Roast Spiced Hedgehog of Pork with Gooseberry sauce

Roasting a hedgehog?  Whatever next!  Oh, don't panic - I've not gone THAT exotic - my "Hedgehog" was a piece of hedgehog cut pork - i.e. hatch marks had been cut across the top surface of the piece of pork topside.

Farmer's Choice (Free Range) Ltd  contacted me again and asked whether I would like to devise a recipe for them to use on their new Facebook page for the Dorset and Bournemouth area (Farmers Choice Bournemouth & Dorset).  Naturally, I said yes please!  After all, the produce from Farmer's Choice is so good, why would anyone in their right mind turn them down?

Perfectly roasted and ready to carve

I, pretty much straight away, knew what I was going to go for.  I had been playing about in an imaginary way, with a recipe for spiced roast pork with a gooseberry sauce.  I'd been hoping that our little gooseberry bush would come up with the goods, but regrettably the birdies got there first.

Ready for the oven

I had also been waiting for a suitable piece of pork to turn up in the supermarket for a reasonable price, but that hadn't happened either.  So immediately I went to the pork joint section of the Farmer's Choice website and my eye was caught by the Pork Topside Hedgehog.  As it turned out, I couldn't have asked for a better cut.  With absolutely no waste and as lean as they come, this joint was perfect for everyone in the family and with careful but easy roasting, resulted in a super tender and flavoursome roast which wasn't dry at all.

My order, in the end, became the pork, some gooseberries, a bulb of fennel (also for the sauce) and a wild card entry of a bag of game meat for a game pie which I haven't made yet.  That's what happens when you give me the pick of a site full of produce, you see.  Personally, I think I was very restrained and I'm sure there are many who would have asked for a whole lot more.

The pork recipe was really incredibly simple.  I just wanted something to flavour the outside of the meat with and give it a lovely colour, rather than something to marinate the joint in for hours and provide a more overall kind of flavour input.

As such, the oil-based rub that I came up with - of olive oil, thyme, sweet smoked paprika, garlic, lemon juice and ye olde salt and pepper - was just perfect.  It was able to sink easily into the cut marks across the top of the pork and gave a beautiful colour once roasted.  The flavour was subtle but very much there, depending on how much of the outside of the pork you had on your fork.  Subtlety, folks, I'm all about the subtlety (and poetry, looking at that last sentence).  Well, where roast pork is concerned, anyway.

The roasting was as easy as falling off a log (and I've fallen off a few in my younger days, so I know how easy that is).  For a 1155g piece, I gave it one and a half hours at 180degC (350degF/Gas 4), then gave it a baste and checked the internal temperature was in the range of 77degC - 80degC (meat thermometer - SO useful!) and as such was likely to be done, but still fairly firm.  I then covered the roasting dish with a good layer of aluminium foil and put it back at the much reduced temperature of 130degC for another hour.  Once the hour was up, the whole package was rested for 20 minutes in a warm (but not hot) place.  The meat wasn't fall-apart tender, but I don't much like that in a roast pork joint.  It held together, but you could easily cut it with just a fork.  It was perfect.

You little beauties!

The gooseberry sauce was just wonderful.  The sharpness of the gooseberries cut through the richness of the pork and refreshed the palate, ending on a soft note of fennel which left you ready for the next bite.  The sauce is a little more time-consuming to make, but if you tackle it ahead of time (which I recommend, to give it time to cool) it really doesn't impinge on your day much at all.

The two recipes are really so simple that I don't even have any COOK'S TIPS for you, other than to recommend you keep hold of the fluffy tops and offcuts of your fennel to include in soup or stock, for which they are invaluable.

The finished gooseberry sauce, hiding its zing behind a benign appearance

Gooseberries and pork.  Mmmnnnn, our new favourite thing.  In fact, my hubby was so taken with the combination, he remarked that he hadn't ever had a better piece of roast pork in all his forty-mumble years.  Now that's quite a compliment.

ROAST SPICED HEDGEHOG OF PORK with GOOSEBERRY SAUCE   (Serves 4-5)

Ingredients :

For the gooseberry sauce :
1 tsp yellow mustard seeds
1 tbsp olive oil
1 bulb of fennel, sliced finely and tops discarded
1 large banana shallot (or equivalent), diced finely
small pinch of salt
quarter of a tsp dried thyme
quarter of a tsp finely ground black pepper
quarter of a tsp vegetable stock powder
1 tbsp & 50ml water
125g dessert gooseberries, tops and tails removed
25g granulated sugar.

For the pork :
1kg or thereabouts topside of pork, mine was hedgehog cut
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp sweet smoked paprika
1 tsp dried thyme
1 clove of garlic, grated
2 tsp lemon juice
pinch of sea salt
half a tsp freshly ground black pepper.

