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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Oriental Beef with Butternut Squash and Special Fried Rice

You remember how keen I was on the shin of beef dishes I've made just recently?  Or perhaps how excited I was about the Pot Roasted Brisket?  Well, this one surpasses all of those.  Truly!

I kept a little secret from the boys about this dish, which was that it originated from the Weight Watchers Oriental Express recipe book!  Anything that has "healthy" or "low fat" in its title always engenders much suspicion in a chap's breast, it seems.  So, I figured it was better that they didn't know, right up until such time as I could commit the big "reveal", or admit it was another failure.  Whichever was appropriate.  In fact, as I didn't have any low fat cooking spray, I substituted olive oil where that was required but used it sparingly.  I also tweaked the quantities of orange juice to water, winding up with a little more of the juice than the water, largely because two oranges came to 150ml, once juiced, and I wasn't prepared to find a home for the extra half - so used it.

I had scheduled this dish for a Sunday evening when, normally, we'd have some sort of Sunday roast.  I reckoned it wouldn't hurt us to not have a traditional Sunday roast - and as it used almost as much beef brisket as had the previous Sunday's meal, it was almost a Sunday roast - just prepared differently.  In truth, I think I was justifying it to myself as I really don't suppose the boys care whether we have a Sunday roast or not - so long as something yummy turns up for dinner each day, I doubt they consider it much further than that.

I had liked the sound of the recipe at the first read-through, plus it also had the benefit of my having just about everything in the fridge or spice cupboard already, barring the meat and the butternut squash.  This made the purchase of these two more expensive ingredients rather more affordable.

The 800g of brisket was a lovely piece of meat.  It took just a little trimming on one side to remove some short runs of gristle, plus a bit of a trim of the fat on the other side.  I didn't remove all the fat, as I knew it was going to be cooking for some two and a half hours and fat doesn't usually survive that!  Dustbins 1 and 2 were in attendance, of course, and soon took care of any offcuts.

Where the rice was concerned, on the previous day we'd been shopping - doing a top-up shop for the weekend and the beginning of the following week.  I always like to have a cruise (don't forget, I use a disability buggy) down the world foods aisle where, to my surprise, I found a bottle of authentic oyster sauce.  At £2-odd, it was a little pricey when I didn't have anything in mind for it - but too good to leave there, so I bought it.  Only as I was assembling the ingredients for the special fried rice, did I remember the oyster sauce.  Using authentic soy (Yellow Plum brand), authentic fish sauce (Squid brand) and the authentic oyster sauce, put the tin lid on our attempts to make an authentic-tasting special fried rice.  I thoroughly recommend you put together some authentic ingredients like these, when you have a go at the rice recipe - they make all the difference.

ORIENTAL BEEF WITH BUTTERNUT SQUASH  (feeds 3-4)


Ingredients :

800g lean beef brisket, visible fat trimmed & sliced
olive oil
2 onions, sliced
1 star anise
1 tsp Chinese 5 spice powder
5cm (2") fresh root ginger, grated
150ml fresh orange juice
250ml water
4 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 red chilli, de-seeded if you prefer, and chopped
400g butternut squash, peeled, de-seeded and chopped into 1cm pieces
salt & pepper

Method :

1.  Heat a large lidded saucepan or casserole dish - one which will go in the oven.  Pre-heat oven to 190deg C.


2.  Add a little olive oil and half the beef strips.  Sear until browned all over, then remove and sear the remaining half and remove.

3.  Add the onions to the pan with a little more olive oil if necessary.  Fry over a medium heat for 4 minutes, stirring occasionally. It doesn't matter of some onions take on some colour, but you're aiming for them all to be softened.

4.  Add the star anise, 5 spice powder, ginger and chilli and stir fry for a minute.


5.  Pour in the water, orange juice and soy sauce.  Stir and ensure that you have de-glazed the pan, getting up all the lovely baked on flavour and stirring it in.  Re-introduce the beef and stir to combine.

6.  Bring to the boil, cover and then place in the oven for 2 hours.

7.  Remove from the oven, stir and add the squash, stirring to combine.  Replace into the oven for 30 minutes or until the squash is tender.  You probably won't need to cover the pan at this stage.

8.  If the sauce remains too watery, add a little cornflour and stir to combine until the favoured consistency has been reached.

Serve with Special Fried Rice :


SPECIAL FRIED RICE (feeds 3-4)

Ingredients :



a knob of butter
1 tbsp olive oil
2 eggs
a bunch of spring onions, trimmed and chopped finely
a small piece of ginger, shredded finely
2 mushrooms, chopped finely
a small handful of frozen peas
a small handful of frozen sweetcorn
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
2 tsp fish sauce
2-300g long grain rice, cooked and allowed to cool.

Method :



1.  Heat the knob of butter and olive oil in a deep frying pan or wok.  Add the beaten egg one by one and cook to form an omelette.  Place both omelettes somewhere to keep warm.


2.  In the remaining butter/olive oil mixture, stir-fry the onion, mushroom and ginger for around 2-3 minutes or until the onions are appearing softened.


3.  Add the peas and sweetcorn and continue to cook until they are tender.


4.  Add the soy, oyster & fish sauces and stir through on a low heat.


5.  Add the cooked rice and stir through gently on a medium heat or until the rice is heated through.  Add the shredded egg omelettes - and serve.


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