Hot and spicy pork steaks

As I had a whole packet of Scotch Bonnet peppers left over from the Trinidadian Prawn Curry, I was alert to anything that required a chilli pepper - and Spicy Pork Steaks were on the menu.

I'm now not quite so scared of the Scotch Bonnets.  Mine are only small, so it is easy not to over-chilli just by using a half.  I am terrible for doing the "I've cut this much off, so I'll use this much, even if it's too much", because I can't bear the idea of the waste.  Which is bizarre, because if a recipe says "half a chilli pepper", then (if it won't keep nicely and it's something small) I've no compunction in throwing the other half away.  I don't understand myself, sometimes.  In fact, in this incarnation, I could easily have used the other half of the Scotch Bonnet as it was hot and spicy, but on a scale of 1-10, registered at around a 4-5.

I love pork in all its different cuts.  I am not one of these people who are put off by the presence of fat in meat and can eat a degree of fat, i.e. on a pork chop, or in slow roasted belly of pork.  Unfortunately, (for me, that is!) both hubby and son are those sorts of people, so we don't get to have pork very often as all the cheaper cuts are laden with fat.

Every so often, though, I find a recipe that will do well with the pork steaks from our local butcher and I get to have a pork fix.  I usually cut the majority of the fat from the chaps' portions and leave the fat on mine - which helps with the overall flavour and gives me a little porky fat moment.

So, when I made the Spiced Chicken Legs by Galton Blackiston recently, it occurred to me that the recipe would potentially be good with pork.  So I gave it a whirl, this week.

Regrettably, I had used up all the fresh coriander in the Trinidadian Prawn Curry (forgetting I'd need some for the pork dish), so had to think a little bit sideways.

I used Galton's recipe as a base and differed from it in that I substituted half a Scotch Bonnet pepper for the large red chillies, used orange juice because we'd run out of apple juice (that'll be the Tequila Cocktails that did that!) and included two tablespoonfuls of honey instead of the coriander.

I debated adding a little vinegar and going down the sweet and sour route, but the marinade was all getting a little bit too liquid by then (I should have reduced the amount of orange juice) so opted not to.

However, what turned out was really very nice indeed.

The marinade was certainly hot - no doubt about the Scotch Bonnet in there! - but perfectly acceptable and in the oven, had reduced down to a sticky glaze that coated the pork steaks.  When I do this one again (and there will be another time!) I will turn the steaks part way through cooking and baste them with the marinade, to take advantage of its stickiness.

The edges of the pork steaks had caramelised beautifully in the oven too, which gave a lovely flavour to both the marinade and the pork - my favourite bits!

I served the steaks with baked jacket sweet potatoes (and an ordinary potato for son & heir, who has decided he's not keen on sweet potatoes) which had a lime & chilli sour cream dressing, (made by including a finely chopped sweet red chilli & zest of half a lime plus some salt & pepper into a pot of sour cream, so couldn't be easier!) plus some garden peas.  Yummy!

HOT AND SPICY PORK STEAKS  (feeds 3)

Ingredients :

6 pork steaks
4 tbsp tomato ketchup
2 cloves garlic, grated
1 Scotch Bonnet chilli pepper, minus seeds (or 2 red chilli peppers)
1 tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
100ml orange juice
2 tbsp runny honey
sea salt & freshly ground black pepper.


Method :


1.  In a large bowl, mix together the tomato ketchup, garlic, chilli, Worcestershire sauce, orange juice and honey, to make the marinade.


2.  Dunk in the pork steaks and leave to marinade for as long as possible - at least an hour.


3.  Pre-heat your oven to 200deg C/400deg F/Gas 6.


4.  Fish out each pork steak and lay them into a baking dish.  Cover with the remains of the marinade, making sure that each steak is liberally coated.


5.  Roast for around 25-35 minutes, until the pork is tender, the marinade has turned sticky and the corners of the steaks have begun to caramelise.  It may well be worth turning the steaks and re-coating with the marinade part way through the cooking.


6.  Serve.


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Slow Cooked Pork with Celeriac and Orange

I seem, purely by chance, to have come up with a selection of dishes that have either divided the audience or just plain old repelled them.  Well, all except for me, that is.  I've liked and enjoyed the majority!

One such is the Slow Cooked Pork with Celeriac and Orange, which I found on the BBC's Good Food website and is by Barney Desmazery.

