Diced pork with parsnips & celery in cider (oven version)

Yes, this is a pretty much identical dish to the slow cooker pork shoulder with parsnips & celery in cider - except cooked in the oven.

Sometimes, it's just easier to use a casserole dish in the oven than to break out the mighty weighty slow cooker (or crockpot) - especially when you're going to be indoors and available to keep a wether eye on the oven.  Today was just such a day and as I'd not cooked the pork this way before, I thought I'd indulge.

  

Instead of using the pork shoulder, I cheated unmercifully and bought 500g of diced pork which turned out to be lean and very acceptable indeed.  I shall use that again.

Aside from that, I used a different type of cider - Thatcher's Red Apple Cider.  It did give the dish a worryingly pink hue to begin with, however the colour cooked out as we went along.  The Red Apple Cider is a sweeter version than I would normally have chosen, but it worked very nicely.  I also increased the herbage in the recipe - using sage, thyme and rosemary to just offset the sweetness a tiny bit.  Our smoked salt helped a little there, too.

It sounds a bit like I made a totally different dish, having said all that - but it really isn't.  I served the pork with mashed potato and steamed vegetables (broccoli, carrots, baby corn and Brussels sprouts) and once again, it made a very good Sunday dinner.

Here is the recipe, just in case you too have a non-slow cooker day!

PORK WITH PARSNIPS & CELERY IN CIDER   (serves 3-4)

Ingredients :

2 tbsp olive oil
500g diced lean pork
a pinch of sea salt
a pinch or two of ground black pepper
1 onion, diced finely
2 celery sticks, chopped small
half a tsp dried thyme
half a tsp dried rosemary
half a tsp dried sage
1 large parsnip, peeled and sliced evenly
2 tbsp plain flour
500ml medium or dry cider
200ml stock (I used ham stock, but chicken, pork or veggie would do fine).

Method :

Heat the oil in a deep frying pan until very hot.  Add the pork (cooking in batches if needs be, so as not to overcrowd the pan), season with salt and pepper and fry until golden on at least two sides.  Remove the pork from the pan using a slotted spoon and decant into a casserole dish with a lid.

Replace the remains of the oil onto the heat and reduce the heat to moderate.

Add the onion, celery and herbs and fry until the onion is softened, but without colouring.

Add the parsnip pieces and fry to get some heat into them.

In a small bowl, mix the plain flour with a little of the cider - just enough to create a free running mixture.

Pour the remaining cider into the pan and add the stock.  Increase the heat under the pan and, while the liquid is heating, drizzle in the flour/cider mix.  Stir well to prevent lumps forming.

Continue to stir until the sauce thickens.  Taste for seasoning and adjust if necessary.

Decant into the casserole dish, stir to distribute the pork evenly then cover and place into a pre-heated oven at 180degC/350degF/Gas 4 for 1 hour.

At the end of the hour, give the contents of the casserole a stir and replace into the oven with the lid off.  The casserole can now continue to cook for a minimum of another half an hour, or as long as until the meat is tender and the parsnips cooked through.

Serve with mashed potato and steamed vegetables of your choice.

Printable version

Slow Cooker Braised Pulled Pork

Oh my goodness, but this Pulled Pork interest is turning up some cracking recipes!

This one came about because we just couldn't resist a piece of pork shoulder that had been marked down in Asda.  Needless to say, we put it straight into the freezer and then worked out what to do with it.

There was some interest in keeping it for Christmas, but when we thought about Christmas, there didn't seem to be a space for it in our plans.  Then, when son & heir's birthday hove into view and we needed to devote many pennies to that cause, we began to wonder what we had in the freezer that could be press-ganged into use.  The obvious thing to do with the pork was to just roast it and have it for Sunday lunch.

However, because the BBQ pulled pork that I'd made was so good, I was interested in carrying it a little bit sideways and maybe not involving so many flavours, but letting the pork speak for itself.

It was a big old piece - around 2kg - and so it would be perfect for this, as we could dress the leftovers any way we wanted with additional flavours and so transform the piece of pork into several dishes.

So it was decided.  I'd put the pork into the slow cooker with the normal collection of stock vegetables and we'd have a pulled pork roast dinner, then decide what to do with the rest another day.

Oh yes.  That worked - it worked beautifully.

I put the pork into the slow cooker at around 9.30 a.m. - accompanied by the usual suspects of carrots, celery, garlic, onion, parsley etc.  I kept the cooker on high all day, as it really was a very chunky piece of pork and I did want to pull it apart.

