Pork in cider

Cider in rock
The Worzels

Traditionally, cider has the reputation as being something associated with country bumpkins in the West Country. The Worzels even did a song about it, parodying Una Paloma Blanco (see above). More recently, however, its image is very much Janus-faced. At its best, it's a wonderfully refreshing drink, catching the best of the British summer in a glass, and can have depth and complexity similar to wine. At its, worst it's diabolical, mass-produced. massively over-strong and is directly responsible for a torrent of tramp piss in public spaces across the country. As booze goes, cheap white cider offers the very most bang for the buck, being able to buy a big bottle of a couple of litres of 5% cider for about £2 which is why it's the tipple of choice for the itinerant and teenagers alike. No park is complete without an empty plastic bottle of White Lightning, along with the dog ends of a couple of spliffs. It's a scene that, were they alive today, JMW Turner or especially John Constable would have immortalised in oil on canvas.

Wivenhoe Park by John Constable (1816)

If you look closely, you can see the two guys in the boat are getting wankered on cheap cider

Source: https://www.atlasofplaces.com/painting/landscape-and-place/

It's fair to say that, in the UK at least, many people's first exposure to alcohol is with a cheeky sip of Woodpecker Cider when they're a teenager (or, heaven forbid, Babycham, which is not actually cheap champagne, but is in fact cider's pear cousin, perry). Woodpecker is dreadful. It's largely tasteless, but sweet enough to give you a molar cavity by just thinking about it. Couple this to the myriad of sweet fruit ciders that abound today, it's like the alcopop explosion of the 90s all over again. Those were the days. Hooper's Hooch, Metz, Bacardi Breezers. Many a teenager will have woken up with a splitting headache and the flavour of one of these aberrations in their mouth from the night before (usually mixed with the taste of vomit), and mushrooms growing on their teeth because of the sugar content. What goes around, comes around, but with a slicker marketing spin on it. Just don't get me started on Snakebite and Black

Cooking with booze is a great thing. If I'd bothered to do any research, I'm sure I'd find it's to do with the huge variety of chemicals produced during fermentation and the same thing could be said of recipes with other fermented ingredients, like gochujang soya bean paste as used here, for example. I've already featured a few dishes that include some sort of alcohol, by way of beer, wine or even rum and I've previously used cider in pulled pork. Like that recipe, it works so well in this dish as apples are a natural partner to pork, hence apple sauce with roast pork. Couple this to the aromatic herbs of thyme, bay and especially sage (again, think sage and onion stuffing), this stew is a wonderful, easy to make weekday dinner

INGREDIENTS

2 tbsp olive oil

1 leek, trimmed and cleaned then cut into 1cm slices

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1 stick celery, finely shopped

200g mushrooms, roughly chopped

1 medium carrot, peeled, topped, tailed and cut into rounds

250g pork tenderloin fillet

200ml decent dry cider

1 vegetable stock cube

Large sprig of fresh sage leaves, finely chopped (about a tablespoon when chopped), or 1 tsp dried sage

Small sprig fresh thyme, leaves stripped from stems and chopped (or a pinch of dried thyme)

1 bay leaf

1 large tsp Dijon mustard

1 apple, peeled, cored and chopped (I used two small Gala, but traditionally it would be a Bramley)

1 large tsp cornflour, mixed with a little water

Salt and pepper

Herbs

Sage and thyme

And, yes, I'm one of those foodie wankers that has a mezzaluna to chop herbs

RECIPE

Heat the oil in a pan and add the leeks, stirring until soft (10 minutes).

Add the garlic and celery and continue to fry for 5 minutes.

Add the mushrooms and continue to fry for a further 5 minutes.

Add the carrot, cider, herbs, stock cube and 200 ml water then gently bring to a boil.

Add the pork and stir.

Stir in the Dijon mustard.

Mix up the cornflour in water and pour into the pan.

Stir well, turn down to low, cover, and simmer for an hour and a half or so (long enough for the carrots to become tender).

Serve it up. Serves two easily and works really well with mashed potato.