This is a simple dish, to be eaten with crusty bread.  The problem with it - from the chaps' point of view, was two-fold.

Firstly (and I agree with them, but it didn't affect my enjoyment of it) was that it had too much orange.  The zest from an entire orange goes in (and I'm glad I didn't zest the entire orange - I left out its top and tail) plus orange juice.  If I were to do this one again (which I won't, because of the chaps' reactions), I'd just put two or three strips of orange zest into the mix.  I've reflected that in the recipe - but if you like orange, then go ahead and put more.

Secondly (and this was just hubby's preference), if a dish has a gravy or sauce or broth that's thinner than double cream consistency, then he doesn't want to know.  As this dish's broth is very much just that - a broth - he didn't like it.  In fact, I believe it was dubbed "pond water".  *sigh*  I liked it - but then I'm quite happy with broth-like gravies and sauces, so long as they're full of flavour.  Which this one was - but it was largely orange!

I loved the texture of the leek, the sweetness of the carrots and the flavour of the celeriac.  The pork had a tendency to be a tiny bit dry though, which I put down to my conversion from an oven-baked dish to a slow cooker dish, in that I just plain old cooked it a bit too long.  I've reflected that aspect in the recipe, too - so you shouldn't have any problem with that now.

As I'm watching my intake of carbohydrates, I didn't indulge in the accompanying bread and have to say that I didn't miss it.  If you felt that the dish was a little light on vegetables, you could easily add mushroom, parsnip, peas or shredded cabbage (at the last minute, with the peas and cabbage!) without compromising the flavours at all.

SLOW COOKED PORK WITH CELERIAC & ORANGE  (serves 3)
 
Ingredients :

2-3 leeks (depending on size) washed & trimmed, each cut into 5 pieces
a handful of Chantenay carrots top & tailed, or 2 carrots peeled and cut to match the size of the leeks
2 tbsp olive oil
600g boneless pork (I used pork loin steaks) cut into decent sized pieces
1 small celeriac, peeled and diced into large chunks
1 garlic clove, chopped
150ml dry white wine
150ml chicken stock
juice of 1 orange
3 strips of orange zest, cut with a peeler
2 tsp soy sauce
a large sprig of rosemary.

Method :

1.  In a large frying pan, heat the oil and once it's hot add the pork and leave it to brown.

2.  Once the pork has browned, using a slotted spoon, decant it into the slow cooker and turn it on to low.

3.  Add the leeks, carrots and celeriac to the frying pan (you may need to do this in batches, in which case add a little more oil) and cook until they start to show browning.  Add each batch to the slow cooker.

4.  Add the garlic to the last batch of vegetables and cook for a minute or so, then add it to the slow cooker.

5.  Into the frying pan, to deglaze it and make the most of the lovely flavours, add the wine, stock, orange juice, orange zest, and soy sauce.  Bring to the boil and cook for 2-3 minutes.

6.  Then season with salt & pepper, add the rosemary sprig and decant into the slow cooker.

7.  Give the contents of the slow cooker a stir to settle everything in together, then replace the lid and cook on high for 3 hours.

Serve with crusty bread, for mopping up the lovely juices.

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Sweet and Sour Pork

I made this recipe for our Tuesday evening meal because son & heir hath decreed that he "doesn't really like that sort of vegetable thing".   He also doesn't really like anything with vinegar in it - he's definitely not keen on sour flavours (unless they're involving something made by Haribo, of course).

So he had a pizza (which made him happy) and I made the sweet and sour pork for hubby and I - and it was gorgeous.

I found the recipe on the terrific Adora's Box blog, which has been the source of two or three really successful recipes, now.  I love it when you find a blog which contains recipes that you know are going to be tried and tested and, from the write-up, you know are likely to taste this way, or that way.  Makes meal planning so much easier!

Our local butcher supplies six pork steaks for £2.99, which is amazingly good value, especially considering that they are cut from a loin and not from the shoulder.  I used four of these steaks for the two of us as they are cut quite thinly.  Even so, I should really have beaten them out a wee bit thinner as I'm sure they'd have been more tender if I had have done so.  Being loin steaks, they are easy to remove the fat from as well.  Often, I'll include the fat in the pan as I cook the steaks as the fat lends so much flavour, removing it at serving to keep for the dogs.  However, this time I didn't use it as I didn't want to lose the pieces of fat in the general melange of vegetables.  That wouldn't have gone down terribly well at all, if hubby had've found a big old globby piece of fat in his dinner!