When it came time to remove the pork, my goodness but it was just falling apart.  Because I'd left the thick fat along the top, this had been slowly rendering down all day and trickling through the meat, keeping it succulent and juicy.

Now normally, I'd run the stock through a sieve and throw away the stock veggies - which always hurt, as they look so soft and unctuous after cooking with the meat.  It really is a wonder I hadn't thought of doing this myself - but I recently saw a lady on t.v. use a hand held blender to whizz the stock veggies into the stock for an incredibly tasty gravy.  This fits so well with my "don't waste a thing!" ethos that I had resolved to do the same the first chance I got.

So I picked out the woody stems of the herbs, plus the garlic.  I'm not that keen on heavily garlicked gravies and sauces - but feel free to leave them there if you try this and are very keen on garlic!  The stock veggies didn't argue and disappeared into a lovely russet coloured, enriched stock - which tasted absolutely divine.

I added a little Essential Cuisine Veal stock powder (just a small teaspoonful) to help bring out the meatiness, plus a little salt and pepper and it was ready for thickening into a gorgeous gravy.

I've frozen another two helpings of the stock, one to go with the other half of the pork - which I've also frozen - and another which may very well become soup!  Liquid gold!

The pork, with some gravy and a dot of apple sauce, was utterly gorgeous.  No other word for it.  Soft, tender, unctuous, well flavoured, sweet, savoury, tiny sour notes from the apples - just divine.

For me, this pork beat the BBQ version into a cocked hat.  Given the choice, I'd have this one any day - and BBQ it up, if I wanted it to go that way!

So the next time you have a piece of pork shoulder that you don't know what to do with, either break out the slow cooker, or put it in the bottom of the oven on low for some 8 hours or so.  You won't regret it!

SLOW COOKER BRAISED PULLED PORK  (serves 6-7)

Ingredients :

2kg piece of pork shoulder, fat and skin on
1 large carrot, sliced thickly
2 large celery sticks, chopped into large pieces
2 garlic cloves, still in their jackets but bashed with the back of a knife
1 onion, peeled and cut into 4 quarters
1 bunch parsley (around 10g)
1 bunch tarragon (around 10g)
1 Knorr chicken stock pot
1 Knorr herb infusion stock pot
sea salt & black pepper
1 tsp veal stock powder (optional)
cornflour.

Method :

1.  Fairly early in the morning, place the carrot pieces into the bottom of the slow cooker to form a trivet.

2.  Place the pork - skin side up - on the carrots.

3.  Throw the remaining ingredients except the stock pots, into the slow cooker with gay abandon.

4.  Make up the two stock pots (together in the same jug) with 800g hot water and decant into the slow cooker.

5.  Sprinkle the top of the pork with a tiny pinch of sea salt and a whole heap of black pepper.

6.  Put the lid on, turn it on to High and forget about it for the next 7 hours.

7.  Remove the lid and place the pork onto a warmed plate.  Cover with tin foil and leave to rest while you deal with the stock.

8.  Remove the garlic (unless you're particularly keen on garlicky gravy!) and the woody stems of the herbs and discard.

9.  Blitz with a hand-held blender until all the vegetables have disappeared.

10.  Decant as much of the stock as you anticipate you'll need for gravy into a saucepan.  the remainder can be cooled and frozen for use another day.

11.  To thicken the gravy, use approximately 1 tablespoonful of cornflour per third of the quantity of the stock.  So, if you're using all the stock, you'll need around 3 tablespoonfuls.  I used a third of the stock, so I used just the one tablespoonful.  Slake the cornflour with a little water, until you have a runny paste.

12.  Pour half the cornflour mixture into the gravy and begin to heat it through to a simmer, whisking all the time to prevent the gravy forming lumps.  Once it has thickened, you will be able to know how much of the remainder of the cornflour you will need to obtain your preferred thickness.

13.  Once the gravy is done, uncover the pork and carefully remove the skin and thick fat.  (You can hang this fat from the nearest tree for the birdies, once it has cooled.  It's also good entertainment for the local cats and dogs - who will sit beneath it trying to exercise telekinesis in order to get at it).  Begin to pull the meat apart into shreds.  This is a perfect opportunity to remove any lumpy bits of fat, which are quite unpleasant to discover on your fork.

