Meeting Your Heroes - Vietnamese Ribs

I’m the type of person to get starstruck.  As much as I would love to maintain an aura of chic cool around celebrities – my all-too-vocal cynical side screams “they’re just people”, truth is, the aura I project is more giggling schoolgirl than European Woman of the World.  A couple of times I’ve met real heroes of mine in very informal settings (a dog walk; a family party) and my blushing stutterings have provided much embarrassment to me (and no doubt them), and much amusement to all others around me.  And I’m not even talking Mandela or anything; think 90s popstar and 80s footballer.  Even my heroes are lowbrow.  In fact, the only celebrity I’ve ever managed to keep my head around was the late, much disgraced, Jimmy Saville – long story but he once tried to snatch a lemon & blueberry cake out of my sticky mitts and I stood firm, staring him fiercely right in the eyes like a mama bear defending a cub.  All things considered, I'm glad he was the one I didn't fawn over.

Which is why the world of Twitter is a world of wonder to me.  Andy once said to me “all you use it for is arguing with celebrities” which isn’t strictly true – I would find that exceedingly dull, and I do still get the fear that people can somehow see me through the screen – I would indeed be the world’s worst troll – but there have been a couple of occasions when I’ve challenged a celebrity on something they’ve said and they have actually responded.  Again, most of the time we’re talking lowbrow, B list British TV faces, but while they might not like what I’ve said, they’ve taken the time to reply and I’m always properly grateful, like the little starstruck fan I am.  And yes, I do realise that admitting this is the absolute ultimate in uncool – which is what I specialise in, apparently.

So imagine what happens when one of my culinary heroes, the eloquent and informative Aussie-Vietnamese Chef Luke Nguyen, takes the time to respond.  I mentioned him in a tweet, saying that I’d just had these Ribs for dinner, and how abso-flipping-lutely amazing they are, and he, bless his lovely little cotton socks, replied saying something along the lines of “glad you liked them, I’m having the same for my lunch!”.  A lovely man and someone, for once, who is deserving of the hero moniker.

As are these ribs.  Proper hero ribs.  Sticky, melting, well-balance Vietnamese flavours.  I roast them as suggested in the recipe, but next time I’m very tempted to stick a bit of water in the tray and slow roast them for ages, really let those flavours get to work and make the meat even more unctuous and fall-off-the bone.  Served with plain steamed rice and garlicky broccoli, they are one of my favourite dinners of all time.  A real hero of a dish.  And I’m glad I told Luke Nguyen so.

Roasted Pork Spareribs (Suon Non Quay)
From Luke Nguyen, Songs of Sapa

1 tablespoon shaoxing Rice Wine
2 teaspoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons fish sauce
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
1 tablespoon honey
0.5 teaspoon five-spice
3 garlic cloves, smashed
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
500g pork spare ribs
6 spring onions, thinly sliced lengthways

First, marinade your ribs.  In a bowl big enough to take everything, mix the rice wine, soy sauce, fish sauce, oyster sauce, honey, five-spice, all the garlic cloves, and add the ribs.  Leave to marinade for as long as possible, at least 2 hours but these bad boys could take much longer if you get organised in time.

When you are ready to cook them, preheat your oven to 200C.  Put the ribs in a single layer in a roasting tray.  Bake for 30 minutes, basting every 5-10 minutes with the spare marinade.

When they are golden and crispy on the edges and fully cooked through, chop them into seperate ribs, and garnish with the spring onions.

Serve with steamed rice and broccoli.

Serves 2

Pork Rillons

To be fair, all the signs were there from the start.

Sign 1

I didn't actually know which recipe I was supposed to be making.  Dom, over at Belleau Kitchen challenged us for this month's Random Recipe blog to go to our cuttings & clippings heap neatly filed, well-organised folder.  I gleefully grabbed mine, and said to Andy "right, I'm just going to throw them all on the floor! And then we'll pick!" "Noooooooooooo" came the reply, moving towards me like some slow-mo action hero.  We're trying to keep the house a bit show-homeish at the moment, you see, what with the landlords popping round all the time to do the DIY necessary to sell the house.  Fun times.  Anyway - instead of me giving this place a new carpet of recipes, Andy rifled through the file until I said stop.  And here is the first sign - the piece of paper he dubiously handed me had four different recipes on.  All French, all country-esque, 75% of them the kind that would take me flipping hours and then Andy wouldn't really like anyway.  In all honesty I couldn't remember which one of the recipes had tempted me enough to rip it out of the Jamie magazine, so I went for the one that looked like we would both enjoy.  Looked like.

Sign 2

Pork Rillons, the recipe I went for, are - you've guessed it - yet another pork recipe.  Any suggestion that round here we are one pork meal away from turning porcine ourselves would, frankly, be accurate.  It turns up quite a lot round here.  We are both, in short, heartily sick of pork at the moment.  So picking yet another gratuitous pork recipe?  Sign two.