The flavour is very definitely sweet and sour.  However, it is a gentler, more rounded flavour combination than one very often finds in these sorts of dishes.  I suspect it is a combination of the velveting of the pork to begin with (coating in soy, sesame oil and cornflour) and the small amount - 1 tablespoon - of white wine or cider vinegar used.  It is enough to create the sour flavour, but not enough to catch at the back of your throat.

Of course, the peppers are lovely in this and I included four or five chestnut mushrooms too - which were a complete joy.  I'm quite sure you could up the vegetable quantity by including carrot, baby corn, baby courgettes, water chestnuts and pak choi, if you wanted.  Certainly the quantity of meat versus the quantity of vegetable matter was weighing heavily in the meat's direction.  Not saying this is a bad thing, just putting the idea out there.

I served ours with plain white rice which was perfectly acceptable, but I'm sure that if you didn't want to include the pak choi in the main dish, some steamed pak choi would be very welcome by the side.

The next time I make this - and there will be a next time (see below!), as I love sweet and sour pork - I shall include son & heir in on the deal.  I can't see that there was anything about the dish that he could have disliked, other than the fact that it included some sort of vegetable matter.  But then, he'll be hard pressed if he thinks he's going to get away with eating no vegetable for the rest of his life!  As they say on LOLCats "aisodon'tthinkso".

18 April 2013 : I made the sweet and sour pork again last night - and this time fed it to son & heir too.  He wasn't overly impressed (and asked, in the preparation, whether "it would contain those stir fry vegetables and stuff") but he did eat it.  Well, everything except the small pieces of broccoli and he wasn't alone in that as his Dad picked those out and left them too.  According to hubby, "broccoli has no place in a sweet and sour".  Well I enjoyed my bits of broccoli, as I really like the way the fluffy head gathers up the sauce!  Tasted yummy in my opinion.  But there we are, we're all different.  Hubby did declare the remainder to be "really good", so I'm not arguing.

I didn't have any mushrooms this time, but I did have a tin of water chestnuts, which were really really good in it.  The butcher had gone mad and gave us a full kilogram of pork steaks, so I had enough left for lunch today.  With the addition of a little Mic's Chilli El Loco BBQ sauce and a few of the leftover water chestnuts, it was a perfectly delicious lunch treat.

SWEET & SOUR PORK  (serves 2)

Ingredients :

400 gm. pork, thinly sliced
3 tbsps. light soy sauce
1 tbsps. brown sugar
1 tsp. sesame oil
2 tsps. corn flour
1 medium onion
2 stalks of spring onions
1/4 cup each of sweet green and red pepper, cut into squares
1/2 cup tinned pineapple tidbits or chunks
1/4 cup syrup from the tinned pineapple
1 tbsp. white wine or cider vinegar
2 tbsps. tomato ketchup
3 tbsps. honey
3 tbsps. cooking oil

Method :

1.  In a bowl, mix the pork with the light soy sauce, brown sugar, sesame oil and the corn flour.  Mix very well then set aside while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

2.  Heat up a wok until very hot. Add 2 tbsps. of the cooking oil and swirl around to coat the wok.

3.  Add the pork and stir fry on a high heat for about 5 minutes or until the liquid that comes out of the pork is re-absorbed.

4.  If necessary, add the last tbsp. of oil (I didn't need to) and stir fry until the pork is glossy and dry. Add the vinegar, ketchup, pineapple syrup, honey, onions and peppers.

5.  Keep stirring until the mixture comes to a boil. Keep the heat high. When the peppers and onions are half done (about 3 minutes), add 1/2 cup of water around the pork to deglaze the pan (again, I didn't need to do this as my pan is a new non-stick and there was nothing to deglaze).

6.  Add the spring onions and the pineapple pieces. Simmer for 2 minutes then turn the heat off.

Serve.

Printable version

Crunchy Baked Pork, Baked Sweet Potato and Tomato Salad

It's a bit of a long title that one, isn't it?  However, the title is the hardest part of this meal - and I'll treat it as a meal, rather than three separate dishes, as it all went so well together.  With no pots or pans to wash up, this one is definitely a winner in my book!

To begin with, I set to with scrubbing the sweet potatoes.  Their skins never appeal as far as eating them is concerned - although they're very tasty, in fact - but I like to make sure they're scrupulously clean, all the same.  I always top and tail them too, as these bits always seem so gnarly, I can imagine dirt can't help but hide in there.  If I was dirt, I would.

