Archive for the 'Pork' Category

Bangers and mash recipe – with video

Published on June 21, 2012 in Cooking techniques explained, Cooking videos, English traditional, Favourites, Pork, Potatoes, Quick and easy and Video recipes. 2 Comments

* Go to the Bangers and mash recipe

Our cooking method for sausages adds extra flavour to the sometimes ho-hum “bangers and mash” by creating a chunky onion and tomato gravy out of the pan juices. Along with the obligatory mashed potato, this dish really does need some greens as well – green beans or broccoli, plunged into boiling water for just a few minutes. Perfect.

This is a reasonably quick dish – suitable for a weeknight dinner. It’s easy to scale up the recipe for extra guests – say, two sausages minimum per person. Continue reading ‘Bangers and mash recipe – with video’

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Uncle Kev’s sausage rolls

Published on September 14, 2009 in Cakes, breads and baking, Christmas recipes, Cooking videos, English traditional, Pork and Video recipes. 10 Comments

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Go to the recipe for sausage rolls

This is my Uncle Kev’s sausage roll recipe, and it’s fantastic for parties. Or you can even make a double or triple batch before Christmas, Thanksgiving or local festive holiday and freeze them, then heat them up in the oven for a really quick finger-food for a big group of people. Continue reading ‘Uncle Kev’s sausage rolls’

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Braised pork belly like Mao used to make

Published on January 23, 2009 in Asian/Oriental, Cooking videos, Pork and Video recipes. 9 Comments Tags: asian cooking, braised, cinnamon, pork belly, shaoshing wine, star anise.

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Pork belly – it’s the cut of the moment, isn’t it? On the menu everywhere. Very now. And very cheap, if you buy it in the right places (look beyond the supermarkets, which have copped on to its foodie appeal and adjusted the price accordingly).

This is a recipe that we don’t do often enough. And it’s attributed to Chairman Mao himself, who always made sure he was eating well while starving the rest of the nation. Being left to starve and told to survive on revolutionary zeal alone was good enough for the masses, but let’s face it, you couldn’t lead them through the Great Leap Forward on an empty stomach! Continue reading ‘Braised pork belly like Mao used to make’

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Rice to the occasion

Published on January 9, 2008 in Asian/Oriental, Chicken and poultry, Christmas recipes, Cooking videos, Pork, Quick and easy and Video recipes. 5 Comments

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Lenny is a whiz with fried rice. Last time she made it I was well impressed, to the point that I would eat it over stuff from a Chinese restaurant any day.

And that’s saying something. I reckon it’s really hard to replicate the flavours of your better-than-average Chinese takeaway. Maybe it’s down to MSG, which in some Asian cultures is literally known as “taste” (oh, if only you could buy good taste in powdered form). We’ve got nothing against MSG, really – it’s either in the food we buy or it isn’t – but we don’t have it in our kitchen, and don’t have any idea how, or how much of it, to use. Continue reading ‘Rice to the occasion’

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We larb turkey

Published on January 3, 2008 in Asian/Oriental, Chicken and poultry, Christmas recipes, Cooking videos, Pork and Video recipes. 10 Comments

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The leftover Christmas turkey was on its last legs, and sandwiches had long since lost their appeal … time for what Lenny calls a “flavour changer”.

Larb is a simple Laotian dish of spicy mince (usually pork or chicken) that is eaten with sticky rice, also known as glutinous rice. In Laos the rice comes in a little hopper-style basket made of bamboo and woven grass. The lime and chili flavours are heaven together, and ground rice powder adds a bit of crunch. Continue reading ‘We larb turkey’

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Your momo says …

Published on February 4, 2007 in Asian/Oriental, Cooking videos, Pork, Sauces and Video recipes. 47 Comments

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Waz and I LOVE dumplings. Pretty much wherever we travel, we try to experience the local yum cha – or dim sum as itâ€™s called throughout much of the world. So we often find ourselves traipsing through Chinatown in various far-flung cities sampling the lovely little morsels in their steaming wooden baskets that make up the dim sum experience.

