I find pork chops quite uninteresting, even though pork is my favourite meat. Of the cuts, I think the chop is the least exciting and I often find myself shallow frying it and adding interest by means of a mustard sauce of some sort. This time I decided to treat the chop as any other cut that can be slow cooked (think pulled pork…).
I love croquettes, they take me down memory lane and remind me of when I used to walk home from secondary school and stop at the local grocery to get some, which I would finish off by the time I got home. They were the best croquettes I have ever eaten but sadly that grocery store is no more. The memory lives on, however, and I will continue making croquettes in search of that perfect taste and texture.
This easy peasy curry is inspired by a recipe by Mimi Spencer – one of the authors of The Fast Diet. Mimi’s purpose was to create a low-calorie delicious meal for fasting days. Here I have removed that restriction and made my own version, which is not particularly fattening but probably not suitable for those days, if you happen to be following the diet.
I love Beef Wellington! Quite frankly anything inside (or outside, for that matter) puff pastry tends to meet with my approval. But Beef Wellington is hard work. Something I tend to let hard-working chefs cook for me in exchange for money. But I wanted to evoke the Wellington-ness of this classic and make my own easy version using burgers. I’m not sure if I can call this dish Wellington at all but I guess it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that these were d-e-l-i-c-i-o-u-s. And really easy. Nothing the mere mortal cook can’t make.
Once again I turn to my faithful soups. I know it’s still summer (just about!), but as I grew up all meals started with a soup and I want my kids to have the same healthy habit. The truth is I never tire of making soups and made this one this week because I had a chickpea craving. I love chickpeas! (I know I’ve said this before…). And they are healthy too, which is a huge bonus.
One of the staple foods of Portugal is salted cod or ‘bacalhau‘, as we call it. It may well be THE staple food. The tradition of eating salted cod is at least 500 years old and we pride ourselves in preparing salted cod in hundreds of different ways. Literally hundreds, and some claim thousands. Cod is the only fish the Portuguese don’t eat fresh and somehow the tradition has stuck to the point that buying fresh cod in Portugal is hard if not impossible but buying any other fresh sea creature that can be eaten is easy. We love our fresh fish but we wouldn’t have our cod any other way!
‘Migas’ are a traditional Portuguese and Spanish dish that was created by shepherds who, as they went to the fields to look after their flock, had little more than stale bread and wild garlic to cook with. The story goes that the tradition stands and that they still cook the dish today.
This is so traditional Portuguese/Spanish, even the sterner connaisseur of Iberian foods would agree. And it’s proper peasant food! Is there anything more authentic? As usual, garlic and olive oil feature abundantly and it is surprisingly simple to make.
Nothing can go wrong when you use pulled pork in a dish. Nothing.
And this is no exception. I wanted to use leftover pulled pork (which freezes really well, by the way) without making the usual sandwich with slaw on a brioche bun. I remembered my favourite breakfast in one of my favourite London breakfast places – The Breakfast Club in Hoxton. I always have the same and even though their menu is extensive I just can’t resist their Chorizo Hash Browns. It’s a potato, onion and pepper ‘hash’ with chorizo, eggs on the side and feta as an optional extra. It really works! So I thought if I used pulled pork instead of chorizo it should still work. Oh and it worked. It really really worked.
A dessert on my blog?! A cake?! Even I am surprised. The truth is I am not a cake baker by any standard. And I am immensely jealous of people who bake cakes with effortless grace. In fact, I can’t bake a cake to save my life and every time I naïvely embark on doing it I fail miserably… but I can bake this! A gooey, oozy and boozy chocolate indulgence. Oh yes.