I then dry them off, rub them with olive oil, liberally sprinkle with salt & pepper and into the oven they go for their first half an hour.

Next, I tackled the pork steaks - which was easy enough.  They just needed the bulk of the fat trimming from their backs and they were good to go.  Dustbin 1 (Jonty) was on hand for this operation, just in case there wasn't enough room in the actual bin for the offcuts.  He's a thoughtful dawgie, like that.

Next job was to make up the flour/egg/breadcrumb plates.  The flour was easy enough, or so I thought.  It seems that the abortive gnocchi attempt had used up all our plain flour, but fortunately we had lots of bread flour, which got used instead.

I consulted the recipe (which again, I can't remember where I got it from.  I am SO going to have to keep a note of recipe sources)  as to how much dijon mustard to use in the egg mix.  I had copied down three tablespoonfuls!  Surely not!  I pondered this for a while, then decided on three teaspoonfuls as being the far more sensible alternative.  As it was, I would only use two teaspoonfuls in future, as it had far too obvious an influence on the overall flavour, I felt.

Next, was the breadcrumbs, garlic and herbs.  I quickly ran two slices of Oatilicious bread across the grater to create the 1 cup of breadcrumbs.  Next, I grated two cloves of garlic in there, then chopped a tablespoonful of fresh parsley and a teaspoonful of dried tarragon.  If I could have found fresh tarragon, I'd have used it.  However, Mr Asda hadn't heard of fresh tarragon, so that was that.  In retrospect, I'd cut the garlic down to one clove, as it did tend to slap you around the face a bit.  Between the garlic and the mustard, I'm afraid the tarragon took a very back seat - which wasn't how it was supposed to be, I'm sure!

So, on with the dipping.  First in the flour, then the egg mix, then onto the breadcrumbs.  It occurred to me then, that I had no idea whether I was supposed to be breadcrumbing one side or both sides.  Although the one side I had done, had used an enormous amount of the breadcrumb mixture and I really wasn't sure it would last for all six.  Still, it didn't seem to make sense to do just one side, so after a bit of judicious dusting off, I breadcrumbed both sides.  In fact, I ran out of breadcrumbs towards the end and the last two had just one side breadcrumbed - so I'd make a little more, the next time I do this one.

Something else that I would make sure to do, is to turn the steaks halfway through cooking.  Because I didn't do this, one side was crunchy and the other a tad soggy - which was a shame.  However, you live and learn.

Once the Pork was safely in the oven and the Sweet Potatoes had been turned, I got on with the Tomato Salad.  It was a simple matter of slicing two large vine ripened tomatoes and some cherry tomatoes.  Then add liberal amounts of freshly ground pepper, a sprinkling of sea salt, a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and likewise of extra virgin olive oil.  Next, slice up a red onion and sprinkle that over the top, along with a little of the parsley - or basil, if you've got it.  Leave to let the flavours mingle for some 15-20 minutes before serving.

So, the last thing to do was the Chilli cream to go in the Baked Sweet Potatoes.  Again, this is incredibly easy.  Decant a small pot of soured cream into a bowl, add finely chopped fresh red chilli and some finely chopped parsley.  There is an alternative, which involves coriander instead of the parsley and lime zest.  I love this particular version, however son & heir isn't good with lime, so we had the parsley version.

I loved this meal, even though the Pork was way too garlicky for my taste.  Hubby had problems with the garlic too, and found the Pork wasn't tender enough for his preference.  He loved the Baked Sweet Potato and chilli cream, plus the tomatoes.  Son & heir ate everything except the last half of his sweet potato, which was incredible considering what a fussy-pants he's becoming.  He even ate the cherry tomatoes with balsamic on them!  Mind you, I didn't tell him about the balsamic.  *wink*  I thought I'd just wait and see.

So, apart from the problems I've outlined above, I think next time I'd flatten out two of the steaks in the hope that they would be able to become more tender during the cooking process.  I can't think of any other way of ensuring they come up more tender that doesn't include par-cooking them before adding the egg and breadcrumb mix, which isn't the best route!

Here's the recipe for the Pork, if you need the recipe for either the potatoes or the tomato salad, just let me know and I'll include them.