London has a surprisingly small Chinatown, and, sad to say, weâ€™ve had some very dodgy yum cha on Gerrard Street, which is this Chinatownâ€™s main drag. I would say the variety and quality of dishes is better in such establishments as China House and King of Kings in Brisneyland (thatâ€™s Brisbane in Queensland for you non-locals). Even good old Edmonton in Canada had some very fine dim sum establishments. Continue reading ‘Your momo says …’

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How To Eat An Island

Published on September 6, 2005 in Cooking videos, Desserts and puddings, Pork, Potatoes, Salads, Sauces and Video recipes. 3 Comments

With epicurean delights like maple-smoked sturgeon and salmon, home-made apple cider and excellent local wines on offer, why wouldn’t a quartet of wandering gourmand-wannabes stop by Ile d’Orleans in Quebec?

After a week on the road we picked up our old friends Cristy and Robert (“Speedy” to his mates) in Ontario and whisked them away to the heady delights of French-speaking Canada – cosmopolitan Montreal first, then Quebec City with its old-world charms. Ile d’Orleans hides in the St Lawrence River not far from the capital and is a little rural haven with much to offer a travelling palate.

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Excellent local ingredients also made this a perfect stopover for our next “Canadian Safari” episode of CTK. Continue reading ‘How To Eat An Island’

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We’re on a (cabbage) roll

Published on August 31, 2005 in Asian/Oriental, Cooking videos, Pork and Video recipes. 13 Comments

We never thought we’d draw culinary inspiration from a place called Vegreville. But that’s just what happened when we dropped into this prairie town on the first leg of our Crash Test Kitchen “Canadian Safari.”

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Vegreville, like much of Alberta, has a substantial Ukrainian population, and the town’s giant “pysanka” (Easter egg) is apparently the world’s largest. No, we didn’t make Easter eggs – we whipped up a version of a staple item that you’d probably find among the leftovers in any Ukrainian refrigerator. Continue reading ‘We’re on a (cabbage) roll’

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Your sausage habits exposed

Published on July 26, 2005 in Cooking videos, English traditional, Pasta, Pork, Quick and easy and Video recipes. 20 Comments

I was doing some web research after our sausage excursion to Calgary and was disturbed at the extent to which the corporate sausage machine has been keeping an eye on our snag tastes.

I’ll elaborate, but first a little on this episode of CTK. We prepare a simple dish that for want of a better name I call “sausagey pasta”. We hadn’t cooked it for a while, so our memories were a little fuzzy on the exact list of ingredients. A bit of Googling and some head-scratching, though, and we came up with a recipe.

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But back to the sausage evil empire. This company called Devro has broken our habits down to pie charts and line graphs. Apparently 31% of us want our sausages straight, but 66% don’t care whether they’re straight or curved. Of more concern, 55% don’t know what’s on the outside of a sausage – natural casing made of gut, or that synthetic stuff we mentioned in the last post. Continue reading ‘Your sausage habits exposed’

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Blessed are the sausage makers

Published on July 17, 2005 in Cooking videos, English traditional, Pork, Quick and easy and Video recipes. 7 Comments

So what do you want in a sausage? Are you content with a cellulose or collagen tube filled with anonymous, homogenous mystery-meat paste containing who knows what?

If you’re like us, you demand sausages filled with real ingredients that you can see, taste, feel and smell. Not to mention the texture â€” and when you bite through that natural sausage casing, a really good “snag” should hit you with a burst of flavour and aroma.

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For a long time, our sausage benchmark was set by Tony’s Super Meats in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia. I remember Tony entered the annual Sausage King contest for the first time a few years back and blitzed the competition with his continental creations. Continue reading ‘Blessed are the sausage makers’

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Excuse our pork

Published on June 5, 2005 in Asian/Oriental, Cooking videos, Pork and Video recipes. 9 Comments

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I could eat hummus (aka “hommus”) all day, as long as someone keeps putting this tasty chickpea and tahini paste in front of me. But I used to be indifferent to tabouli (aka “tabouleh”), having mostly experienced it as the padding between the meat and the wrapping in some pretty pedestrian donair kebabs.

Never liked parsley much as a kid as it was. But my tastes have mellowed; I now realise that parsley has its place, and that place is tabouli. Making it is a lot of fun and it’s easy. Ditto for the very tasty hummus (especially if you have a bigger blender than ours!). Continue reading ‘Excuse our pork’

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Archive for the 'Pork' Category

Bangers and mash recipe – with video

Uncle Kev’s sausage rolls

Braised pork belly like Mao used to make

Rice to the occasion

We larb turkey

Your momo says …

How To Eat An Island

We’re on a (cabbage) roll

Your sausage habits exposed

Blessed are the sausage makers

Excuse our pork

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