Method :

1.  Begin, ahead of time, by making the gooseberry sauce.  Heat a small pan and once hot, add the mustard seeds to toast.  Once they start to pop, decant into a small bowl and reserve.

2.  Heat the olive oil and add the fennel and shallot, plus the sea salt.  Cook gently until the shallot is transparent and the fennel has begun to soften.

2.  Add the pepper, dried thyme, vegetable stock and water.  Bring to a simmer and cook until the fennel is tender.

3.  Taking a stick blender, carefully blend until thoroughly combined, but still retaining texture.  Decant into a bowl and reserve.  Replace the pan onto the heat.

4.  Add the gooseberries directly to the pan and add a tablespoonful of water.  Cover the pan and allow the gooseberries to heat through, giving the pan a little shake every now and then, to prevent them from sticking.  This should only take around 5 minutes if the gooseberries are ripe.

5.  Once the berries are softened and their juice is beginning to escape, add the fennel mixture and mustard seeds and stir to combine.

6.  Add the sugar and remaining 50ml of water.  Stir well, then bring to a simmer and cook until the sauce has reduced to a loose jammy consistency.  Taste for seasoning and adjust if necessary, likewise if you think the sauce needs more sugar, correct that too.  Be cautious with the sugar, as you want the sauce to stay tart and not become jam-like.

7.  Once you are happy with the flavour and consistency, decant into a bowl and allow to cool.

8.  Remove the pork from the fridge a good half hour ahead of time.

9.  Place into a roasting tin and mix the seasoning ingredients (oil, paprika, thyme, garlic, lemon juice, salt and pepper) together.

10.  Spoon the seasoning mix over the top of the pork and rub into all the cracks and crevices.

11.  Put into a pre-heated oven at 180degC/350degF/Gas 4 for an hour and a half.

12.  Remove the pork from the oven and baste it with the juices, then cover with tinfoil and return to the oven.

13.  Turn the oven down to 130degC/250degF/Gas 2 and cook for another hour.

14.  Remove the pork from the oven and baste it again, then replace the tinfoil and leave it in a warm place to rest for 30 minutes, before carving.

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Slow Cooker Braised Silverside of Beef

Multiple gorgeousnesses

You might remember I mentioned that our local butcher is selling silverside at a remarkably good price - £4.95 a kilo.  Well, we couldn't leave such a great offer in the shop, now could we?

Silverside comes from the back leg of the animal - above the leg and below the buttock, effectively.  The piece of silverside we brought home was a really nice-looking piece of beef, with fine lines of fat marbling through the meat that would ensure it stayed juicy when cooked.  For some strange reason, the butcher had attached extra fat to the joint of meat which we were quick to remove.  Well, for our purposes - we were braising in stock - we didn't need the extra fat and the dogs were happy to take it off our hands.

For all that we were keen to have a proper roast beef dinner that Sunday, I couldn't help but worry whether roasting the beef would render it tender enough.  I know that hubby and son & heir have textural issues with their food and tough meat is a guaranteed no-no for the both of them.  So this is why we opted for the guaranteed tenderiser of the slow cooker.

Hubby was in charge - as it was Sunday - and he put the beef into a lovely broth of assorted flavours that smelled awesome as the day progressed.

This photograph makes my teeth itch to get stuck in again!

When it came to serving time, between the smells from the gravy, the meat, the roasting vegetables and Yorkshire puddings, I was in a welter of anticipation.  I had my little pot of horseradish sauce and another of mustard, my knife and fork were in their blocks and ready for the off.  I felt like one of the Bisto kids!

Roast beef has to be my favourite Sunday meal.  Now okay, this beef wasn't "roasted" as tradition would dictate but boy oh boy, it was very close to it.  Succulent and robust, each slice just danced across your tongue accompanied by the tangy horseradish - just bliss.

So if your butcher is doing a special offer on silverside and you've got a slow cooker - don't hesitate, just get some!

SLOW COOKER BRAISED SILVERSIDE OF BEEF  (feeds 3 with plenty left for a pie the next day)

Ingredients :

1 tbsp sunflower oil

1kg piece of silverside of beef

100ml beef stock (from a cube or made with Bovril is fine)

100ml Shiraz red wine

2 bay leaves

1 large onion, coarsely sliced

2 garlic cloves, smashed, with skins left on

1 carrot cut lengthways and into chunks

a tsp of whole black peppercorns

a tsp of herbes de provence

half a tsp of Worcestershire sauce

half a tsp of Mushroom ketchup.

Method :

1.  Into the slow cooker , add all the ingredients except for the oil and the beef.  Turn the slow cooker on to high, to get them all heated through.

2.  Take a non-stick frying pan and on a high heat, heat the oil until sizzling.  Then seal the beef on all sides, leaving it long enough to get a crusty, caramelised surface that will help the "roasted" flavour.