14.  You can serve this pork in any way you so desire.  I served mine as part of a roast dinner.

Printable version

 

Slow Cooker BBQ Pulled Pork - perfect for winter!

I've been eyeing up various recipes for pulled pork for a very long time.  The reasons I hadn't got around to making it until now, were firstly because we didn't have a barbecue to cook it on and secondly, when we did have a barbecue, it rained.  And rained.  And threw it down - repeatedly.

Then, however, I saw a blog posting from a lady (forgive me, but I've forgotten who it was and on which blog I saw it - should've made a note!) who had experimented with cooking pulled pork in the slow cooker, with amazing results.

Bing!  Genius.

Now I'd have thought that the slow cooker would have resulted in the pork becoming too soft and not having that roasted flavour that is essential to a good pulled pork recipe.  How wrong was I?

So this Pulled Pork recipe was a bit of a major production in time, if not in effort.  Nope, it definitely didn't involve a lot of effort.  I simply prepared the pork by trimming it a little bit, then rubbed it with a whole heap of spices and flavours (chipotle chilli, English mustard, smoked paprika, garlic, brown sugar) and left it to marinate overnight.

What started out as one piece, fell into four after 12 hrs!

The following day, first thing in the morning, open up the slow cooker, open up the plastic bag in which the pork was marinating - and bung the contents into the cooker.  Tip half a jar of Mic's Chilli El Loco BBQ sauce over the poor confused piece of piggy - turn the cooker to low - and forget about it for the rest of the day.

Some 12 hours later, put some chips on to cook (deep fry them if you must - but oven baked curly fries did the job for us) and prepare your sub rolls.

Lift the pork from the slow cooker and pull it apart with two forks - just like you've seen them do it on the t.v.  Now - this is the tricky bit.  Try, really really hard, not to eat too much before you can get it onto the sub rolls.  Yes, I know it's difficult - so, so difficult - but this was intended to be a meal for the whole family with leftovers - remember?

See that apple sauce peeking out?  Yum.

Because I'm a rampant traditionalist at heart, I gave my sub rolls a liberal coating of apple sauce - and not the American type of apple sauce that is nigh on liquid, the type that has chunks of apple in it and is closer to a tart jam.  The pulled pork then went on top, with a scoop of the liquid from the slow cooker on top (and boy, that "sauce" was amazing!).

My menfolk eschewed the apple sauce version and went for a liberal coating of the El Loco BBQ Sauce on their rolls, with pork on top and the slow cooker juices poured on.

Oh my gawd, but it was good.

Now okay, I'll accept that it didn't have the charred flavour that you would have got from the barbecue, but there were so many deep and meaningful flavours going on there anyway, that we really didn't miss it.  I'm sure that, had we have finished the pork on the barbecue, it would have taken on a completely sublime flavour - but just straight from the slow cooker was pretty darned awesome.

So for people who don't have a garden, or a barbecue, you too can have pulled pork!  Either cook it - well wrapped - for 12 hours in an extremely low oven, or break out the slow cooker.

Oh my - just the memory of this pork is making my mouth water.  The weekend is coming - hi thee down to your local butcher and get a pork shoulder.  You'll be glad you did!

SLOW COOKER BBQ PULLED PORK   (serves 3-5)

Ingredients :

1kg boneless pork shoulder, trimmed of extraneous fat
1 chipotle chilli
1 tbsp English mustard powder
1 tbsp sweet smoked paprika
2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
half a tsp cayenne pepper
1 tbsp soft brown sugar
1 clove of garlic, grated
around 200ml of prepared BBQ sauce (as in Mic's Chilli El Loco BBQ Sauce).

Method :

1.  Into a large freezer bag (one large enough to take the pork as well), add all the dry ingredients and the garlic.  Mix well.

2.  Add the pork and seal the bag.  Then massage the meat through the bag, ensuring that the rub ingredients reach every single little bit of the meat.  Once well covered and well rubbed in, leave to marinate in the fridge for around 12 hours (overnight is best!).

You may well find it necessary to double bag the pork, to resist your fridge contents smelling of BBQ garlic!

3.  Take the pork out of the fridge and allow it to return to room temperature (around 30 minutes).

4.  Decant the pork straight from the bag into the slow cooker - along with any juices.

5.  Pour the barbecue sauce over the pork, ensuring it is well covered.

6.  Turn the slow cooker for low and leave for 12 hours.

7.  When done, remove from the cooker and cover with silver foil.  Allow to rest for 15 minutes or so, then pull apart with two forks to create the classic "pulled pork" look.