NOTES

The leek adds a subtlety that is missing with onion. but you could use an onion instead if you don't have a leek. Likewise, you could use a different form of pork or even braise pork chops in this sauce

Add a splash of cream to make the sauce more rich. Not an option in our house as Mrs Sweary is not a big fan of creamy sauces, but really, it would elevate this dish to something that bit more special

I recall something Delia Smith had written about how pork goes well with apples because they come from the same sort of terrain. Your wild boar, where pigs come from, are very much at home in the old orchard.

Choose a good quality cider for this. Nothing too fancy or expensive, but not Woodpecker or, heaven forbid, some cheap white cider. The offerings from Westons would be good, like the example below. Hell, Strongbow might even work as a budget option, just nothing that's got other fruit in it as it would be too sweet.

Henry Weston's Vintage Cider

A good cider for this recipe

Leek, mushrooms, carrot, pork and cider. This dish couldn't be any more rustic if its parents were first cousins and it was caught fucking a sheep. That's not a bad thing (I mean the rustic thing, not the near incest or the sheep worrying, obviously) as this is good, honest food with no pretence. Indeed, it's a very good thing and adds yet another great recipe to make a lie of my scoffing at the awful cuisine of England which I've mentioned on a few occasions.

I have to do a Rick Stein and twat on about the Constable picture I posted above. This is Wivenhoe Park which is now the site of the University of Essex, where I studied. This was where I spent many years, through two degrees  (and quite a few Snakebites and Black, especially early on), and where I met my wife. I had a postcard of that very paintings on my wall throughout my student days. I did get wankered by the side of that lake on many occasions, though not usually on cider.

Ratatouille

Smooth jazz from The Manhattan Transfer
Nice!

The 1970s were great*. Cooking (since you're probably interested if you're here) was all about Fanny Craddock, The Galloping Gourmet and the new CILF on the scene, Delia Smith. Films mirrored these culinary giants of the small screen in the shape of Alien, Jaws and Princess Leia in Star Wars (or Star Wars Episode VII: A New Hope as it's known now).

Music had a massive shift also, with disco and, most significantly, the advent of punk happening in this decade. It needs stating, though, that while there was a revolution going on in popular music, there was still a major stream of less challenging fare flooding the UK top 40. There was a slew of easy listening and novelty songs throughout the decade, from the cliche-ridden Europop celebration of the package tour to Spain, Sylvia's "Y Viva España"; to the Rupert Holmes cheesy ballad telling the story of a bored married bloke who replies to an ad in a lonely hearts column in order to have an affair, but with an obvious twist, the Piña Colada song. Another one was Chanson D'Amour by The Manhattan Transfer as seen in the video at the top of the page. The latter is a piece of light jazz which includes the actual lyric "Rat-ta-tat-ta-tat". However, as anodyne as that song is, that lyric starts running untrammeled through your head as soon as you hear the name ratatouille. Less ear worm and more ear rat, or maybe it's just me on that. I can guarantee, however, that, if you know the song, the very fact that I've mentioned it means that the tune will now be in your head for at least the next couple of hours. You're welcome.

70s TV chefs and iconic 70s movies. The similarities are mindblowing!

Left to right, top to bottom Fanny Craddock; HR Giger's Alien from the Ridley Scott movie; Graham Kerr, the galloping Gourmet; Jaws; Delia Smith; Carrie Fisher as Star Wars' Princess Leia. Coincidence? I don't think so!

(Images from http://www.turnipnet.com/whirligig/tv/adults/other/cookery.htm, http://www.wallpapers-web.com/aliens-movie-wallpapers/3789979.html, http://bunchedundies.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/real-men-jump-over-chairs.html,  https://www.kentuckycenter.org/all-shows/family-film-night-on-the-belvedere-jaws, https://www.eatyourbooks.com/library/12849/delia-smiths-complete-cookery-course, http://www.xaluan.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1668805)

Ratatouille is a classic vegetable stew from Provence and is best described as pure sunshine in a pot. Fresh aubergines, peppers, courgette and tomatoes, they're all there. As a meat free meal it's a great way to use the fresh produce you get in the summer and it tastes fucking amazing, especially if it's with some fresh, crusty bread.