CRUNCHY BAKED PORK (feeds 3)

Ingredients :

6 pork steaks, or 3 pork chops
1 cup of plain flour
1 egg, whisked lightly
2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 cup of breadcrumbs
1 clove garlic, grated
1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
1 tbsp chopped fresh tarragon
sea salt & freshly ground black pepper.

Method :

1.  Pre-heat your oven to 180deg C/350 deg F/Gas mark 4.

2.  Trim the pork of the majority of its fat and prepare a roasting tray to receive it once coated with breadcrumbs.

3.  Then, prepare three plates - one with the flour, plus some seasoning.  The second with the egg and mustard mixture and the last with the breadcrumbs, garlic and herbs.

4.  Dip each steak or chop into firstly the flour, then the egg, then the breadcrumbs and place it onto the roasting tray.

5.  Once every one is coated, place the roasting tray into the oven for 15 minutes.  At the end of that time, remove from the oven and flip over onto its other side.  Replace and bake for another 15-20 minutes, or until they appear to be done.

6.  Serve.

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Three taste sensations in one dinner! Pork with rhubarb BBQ sauce and baked sweet potatoes.

The three taste sensations are :

1.  The rhubarb barbecue sauce;
2.  The baked sweet potatoes;
3.  The chilli cream that went in the sweet potatoes.

(And the pork was pretty special, too!  The salad, well, it was salad.  What can I say?).

Let's deal with the barbecue sauce first.

I put "BBQ Pork" on the menu list for this week, fully expecting to do my usual chilli/soy/honey mix for the pork steaks.  However, in browsing food blogs during the week I spotted a recipe for Rhubarb Barbecue Sauce from IslandVittles.com.  As I am sure you will appreciate (from the title of the blog, if nothing else!) any recipe involving rhubarb and I'm interested.  (I've also bookmarked their Rhubarb Gin for future reference).

It looked, from the recipe, as though it could be a bit of a fiddle to make.  However, it was rhubarb and deserved further investigation.  In fact, I couldn't have been more wrong.  The recipe (available on the IslandVittles.com blogsite) is easy peasy to make, involving chopping rhubarb and onion, then a bit of frying and mixing (sugar and tomato paste), followed by boiling and simmering (with herbs & spices), then a bit more mixing (with Dijon mustard, cider vinegar and honey).  Couldn't have been any easier.  Because I was making a half-size batch, I didn't simmer mine for the full hour as it seemed to be quite thick enough at around a half an hour.

I, too, used a stainless steel tea ball for the bouquet garni ingredients.  Well, all except the bay leaf which was easy enough to extract at the end.  I didn't have a whole dried chilli, so just included some dried chilli flakes into the tea ball.  One other difference was that as I can't abide cloves, I used a star anise which also went into the tea ball.  I reckon that tea ball was a genius idea for using whole spices which you ultimately want to extract - and I may well use it again in curries.

The end result was a Barbecue Sauce of some considerable character.  Tasted on its own, it definitely made your taste buds sit up and take notice, but when smoothed onto pork steaks, it moved from "great" to "superb".

I heartily commend it to you, especially as we are in the height of Barbecue season.  We must be, it's raining!

So, the second taste sensation was the baked sweet potatoes.  Why have we never considered baking a sweet potato before now?  We kept asking ourselves this last night, as we were tucking into that gorgeous sweet orange flesh that went so well with the Barbecue pork.

After all, they are easy enough to prepare for baking - a simple wash under the tap and a good old scrub with a potato brush and they're ready to be rubbed in olive oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper and into the oven they go.  No different to a normal baked potato.

I was anticipating them taking around an hour, but in fact (as they were fairly small ones) they only took three-quarters of an hour to bake.  They looked a bit deflated and collapsed after baking, plus there was a worrying amount of baked-on sticky juice underneath them that made them look as though they'd been welded to the silver foil.  However, they came free from their moorings without any difficulty and held their shape to be transferred to the plate.  I had visions of them collapsing half-way.

Which brings about the next flavour sensation, which was the chilli cream which was used as a topping.  Boy, but did it go well with the sweetness of the potato flesh!  Goodness, but my mouth is watering with the memory.

It's a simple enough recipe, simply take a pot of soured cream and add the grated zest from a lime, a chopped red chilli (I abandoned the seeds) and some chopped coriander.  Add a little salt and pepper and mix.  Hey presto - chilli cream for use in baked sweet potatoes.