8.  Serve in baps or sub rolls, with apple sauce, additional BBQ sauce, some salad or anything you fancy additionally.  Don't forget to add a spoonful or two of the juices from the slow cooker on the top of the pork once it has been laid into the roll.

Delicious!

Printable version

 

 

Slow cooker pork shoulder with parsnips and celery in cider

This recipe marks something of a turning point in the seasons.  The weather, although we are still getting the occasional warm to hot day, is turning more towards the autumnal.  For the next week or so, we'll be in that betwixt and between twilight world of not knowing whether to serve a salad or a casserole.  I figure that the best thing is to serve a combination of both, although perhaps not on the same plate!

I've already returned back to having to wear a cardigan whilst blogging, as our flat has such thick walls that it can be really warm outside (literally, just outside the window by my left arm), but in here it's really quite cool.  I thank the powers that be for that when the temperatures are up in the thirties - I think I might die otherwise - but as I've got older  (watch out, I'll have my ear trumpet out next!) I find I notice the cold more.

 

So, when I discovered this pork recipe in the Good Food Magazine, it very much appealed to me.  I thought it looked like it was showing the promise of some lovely autumnal flavours, whilst being homely and comforting to eat.  However, I didn't want it to have to spend two and a half hours in an oven that is expensive to heat - which meant breaking out the slow cooker.

Consequently, I've changed the method of the recipe quite considerably to suit the slow cooker.  I would ordinarily link to the original recipe so that you have the choice of which recipe to use, but I can't find it online anywhere yet.  As time goes by, if anyone finds it online somewhere and would like to let me know, I'd be happy to link to it.

Hubby wasn't too sure at all about this recipe, as when he went to the butcher to buy the pork shoulder all the pieces in the shop seemed to be very fatty.  Still, he persevered and bought a good sized piece, but it did nothing to change his fear that the meat would be globby and covered in horrid fat.

Not our piece of pork, but it illustrates the degree of fat involved

When it came to trimming and cubing the meat, I saw what he meant, as the piece did indeed look a bit worryingly fatty.  However, once I'd removed the rind and a good percentage of the underlying fat, it looked a lot better.  I have found recently that I just can't do high fat meals in the way that I used to - my tummy seriously rebels!  Even plain old chips are a bit of a lottery these days, so I was very keen to remove as much fat as I could - bearing in mind that the dish needed a small amount of fat to keep the meat moist and juicy in the cooking.  Plus, as the dish was being cooked for some five hours, I felt there should be plenty of time for the small amount of fat that was left to render down.  So, accompanied by the three waggy tailed dustbins who were very happy to provide a home for any offcuts from the pork, I spent a happy fifteen minutes or so with a very sharp knife, trimming and cubing.

I don't really know what it is about trimming up meat, but I really enjoy it.  It may be the conversion of what appears to be a fairly "useless for the cause" chunk of meat into "perfect for the cause" pieces, but I find it really satisfying.  So do the dogs.  *chuckle*  In fact, Dustbin no. 1 - Jonty the Saluki - will appear out of nowhere as soon as he hears the butchery knife being removed from the knife block.

Getting back to the recipe, the end result was absolutely cracking.  I served it with some creamy mashed Maris Piper potatoes, Tenderstem broccoli, carrots and peas, for our Sunday dinner.  Even cautious hubby declared that it was "delicious" and cleared his plate.

It was one of those simple dishes that isn't made up of a huge amount of ingredients, but every ingredient just works with all the others.  There was no need to think "next time, I'd add this or leave that out", it was just perfect right the way it was.  Sometimes, those simple recipes are just the best.  So it was with this one.


SLOW COOKER PORK SHOULDER WITH PARSNIPS & CELERY IN CIDER   (feeds 3-4)

Ingredients :

2 tbsp rapeseed oil
1kg pork shoulder, trimmed and cubed
2 onions, sliced
2 celery sticks, cut into 1cm pieces
3 small parsnips, cut into chunky pieces
2 bay leaves
1 tbsp plain flour
330ml bottle of cider
500ml approx of pork or chicken stock.

Method :

1.   Heat 1 tbsp of the rapeseed oil in a frying pan until very hot, then add the cubes of pork and quickly brown on all sides.  Try to achieve a good colour on the cubes, but without burning.  Decant the cubes into your slow cooker (or crockpot), turn to low and replace the lid.