*They weren't. They were pretty shit. We had the Three Day Week. We had Baader-Meinhof. We had flares and wing collars (see here for my take on this). The Cold War was still quietly raging and virtually nobody in the UK had even heard of couscous, let alone eaten it.

TIMING
Preparation: 15 minutes
Cooking: 60 minutes

INGREDIENTS
4 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
4 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 aubergine, cut into 2cm dice
1 courgette, sliced into 1cm rounds
1 yellow pepper, cored, seeded and chopped into 2cm squares
1 red pepper, cored, seeded and chopped into 2cm squares
4 medium-large tomatoes, skinned and chopped
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp sugar
salt and pepper to taste
handful of basil leaves

Chopped and ready to cook

RECIPE
Heat the oil in a pan and gently fry the onion and garlic for 10 minutes.

Add the aubergine and fry for 10 more minutes.

Throw in the courgette and fry for another 10 minutes.

Add the peppers and fry for another 10 minutes.

Stir in the tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, tomato puree plus salt and pepper to taste before adding 100ml water.

Bring to the boil, cover and simmer for 20-30 minutes (until the vegetables are tender).

 I smell a rat
And it smells fantastic

Makes plenty for a big bowlful each for two people plus a decent lunch with the leftovers.

Serve with fresh bread.

 Ready to eat

Just add bread

NOTES
Big, ripe tomatoes work best in this.

Other herbs would work well in this, like oregano or (sparingly) thyme. The fresh basil is sublime, however.

As I mentioned, this dish is from Provence which became the Nirvana favoured by the British middle classes in the late 80s/early 90s, thanks in main to the book A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle and the subsequent TV mini-series based upon it. It spawned a load of imitators as people with more money than sense followed through on their French rural wank fantasy, with often limited success and financial insecurity, the gullible cons de chez con, as they might say in France.

There is a little known incident on a teatime programme called Nationwide in the UK which had a cooking piece presented by Fanny Craddock in which she was making meringues. When this piece was finished, the anchor man of the programme, addressing the viewers, said "And I hope all your meringues turn out like Fanny's"

The most famous version of Chanson D'Amour is the one I put at the head of this post. However, this is not the best. That belongs to the version in the video below, as perfomed by the Muppets, which is actually sublime.

The Muppets do Chanson D'Aamour
They weren't only just about mna mna

Afelia Pork

INTRODUCTION
As you may have guessed, I have a very British love of the double entendre (and, yes, the irony of something as British as football hooliganism and binge drinking having a French name does not escape me). To really enjoy a good double entendre you do have to need it to be accompanied by the appropriate sound and all the double entendres in this blog update will have a convenient player to give you a sound from that British institution, the Carry On films, to enhance your smutty enjoyment.



Cookery is chocker-block with double entendres from your coq-au-vin...



...to your spotted dick.



Afelia pork is another, though slightly disappointing in the double entendre front. Obviously it would be sound even more rude if it was made with steak and was called afelia rump.



This double entendre-rich blog entry builds on my previous one for pulled pork, though that didn't benefit from the sounds. That recipe is one of the rash of similar dishes that have been doing the rounds for various cuts of meat for a while now, and I can see why they are so popular as I really like my meat pulled.



If that sounds appealing, do look it up. You'll find my entry very satisfying.



INGREDIENTS
1 heaped tbsp whole coriander seeds
Juice of 1 lemon (works out about 2 tbsp)
2 tbsp dry white wine
3 large cloves of garlic, crushed
Salt and pepper
500g lean pork meat in 2-3cm cubes (tenderloin is good)
1 tbsp olive oil 

Meat mixed with the marinade, ready to go in the fridge to steep

RECIPE
Crush the coriander seeds in a pestle and mortar. Yes, I'm THAT kind of cookery prick who has a pestle and mortar. Crushing them between two plates also works if you don't happen to be a foodie wanker.

