I feel I should tell you anyway.  Which is that I deleted the blog on Sunday evening, in a fit of frustration and bad temper.  I had been trying, all flipping day, to post the Pork & Rhubarb recipe but with little success.  When, finally, I got everything together in the right place and had it written, photograph installed and ready to post - the computer threw a wobbly and wouldn't post it (or so it seemed - unknown to me, it had posted anyway).  It seemed as though I had spent the last two days trying to a) be a mum, b) be a wife (albeit not a great one, as poor hubby has to do almost everything thanks to my disability), c) write the damned post and d) time was running out, as I should (by then) have been in the kitchen making steak & kidney pie.

So, after a lot of shouty noises, swearing and general stomping about, I decided that the best thing was to delete the flipping blog and get that source of frustration out of my life.

Kerpow!  With one fell click of a switch, there it was gone.  Strangely, I didn't feel any lighter.

I missed not being able to go into Google Analytics to see who'd been by, what they'd been looking at, whether the results were up in comparison, or down.  I missed having the hope that someone would have commented (which is by far the best part of the whole blogging experience, and I wish more of you would!).  I missed the mad scramble for the camera as dinner is served.

Although, I did enjoy the freedom that not having the blog gave me.  Not having to remember to take a photograph of each meal.  Not having the next blog post forming itself at the back of my head.  Not feeling pressured to think of or find some interesting recipes that would blog well.  I actually managed to spend some time reading my book (and very good it was too - "Wolf of the Plains", by Conn Iggulden.  All about the early days of Genghis Khan).

It was in this period of time that I had to put together the week's menu plan and convert it to a shopping list.  I didn't spend any time scouring the internet for inspiration, nor did I waste much time looking through my lever arch folders full of categorised recipes (yes, I'm THAT anal - I have one folder for "tried & tested" and one folder for "untried & ideas").  I just got on and wrote down things that sounded nice, fitted with what we had already or were things that we'd liked in the past and were worth doing again, interspersed with old favourites.

So you won't find any curried lark's tongue, or fricassee of lamb niblets going on this week.  I think this is a good thing, as I suspect I had been being driven by the blog rather too much - and instead, I needed to get back to the driving seat and take a firmer control.

Obviously, I re-instated the blog the following day, having calmed down and talked it over with hubby.  Thank goodness for Blogger's "cooling down period" approach to blog deletion, eh?

So here I am again, suitably contrite (although as I say, I doubt any of you noticed it was gone!) with a new and improved approach to finding time to write the blog and every intention of never deleting it again.  Honest.

Now then, let's have a look at what I decided to cook for dinners this week.

Unfortunately, we missed the steak & kidney pie - but I write briefly about it in my latest blog post for the Bournemouth Echo - which should follow this blog, so look out for it if you're interested.

Tuesday brought a return visit from an old friend from last summer.  Spicy chicken with mango salad & naan bread was what it should have been, however having received a brick-hard mango with the shopping delivery on Tuesday, it rapidly became just spicy chicken with plain old salad instead.

We've acquired a nice non-stick frying pan since last summer, so I decided against cooking the chicken in the oven (as I'd done before) and opted for the pan frying version.  That way created a gorgeous crunchy spicy crust on the chicken which was really satisfying to eat.  The chicken is a lot more controllable where cooking time is concerned when you're breathing down upon it, watching its every move, too.

I'm really not sure what the naan bread is supposed to bring to the dish, other than a fabulous accompaniment to the sour cream & lime mixture that goes so well with the chicken and salad.  It was a bit out there on its own, without any friends other than the sour cream & lime and seemed a bit surplus to requirements.  I think I'd have far rather had some sweet potato wedges or some such.  Much more appropriate.  So, that's my recommendation, which I've included in the recipe - which I'll blog next time.

Wednesday (tonight, as I write this) we've got good old Impossible Quiche.  Except, with this one, it'll be made with some of the leftovers from last night's salad, such as red onion and red pepper.  With lovely back bacon, how could it go wrong?  I'll definitely be doing some potato wedges to accompany it - probably with a sprinkling of Cajun spice or maybe even ras-el-hanout.

Photo c/o BBC Good Food

Thursday is one to look forward to.  Thyme & mustard gammon with mashed potato, peas and carrots is a not only delicious but easy to make, too.  Can't argue with that!

As for Friday's dinner, well, here follows a bit of child psychology.  You see, son & heir hates stir-fries, for the simple reason that the dreaded vegetables are mixed in with the lovely meat to the extent that if he attempts to pick one from the other, he gets told off.  So, as and when he asks, it's a Pork with red peppers dish and not a Pork & Peppers stir fry.  I just know he's going to really like this meal, as the vegetables are represented by both red and yellow peppers and the pork will be the steaks from our local butcher, which he really likes.  So, it's best not to colour his opinion early on, by calling it a stir-fry.  Better to let him find out it was stir fried, on the day.  *wink*

As hubby is now working, Saturday has become our "top up shop" day.  So because I will only cook fish that is as fresh as I can get it, fish is only available on a Tuesday or a Saturday for us.  As a consequence, Saturday shall be Kedgeree day.  Is there much nicer than a lovely little mountain of smoked fish, curry spices and rice, all held together with lovely butter and topped off with crumbled egg yolk?  Naughty, but oh, so nice!

Sunday sees the return of an old friend, in that I thought I'd have a second go at the Lamb & Orzo bake.  This surprised me, last time, as to its depth of flavour and general niceness and seemed perfect for a "getting away from a roast" Sunday.

Which leaves the poor old packet of prawns that I'd bought for the prawn curry that we should have had on Monday (see Bournemouth Echo post as to why we didn't).  I'd bought everything required for a prawn curry - so, prawn curry it is!  Just a week late!

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