2.  Reduce the heat to medium and add the remaining tablespoonful of rapeseed oil to the frying pan and add the onions, celery and bay leaves.  Cook until the onions are softened and beginning to turn golden brown.  The celery should have softened by now too.  Decant the lot into the slow cooker and replace the lid.

3.  Put the parsnip pieces into the frying pan and stir fry them until they have achieved some colour on at least two sides, then decant them into the slow cooker and replace the lid.

4.  To the frying pan, add the cider and the stock and season well with freshly ground black pepper and a pinch of salt.

5.  While the liquid is heating up, place the flour into a small bowl, add a tablespoonful or so of water and mix until all the lumps are gone.  Drizzle this into the cider/stock mixture and stir consistently to prevent lumps forming.   The gravy should begin to thicken, so continue to stir until you are happy with the consistency.

6.  Decant the gravy into the slow cooker and stir the contents to mix it through and settle them into an even layer.  Turn the slow cooker to high, replace the lid and leave it to chuckle for the next 5 hours.

7.  Before serving, taste for seasoning and adjust if necessary.  Then check that the gravy is the correct consistency for your taste.  If the gravy requires further thickening, then place a tablespoonful of cornflour into a small bowl.  Slake it by adding a small amount of water and drizzle it into the slow cooker, stirring quickly all the time.

Serve with mashed potato, carrots and a green vegetable of your choice.

Printable version.

Slow roasted, fennel seed & black pepper rubbed shoulder of pork.

I might as well come right out and say it - but pork is one of my favourite meats.  I reckon lamb is top of the heap, beef a close run second and pork is there, very definitely trying to shoulder the beef out of the way.

Talking to the lady in the butcher's, she was saying that pork is her favourite yet she doesn't really like bacon.  Oddly enough, hubby is exactly the other way inclined.  He adores bacon in all its forms, yet can take or leave pork.  Me, I'd have a hunk of roast pork over a hunk of roast bacon, any day - although if you waft a bacon sandwich under my nose, there may be a battle.

So anyway, we hadn't had a roast dinner for a while and I'd been yearning for a piece of pork belly done in Chinese spices and chilli.  Now unless I make that for myself (which isn't beyond the realms of possibility) it just isn't going to happen in our house, owing to the two chaps being so fat phobic.  (It's a wonder they put up with having me around the place, thinking on!).

Then, when I was pondering on the cheaper cuts of pork (I'm a great proponent of making use of the under-utilised cuts that the general public seem to be shunning, these days) that I could roast, I remembered the slow roasted shoulder.  I'd seen a number of recipes indicating that slow roasting of a pork shoulder was infinitely do-able and with good results from the chaps' point of view.  The slow roasting means that a good deal of the fat has rendered out of the meat (apart from the thick layer under the skin) and the resultant meat is juicy and not in any way dry, whilst producing a good crackling.  Sounded perfect!

What sounded even better, was the price.  At £3.88 a kilogram, you just couldn't go wrong.  Now, when I'm making a casserole or suchlike, I generally reckon that anything from 500g upwards will suffice.  However, I did have an extra mouth to feed, as son & heir would be having his friend J over and he would be there for dinner.  I was just crossing my fingers that J was a good eater, having had recent experience of one of son & heir's friends who didn't know what a Scotch Egg was and had never eaten a fried egg sandwich.  So, I went for just over a kilogram, so as to (hopefully) leave a little bit to have in a sandwich with apple sauce the next day.  My own little hog roast.

I ground up the fennel seeds with four black peppercorns and some salt in my pestle & mortar.  This lovely fragrant mixture got rubbed into the flesh of the pork and, after a dousing in white wine vinegar, into the skin for interesting crackling.

From there, it was a matter of putting into a pre-heated oven at 220deg C (fan) for 30 minutes, after which the oven was turned down to 140deg C (fan), the roast was covered in tin foil and left to think about life for the next two hours.

The oven is then turned back up to 200deg C (fan) and the meat is swathed in tin foil, but ensuring that the crackling is left uncovered.  This helps to keep the meat moist whilst the crackling receives a final crackle-up in a hot oven for 20-30 mins.  It's convenient, because this coincides with your wanting to put the roast potatoes in the oven at a greater temperature and you can do the two at once.