3.  Place the beef carefully into the stock in the slow cooker.

4.  Pour any liquid fat out of the frying pan, then add a ladleful of the stock from the slow cooker to deglaze the pan.  Pour back into the slow cooker, add the lid and cook on high for some 5-6 hours.

5.  Once the cooking time is up, remove the beef and cover in tin foil.  Leave it to rest in a warm place for up to half an hour.

6.  In the meantime, drain the cooking liquor through a sieve into a saucepan to make the gravy.  Begin by bringing the liquid to a gentle boil and allow the liquid to reduce by a quarter - just enough to concentrate the flavours.  It is probably best to judge it by taste, as to how far you reduce the liquor.

7.  Once reduced sufficiently, slake a dessertspoonful of cornflour with a little water - just enough to make it mobile - and add, by degrees, to the gravy, stirring constantly.

8.  Once the gravy achieves the desired consistency, carve the meat and serve.

Printable version

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Thai spiced roast Pork Tenderloin with Rhubarb sauce & roasted Five Spice Butternut Squash

So you'll remember my saying that hubby has taken on the mantle of Sunday Roast Chef?  Well, he explains a bit more about it below, then takes you through this fantastic roast.


Don't be scared of the rhubarb sauce - honest!  This roast dinner was truly one of the best roast dinners I've had.  Yes, it was out of the ordinary - but the pork was softly tender and tasted just fabulous, the butternut squash was delicious and the rhubarb sauce just brought everything together.  Think "rhubarb with a savoury Chinese twist" and it might not seem quite so strange.  I went back for more sauce and was furiously trying to think of how I might use the leftovers of sauce the next day - right up until I discovered there weren't any leftovers!


The only element on the plate that seemed a little out of place - and only in my opinion, everyone else was quite happy with them - were the carrots.  They seemed just that little bit too "English" to me, which is odd considering how you find carrot in so many stir fried recipes.  Perhaps it was their shape that did it.  Maybe if they'd have been ribbons, they'd have fit a little better.  Maybe it was just my tastebuds that didn't fancy carrots that day!

I'm very much looking forward to this coming Sunday!

Oh, and I've been invited to include this blog post in Delectable Musings "Seasonal Eats" listings - which I was very happy to do.


Right then, over to hubby ....

Marinated pork fillet before cooking

A few weeks ago, Jenny and I embarked on a voyage of discovery with a plan to have a roast dinner, every Sunday.

What makes it a voyage of discovery is that we wanted to explore both traditional and not-so traditional recipes while trying out some techniques that were a bit outside my comfort zone.  I would say that my cooking expertise is around the level of 'enthusiastic amateur' and so this week's offering definitely qualified in both the not-so traditional and the outside the zone categories! 

Anyway, without much more of an ado, here's the recipe, which I've split into three elements which I hope will be easy to follow.  While the recipe might look a bit daunting, please don't be put off.  The vast majority of the work here is in the preparation and all of this can be done well ahead of cooking.  Once your oven is pre-heated, the whole meal takes only thirty minutes to cook with absolutely no rushing around to be done (don't tell that to the family though)!

THAI SPICED ROAST PORK TENDERLOIN WITH RHUBARB SAUCE  (feeds 3)

For the Tenderloin :

Ingredients :

450 - 500g Pork Tenderloin Fillet, cut into three equally sized pieces
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tsp grated ginger
1 tbsp red Thai curry paste
1 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
2 tsp Muscovado sugar
1 fennel bulb, cut into wedges
1 red pepper, deseeded and cut into 1cm strips
1 red onion, peeled and cut into wedges (leaving the base of the onion untrimmed will prevent the wedges from falling apart).

Method :

1.  In a bowl make the marinade by combining the garlic, ginger, curry paste, soy, sesame oil and sugar and mix well.  Add the pork pieces to the marinade, ensuring each piece of pork is well coated.  Cover the bowl with a double layer of clingfilm before putting into the fridge for at least 8 hours, or preferably overnight.

2.  Prior to cooking, arrange the red pepper, fennel and onion in a deep roasting dish and drizzle with vegetable oil.  Give the vegetables a bit of a swirl in the oil to ensure an even coating and then arrange the marinated pork portions on top of the vegetables.

3.  Roast in a pre-heated oven at 190c for 30 minutes.

Pork tenderloin following roasting

For the Rhubarb Sauce :

Ingredients :

450g rhubarb, cut into chunks
3 banana shallots, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
30g butter
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp honey
 juice of 1 lemon
2 tsp fresh thyme, chopped.

Method :

Rhubarbly tangy & gorgeous!

1.  In a small saucepan, melt the butter and then saute the shallots and garlic until soft.

2.  Add the rhubarb and cook for a further two to three minutes.

3.  Stir in the vinegar, sugar, honey, lemon and mustard and cook until the rhubarb has completely disintegrated.  Once this stage has been reached, add the thyme and season with salt & pepper.