Mix the crushed seeds with the lemon juice, wine, garlic, salt and pepper and half of the olive oil, then mix well.

Add the pork, and stir so that it's well covered by the liquid, cover and put it in the fridge to marinate for at least a couple of hours. This allows the marinade to tenderise the meat as well as making it taste nicer.

Be aware that your fridge will smell like Dracula's worst nightmare with the garlic.

Pork on the hob, cooking

Heat the rest of the oil in a frying pan or wok on the hob and add the meat plus any remaining  marinade and keep stirring on a medium heat until the pork is cooked, about 20 minutes.

The liquid will reduce down to an almost syrupy consistency.

Serve with roasted peppers and perhaps a rice dish, like my recipe for tomato pilaf.

And here it is ready to eat

NOTES
You could make quite a feast out of this with a starter and dessert. As a starter, a nice soup and it doesn't come any nicer than the wet, fishy mouthful of clam chowder.



A good dessert to have with this dish would be something fruity, perhaps pears poached in port, since there isn't anything nicer than a big juicy pear.



This recipe doesn't have any butter in it, but I do like to stick a knob in when I'm cooking.



Afelia is usually a dish made with red wine from Cyprus but this is Delia Smith's version made with white. You can always rely on Delia but I'm a bigger fan of Fanny Craddock's recipes as well. Delia's are great, but I love the taste of Fanny's.



My wife can't think of double entendres so I had to give her one.



  Thanks to http://www.carryon.org.uk/sounds_frm.htm who I've linked to for all the Carry On sounds

Steak night! Peppered steak, potato wedges and the trimmings

Vegetarians might be advised to skip over this entry, though the wedges will go with anything.

Former Smiths front-man, longstanding vegetarian and twat*, Morrissey, stopped a festival show at Coachella, California in 2009 because he said "the smell of burning flesh is making me sick". Personally, I find the smell of burning flesh generally makes me feel fucking hungry rather than nauseous and it doesn't get any more orexigenic than the smell of searing steak. A good piece of steak really doesn't need much more than seasoning to make it fantastic. However, thanks to the queen of TV chefs and the GILF of modern cuisine, Delia Smith, this recipe makes a good thing great. Of course, this recipe was taken from a more innocent time when when the fondu set was the height of sophistication, Vesta curries were regarded as exotic food/foreign muck (depending on your POV) and Delia herself was such a young slip of a girl, she was a merely a MILF (do I need to put a link in for this, after the one for GILF? Isn't it fucking obvious?) and I have updated it a little. It was also before this happened:

Fucking chips! As Kevin Kline's character said in A Fish Called Wanda: "the English contribution to world cuisine: the chip". Go to any regular/"family" pub and whatever you order will be served with fucking chips. You can have shepherd's pie which is generously topped with mashed potato and they still serve that with fucking chips. Even, in the north of England, if you sample some of the delights of exotic oriental cuisine you get them with fucking chips. Lamb shish kebab WITH FUCKING CHIPS! Chicken tikka masala WITH FUCKING CHIPS! Sweet and sour fucking chicken WITH FUCKING CHIPS! The humble and overworked chip does have a time and a place, however. There is little better than enjoying good fish and chips on a windy seafront, or a tray of chips slathered in gravy as you walk down the street. More relevantly, a great steak is so much better when it's got a side order of chips. As anyone will tell you, real chips are hand cut and deep fried which is a bit awkward since deep frying is a regal pain in the arse. Also, as much as I loath to bring healthy eating into this blog, real chips are relatively high in fat. A great alternative is this recipe for potato wedges which are baked with a generous covering of oil and turn out like a cross between baked potatoes and deep-fried chunky chips.

*Just to be clear, these two qualities are not in any way related. I have many family members and friends that I love dearly who are vegetarian - indeed, I was vegetarian myself for a short while as a student - and many meat eaters who are such twats I wouldn't waste a full bladder on in the vanishingly remote possibility that it might prevent their nasty and painful death from spontaneous human combustion.