The meat just fell apart and tasted divine.  Son & heir's friend J declared the dinner to be the best he'd ever tasted, apart from his Mum's roast dinner, and even dedicated a little song to it.  Now there's a vote of appreciation!

Menu plan : 31 May - 6 June 2011

Here we are again with the meal plan for this coming week and already we're two days into it.  Mind you, we did take one day out to drive around the New Forest and see this year's crop of foals, which was a lovely sunny day which everyone enjoyed.  We took a picnic and stopped at Bolderwood where they've got a well organised picnic area with loos and even an ice cream stand.

This week's menu is following on with the lighter, less calorific, fresher meals - well, as much as is possible!

One deviation from this is Saturday's curry, which is taken from the Gurkha part of the British Army Cookbook - a copy of which (just the Gurkha part, not all of it!) was given to me by the generous Willie who I am sure you will have noticed in the comments sections of my blogs.  Goodness only knows where he got it from - and we won't ask.  ~taps the side of her nose knowingly~  LOL

So, this is how the week's menu has shaped up :

Tuesday : Chicken Jhalfrezi, basmati rice and Peshwari naan

Wednesday : Turkey meatballs in tomato & fennel sauce, with wholemeal pasta & doughballs

Thursday : Chilli Prawn Noodles

Friday : Paprika chicken with Jacket Potatoes

Saturday : Fried Pork Curry with sauce & mushroom rice

Sunday : Pork Shoulder, roast potatoes, carrots, corn on the cob, spring greens & apple sauce

Monday : Chilli con carne & rice.

As I am writing this on the Wednesday evening, we have already sampled the Chicken Jhalfrezi, which was spectacularly successful.  I was a little bit dubious about it, as it was a "healthier" recipe which didn't sound like any curry I'd ever produced.  Not that that's a bad thing - it's always good to learn new techniques.  I was just a little concerned that it would be a bit left-field for the menfolk.

The curry itself was made with chicken marinated in yoghurt, tomato puree, chilli and lemon juice.  You cook the onion and green pepper and add the marinated chicken, cooking the whole thing until fairly dry.  Then - and this was the left field bit - you serve the curry on a bed of salad leaves (I chose watercress, although spinach would be good too) that have been dressed in lemon juice & sea salt.

It was, as they say, blindin'.

This evening's fare was a dish of home-made meatballs in a tomato & fennel sauce.  The meatballs were made with turkey mince which is as economical as it is gentle in flavour.  However, with a clove of garlic, some breadcrumbs and lemon zest - not to mention a good hit of sea salt & freshly ground black pepper - a fairly uninteresting pack of mince turned into some cracking good meatballs.  The sauce was great - the fennel seeds gave it an interesting fragrance and a hint of aniseed on your tongue.  I'll be blogging this one once I've done the Jhalfrezi!

Thursday is hubby's night to cook and he's trotting out his famous Chilli Prawn Noodles.  I can't wait, as I really enjoy this dish - and we've a few interesting ingredients in the cupboard now that we didn't have previously.  Hubby may opt to stay with the approved recipe - but with things like Mirrin and Fish Sauce just sitting there, they'd be hard to resist.

Friday brings the second attempt at the Paprika chicken that got bumped from last week's menu.  Fingers crossed, it makes it this week.

Saturday is Ghurka curry night and, because I couldn't rustle up 10 or 50 friends to come and share, I'll be having an interesting time scaling the British Army's recipes down to suit 3 of us!

I'm really looking forward to Sunday's roast.  I haven't done a roast for a few weeks now and have been yearning for a piece of pork.  I figure a slow-roasted piece of shoulder will fit the bill perfectly.  I've managed to accumulate enough dripping in my fat cup for roast potatoes, and we'll be having Chantenay carrots, corn on the cob and spring greens.  I'll try to avoid doing Yorkshire puddings, in the interests of keeping the whole thing on the lighter side of "thumping great roast dinner".

Which brings us back to Monday, when we'll be trotting out another old favourite - Chilli con Carne.  Well, it is possible to make it without incurring the wrath of the calorie police, plus Son & heir really enjoys a good chilli.  It won't be the mega-chilli of late, which involves beef shin, but a more demure version using minced beef.  I've got a few aces up my sleeve that were used in the mega-chilli, so it'll be interesting to see how they translate in the more demure version!

So there we are.  It would seem as though meat-free Monday has taken a bit of a back seat again, which is very naughty of me.  I'll have to do better for next week!

.