4.  Cook the sauce for another few minutes before passing through a fine sieve to remove any bits.

For ease of preparation, the sauce should be made ahead of time and then reheated for serving.

Butternut squash before roasting

ROASTED FIVE SPICE BUTTERNUT SQUASH

Ingredients :

1 butternut squash (about 850g)
30g butter
30g brown sugar
1 tsp Chinese five spice
1/2 tsp salt.

Method :

Roasted butternut squash at 12 o'clock!

1.  Peel the squash and cut into bite sized chunks before placing in a bowl.

2.  In a saucepan, melt the butter over a medium heat and add the sugar, stirring until dissolved.  Now add the five spice powder and the salt and stir until nicely mixed.

3.  Pour this mixture over the chopped squash and mix well until all of the squash chunks are completely coated. Spoon the chunks evenly onto a roasting tray, leaving any excess butter mixture behind.  The squash also takes 25-30 minutes at 190c and so can be put into the oven, on a lower shelf, at the same time as the pork (above).

At serving time, arrange the roasted pepper, fennel and onion onto warmed plates.  Slice each pork portion into medallions and lay these artfully on top of the vegetables.  Serve with the five spiced butternut squash and some peas & carrots before ladling the warm sauce generously over the pork.

Prepare to accept the adulation of the masses.

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Gammon, pot roasted in Cola

I was having trouble, just then, working out whether to call this "Gammon, pot roasted in cola" or "Pot roast cola gammon" or even "Cola braised Gammon ham".  It's a tricky one.

Either way, what it was trying to convey is that this blog post is all about a boneless smoked gammon joint, that was cooked in a saucepan of cola drink, celery, onion and carrots.  You can make your own mind up as to what to call it.  I call it yummy - but a terror to clean up afterwards!

I had been pondering over what to cook the bacon joint in - or whether to just pop it in the oven and roast it - for some time before hubby mentioned that we had a spare bottle of cola that I could use, if I wanted.  Having already made a ham cooked in cola (albeit a much bigger one, the Christmas before last), I thought it would be interesting to see how it translated to a much smaller piece of meat.

Has definitely succumbed to the "cola" effect!

The joint I had was around 800g, so just a little fellow - but just enough for a Sunday dinner, with a little left over for sandwiches the next day.

As is my habit, I soaked the gammon overnight to reduce its salt content.  It smelled lovely when it went into its chilly bath (I just used water, as I was only interested in getting rid of the salt, rather than getting additional flavours into the meat) and I was quite hopeful of a good dinner the following day.

I roughly chopped up the two carrots, an onion and two sticks of celery and used them to create a trivet upon which to put the meat, as I've known the bottom of a piece of meat become quite scorched when cooked this way.  In went the gammon and I poured the cola in until just covering the top of the meat, whilst still leaving a gap at the top of the saucepan.  I didn't want it boiling over - not with cola involved in it, anyway!

I left the gammon chuckling away on a low simmer for approximately an hour and a half.

What I didn't think about though, was that as the pot simmered the steam gathered under the lid and ever so slightly lifted it.  Enough for a splurt of cola/steam mix to decorate the top of my cooker, the buttons on the front of the cooker, the saucepan, the worktop to the side - and anything else that wanted to get in the way, with a sticky dark brown goo that was extremely hard to remove.  Oh - and the goo that had managed to creep in between the saucepan and the hot plate and then burn, was virtually welded on.  *sigh*  I'll have to think of a better plan, if I'm going to do this again in future.

I had used a big jam cauldron for the Christmas piece that I cooked in this way, and it obviously didn't have the same effect between steam and lid, as this hadn't happened then.

Served with roast potatoes & parsnips, creamed leeks, cabbage and carrots - delicious!

Still, the end result was worth all the mopping up and cleaning.  The ham emerged looking pleasingly dark and, when cut, demonstrated a lovely distinction between the cola-flavoured outside and the pink, succulent inside.  Between the soaking and the cooking, the ham had wound up delightfully moist and very acceptably mild in flavour.  There wasn't a very distinctive difference in flavour between the inner and outer, which is nice because you don't really want a strong cola influence in your roast dinner.

Roasties close up - no dribbling, now!

I had used the gorgeous Greenvale Farmfresh Jelly Potatoes for my roasties and can report that they are utterly perfect when used in this way.  I par-boiled them - at which they behave impeccably, not collapsing, or dissolving, or remaining bullet-like - and roasted them for the prescribed 45 minutes at 200degF.  The end result was a perfect, crispy, gently potato flavoured roastie, which we all agreed was one of the nicest roast potatoes we'd had in a very long time.

Next on the list for these potatoes is to try them in potato salad, after which I'm sure will come some mashed potato.  I can't see son & heir letting me get away without mashing them, for very much longer!

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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!