INGREDIENTS
Steak
2 steaks (personally I like ribeye or sirloin, but rump is also great)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp black pepper corns
1 garlic clove, roughly chopped
Dash Tabasco sauce
1/2 tsp English mustard
Salt
Half a glass of red wine (about 100ml)

Wedges
500g potatoes, washed but not peeled
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp garlic powder
pinch mixed herbs
A good pinch of salt (to taste)
Lots of black pepper (to taste)
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Trimmings
2 big portobello mushrooms, whole (you could use big field mushrooms or a few regular small mushrooms)
1 onion, sliced

Tomatoes (depends on size, but 1 medium one each or more if they are smaller)

RECIPE
Crack the black peppercorns in a pestle and mortar. Alternatively, if you're not as big of a foodie wanker as me, you can put them in a freezer bag and bash them with a rolling pin for the same effect. Add these to a large, flat dish (big enough to lay both steaks down flat) and pour in the olive oil, garlic, Tabasco and mustard then mix. Place the steaks into the mixture and turn them over in order to give both a nice coating of pepper. Repeat a few times until they are both well studded with the peppercorn fragments. Cover the dish with clingfilm and leave on the side for at least an hour or two before you want to cook them. It is important that they are left at room temperature.

Steaks marinating

For the wedges, cut the potatoes lengthwise into thick chunks, or wedges, and dry them with kitchen roll. Throw them into a roasting dish and sprinkle on the rest of the ingredients. Toss the wedges so they all get an even coating of the mixture. Preheat an oven to 180 and put the wedges in for 45 minutes, turning them half way through. At the same time as putting the wedges in the oven, put the tomatoes in a shallow ovenproof dish and put them in the oven at the same time. As an alternative, you could actually just griddle the tomatoes at the same time as the steak but roasted tomatoes have so much more intense and concentrated flavour.

Potato wedges before cooking

Potato wedges cooked and ready to serve

Add a little oil to a frying or a griddle pan and fry the onions, long and slow, (OK, 5-10 minutes, so not that slow) on a fairly low heat. If they get too dry, add a splash of water to keep them moist. Add the mushrooms and fry them gently on either side along with the onion. When they're done, remove them and keep them on the side.

A good couple of minutes before it's time to cook the steaks, stick the same pan on to heat. Once it's nice and hot, throw on one of the slabs of meat. There is no need to add oil to the pan because the steaks are already oiled from the marination. Obviously, cooking steak depends a lot on how you like them between rare to crucified (and if it has to be very well done you have no business reading a food blog you fucking philistine), and how thick they are, so this step is about trial an error. Pressing the steak will give you an idea: the softer, the less done. As a rough guide 2-3 minutes per side will make it rare, 5 minutes for medium. Any more than that and I'll deal with you later, see below.

When cooked to your required level of doneness, put the steaks on their serving plates and leave to rest for a few minutes, adding a little salt to both after a minute or two. Meanwhile, turn down the heat on the hob and return the mushrooms and onions to the pan for a minute or two then throw in the red wine to wash out the pan. plate up the mushroom and pour the rest of the pan's contents onto the steaks. Serve up the wedges and tomatoes and eat, washed down with the rest of the red wine.

Steak night! All ready to eat

NOTES
Steak is truly wonderful, but only if it's not overcooked. Personally, my instructions for a perfectly done steak are "wipe its arse and walk it onto the plate", or "blue" if I'm in a restaurant amongst polite company. However, if the steak is taken out of the fridge just before it's cooked, rather than being cooked from room temperature, a blue steak will be cold in the middle (hence the point of stating the marinating steaks are not put back in the fridge). The steak must be at least as warm as it was when the animal was slaughtered, in my opinion. However, blue isn't for everyone but it should be at least pink in the middle (little more than medium-rare). If you like your steak well done, remember that a cow died to give you this piece of itself. It deserves to be treated properly. It needs to be trans-substantiated so it can gambol on your tongue for one last time in the succulent juices of your steak. If there are no juices this isn't going to happen and that herbivore will have chewed it's last cud in vain. Worse still, it will probably be tough as shoe leather and taste like shite.