Howard 25 May 2009 Dessert, Dinner, cookshowandtell 12 Comments  Print This Post  Email This Post

Another week, another dinner party

Chogz and Nogz recently invited us over for a “home cooked” dinner, how could we say no to that ? What was suppose to be a dinner cooked by them, turned into a thee course meal with everyone involved. We all prepared a dish each before retiring on the coach for some Scene It on the Xbox 360. Not only did we spend a qaurter as much compared to if we ate out at a restaurant, we all had fun without breaking the bank.

Organic baby carrots from Harris Farm

We were still recovering from last week’s Spanish themed cook up but I’ve also noticed that lately we’ve been cooking and eating more than we have been eating at restaurants. Either the GFC is kicking in for us or perhaps we are just getting old, I’m leaning towards the latter.

Snack

Olive sour dough with olive oil and balsamic vinegar

Olive sour dough with olive oil and balsamic vinegar

Whilst waiting for the pork to cook, we helped ourselves to fresh olive sourdough dipped in extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Entree

French mushroom soup

To start of our meal, Minh and Squishies prepared a beautiful mushroom soup. A conconction of diced mushrooms attained from Eveleigh’s market was added to a chicken stock that had been bubbling away for at least three hours was topped with a crispy layer of mixed herbs and cream. I can’t remember what recipe book they adapted it from, but I’ll make sure I update this post when I find out.

Main

Crispy skin braised pork w/ potato puree

Not to blow our own trumpets, but this crispy skinned braised pork was just cooked to perfection. By rolling the piece of pork up during the cooking process it has preserved the natural juice of the pork, while the exterior absorbed the fragrant broth. The 2 hours or so of braising has helped us achieved tender melt in the mouth pieces of meat. Paired with the creamy potato purees, we were more than delighted by the outcome.

Recipe : Crispy skin braised pork
Adapted from The Cook’s Book by Jill Norman

Ingredients

• 10 Juniper berries
• 1 star anise
• 15g black peppercorns
• 2.5 cm piece of peeled fresh ginger
• 3kg piece of pork belly, bonned, rolled and tied.
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 large onion cut in half and studded with 3 cloves
• 4 carrots cut in half lengthways
• 2 large leeks cut into 2.5cm pieces
• 8 garlic cloves, peeled
• several springs of rosemary
• several springs of thyme
• 2 bay leaves
• 200ml light soy sauce
• approximately 2 litres of chicken stock, or enough to cover the rolled pork belly in the pot.
• butter for frying

Recipe

1. Crush the juniper berries, star anise, peppercorns and ginger using a mortar and pestle, then using a piece of muslin, tie into a bag.

2. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius, season the pork with salt and pepper well. Heat oil till hot in a large pot, then sear all sides of the rolled pork until golden brown. Remove and set aside.

3. Fry reserved trimmings of the pork belly in the pan until well brown and crisp. Remove and set aside. Add the onions, carrots, leeks and garlic to the pan and cook until browned, then push to the sides of the pot. Replace the crisped trimmings to the middle of the pot, placing the rolled pork belly on top.

4. Add the herb springs, bay leaves and soy sauce. Pour enough stock to submerge the meat and vegetables. Bring to the boil, removing any scum. Add the spice bag to the pot.

5. Place the lid over the pot, allow to simmer over low heat for 2.5 hours.

6. Once cooked, remove from the pot and allow to rest for 10-15 minutes.

7. In the meantime, laddle out the remaining sauce into a pot, reducing until a thick consistency is achieved, this will take about 2o minutes. We used this when presenting the meal as a sauce/jus.

8. Remove strings from the pork, unroll the piece of belly, chop into desired sizes (we chose 10cm squares).

9. Melt butter into a large frying pan, heat until foaming. Place the pieces of pork into the pan, skin side up. Allow to fry for approximately 2 minutes, before turning around, to produce a crunchy exterior.

10. For the potato puree, prepare your potato as per normal mash potato.

11. Strained the mashed potato through a sifter, then gradually add heated cream and room temperatured butter to the desired consistency.

12. Serve with carrots and puree and pour remaining pork reduction onto plate.

Dessert

Nigella Lawson’s molten chocolate baby cakes.

Nigella Lawson's molten choc. baby cakes.

Whilst everyone was recuperating from the main meal, Chogz quickly whipped up some of Nigella Lawson’s famous molten chocolate babycakes. After a quick 20 minutes filled with games, we were summoned back to the dining table for the final meal of the night. The warm fluffy babycakes with its lava filled centre, served with berries and a dollop of freshly whipped cream definitely hit the spot.