With a side salad of mixed leaves, beetroot, cherry tomatoes, radish, olives and red pepper, we ate like kings last night - and I can't believe how good for us it all was.  The pork was trimmed, so was virtually fat free.  Hence, the only fat was in the chilli cream - which was a teaspoonful or so and the small amount of olive oil that went into the Barbecue sauce.  I suppose there was sugar in the Barbecue sauce and natural sugars in the sweet potato, but other than that, it had to have been good for us. If it wasn't, please don't burst my bubble.  *chuckle*

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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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Pork steaks with rhubarb : chinese style!

I guess that title has probably put at least 50% of you off reading this recipe, but if you got this far do please read on - it's very worth it!

Ruby - growing well, but before she went for world domination

I was very keen to make the most of the butcher's special offer regarding the pork steaks, plus Ruby our rhubarb plant has been growing like a proverbial weed and needed cropping.  You might think "main course and dessert", but if you're me, you think "how can I combine the two"?

I had a recipe for braised pork with plums which I'd been hanging onto with a view to making some day soon and, having had a bit of a review of it, began to consider the concept of replacing the plums with rhubarb.  There wasn't any other ingredient that would clash with the rhubarb and I felt that the astringency would sit well beside the pork and in place of the plums.

I had another potential area of difference with regard to the original recipe, over cooking time.  The recipe recommended cooking for 2 hours, although it was dealing with pork shoulder - and I had pork loin.  I knew if I cooked the loin steaks for too long, they stood the chance of being like shoe leather.  However, if I didn't give them long enough to render down any areas of fat (even following on from a judicious trimming), neither of my chaps would be able to eat it.  The saving grace, in this instance, was the oven temperature, which the recipe recommended at 140deg C (fan).  I reckoned that if I kept a lid on the casserole dish, at that temperature, covered in sauce, the steaks would (hopefully) come out without damage.  As it turned out, the meat was perfectly tender and without a scrap of fat to cause confusion and dismay.  (Thomas the Tank engine reference there - did you get it?)

There was also required to be some juggling where the timings for cooking was concerned.  It required two hours, so let's allow some three quarters of an hour preparation time (other people could do it quicker, but it takes time when you're sitting down for some reason), so probably three hours would see it right.  So, we would eat at 6pm so three hours would take us back to 3pm - the trouble is, I needed to be out at 2.30pm on an errand, which was right in the midst of prep. time.  The only thing for it, was to prep. the dish right up until the "putting in the oven" stage, minus the rhubarb, then put it in the oven when I returned - all of which worked like a charm.

I served the dish with plain white rice, but it was crying out for some vegetable involvement.  Next time - and there will be a next time - I'll cook some mushrooms with the pork and maybe some baby corn.  Perhaps I might even go mad and steam some Pak Choi to serve alongside.

CHINESE STYLE PORK STEAKS WITH RHUBARB (Serves 3)

Ingredients :

3 pork steaks or 800g pork shoulder, diced
3 tbsp mirrin or rice wine
3 tbsp soy sauce
2cm piece of root ginger, grated
2 garlic cloves, grated
a red chilli, deseeded and chopped
2 tbsp vegetable oil
a small onion, chopped fine
a star anise
1 heaped tsp Chinese five-spice powder
1 cinnamon stick
1 tbsp granulated sugar
half a tbsp tomato puree
250ml chicken stock
2 large sticks of rhubarb, trimmed and cut into 2cm chunks.

Method :

1.  Heat oven to 160deg C/140deg C fan/gas 3 (or not, if you're doing the two-stage preparation method).

2.  Heat the oil in a large frying pan.  Tip in the onions, ginger, chilli and garlic, star anise, five spice powder and cinnamon.  Fry until fragrant and soft.

3.  Stir in the sugar, then increase the heat and add the pork.  Turn in the oniony mix until the meat is just sealed, but not browned.

4.  Add the mirrin and soy sauce, tomato puree and stock.  Stir well and decant into a casserole dish and cover.  Then either place to one side to cook later, or place into the oven to cook for 1 hr.

5.   After the hour is up, remove from the oven and add the chopped rhubarb.  Stir well to combine, then replace in the oven uncovered, to cook for a further hour.

6.  At the end of that hour, if the sauce is still fairly thin (the rhubarb will have added to the juices as it cooks), simply separate the meat from the liquid then pour the liquid into a small saucepan and reduce until you're happy with its consistency.

7.  Pour the sauce over the meat and serve.

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