Sign 3

The recipe suggests serving this dish with 'a lively Sancerre'.  

Sign 4

This recipe takes flipping hours.  You have to start it the night before, salting cubes of pork belly.  Then you have to fry and slow cook the pork belly.  Then you have to leave it to cool.  Then you reheat it.  Flipping.  Hours.  For a flipping (and I quote) 'snack'.  A snack, FYI Jamie Oliver and Ed Wilson, from whom the recipe came, is cheese on toast.  An apple.  Yoghurt eaten straight from the pot.  It is not something you have to start the night before.  And yes, I am saying 'flipping' a lot but my Mum reads this blog.  Sometimes.

Sign 5

I had literally no idea just how much 250g of lard looks like, until I measured it out.  Trying to kid myself, I pretended that the fluffy white solids in the bowl were ice cream.  And then I realised I wouldn't even allow myself that much ice cream.  That was the point, sign five, at which I knew we were really in trouble.

Sign 6

Frying cubes of pork belly, skin side down, in some of the aforementioned lard, creates a lot of smoke.  Enough to set off the fire alarm and make your newly-cleaned carpets smell of acrid pig fat.  Oh, and the skin STILL wasn't crisp enough, like some kind of flipping heat-resistant kevlar jacket for the pork.   Every window and door in the place wide open, autumn upon us so not as warm as it has been.  Sign six, right there.

Sign 7

Serving up, after all that time and effort and just flipping everything, what essentially comes down to cubes of flabby pork belly that taste of lard.  Not the promised chic bistro-snack.  I guess that was the biggest sign.  That and the uneaten pork pushed to the side of the plate.  The nicest part of the meal were the green salad and the bread and listen, I am not the sort of person who says that lightly.

Sign 8

We don't eat much pudding day-to-day, but I'd made an apple crumble, on a hunch.  Just in case.  We ate it all. 

So yeah, in the future, listen to the signs.  My sign to you is - DON'T MAKE THE LARD CUBES, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.  Or if you do, make sure that the green salad and bread are really good, you have apple crumble for afters, and that glass of lively sancerre translates into a whole bottle.  You will need it.

Pork Rillons
From Jamie Oliver magazine

1kg pork belly, bones removed if there are any
50g salt
250g lard
250ml dry white wine (I suggest you use your lively Sancerre and neck the rest from the bottle in a fit of disappointment)
3 bay leaves
1 large sprig thyme
10 peppercorns
4 garlic cloves, halved
125ml water
Green salad and bread to serve (this is important)

The day before you want to eat your snack, plan well ahead.  Cut the pork belly into 5cm cubes, sprinkle with the salt, cover and put in the fridge.

The morning before you want your snack, rinse the salt off the pork and pat dry with kitchen towels.  Over a high heat, fry the cubes of pork belly in a small amount of lard.  Curse the recipe and open the windows.

Heat your oven to 140C.  In one layer in an oven proof dish, put the cubes of pork, the wine, the garlic, thyme, bay, peppercorns, the rest of the lard and the water.

Cook for 1.5 hours until the pork is tender and tastes of lard.

Pour away most of the lardy juice and leave to cool in a small amount of it.

When you are ready to eat your snack, heat your oven to 200C.  Heat the pork for 10 minutes until sizzling.

Leave most of the pork, eat the salad, the bread, and drink the wine.  Realise as you smell the lard lingering in your hair that some recipes remain in your folder, uncooked, for a reason.

Serves - god knows.  Depends on how many lard cubes you will eat, per person.   This made about 16 cubes, so take it from there.

Mushroom and Pork Ragout

AKA Because what this blog needs is another leftover pork recipe

When we moved to NZ, one of my conditions was that we live in a city.  As antisocial as I am, I thrive in cities.  It's definitely easier to be anonymous in them, which is what I need -  if you were as scruffy and slovenly as I am, you'd need anonymity too - the high-pressured fishbowl of small town life just isn't for me.  And although Andy says that he'd love to live out in the country with all the psychos and axe murderers (listen, I've seen Misery), he's such a night owl that I think, deep down, he needs the city too.

The thing about cities, even in a small city like Wellington, is you get the best of both worlds.  There are the constants, the institutions, the things that will never, ever go because the locals just won't let it.  And at the same time, the changes, the new ventures - well, they're pretty exciting too.  Working for myself, I don't get the chance to mooch through the city centre as much as I used to, so yesterday, when I had an appointment in town, I took the opportunity to have a wander round.

It was just in the middle of noticing a couple of new places - a new bar on Dixon street, oh and when did Perrett's cafe turn into a Mexican place? - that I noticed something else new.  People were wearing extra layers.  No longer just the thinnest, smallest piece of clothing available, as has been the norm all summer - but here I spotted cardigans.  Jumpers.  Shades of dark green, brown and yellow.  In short - autumn clothes.  

Now, I am a summer-loving lizard, no doubt about it.  I reckon I could live very, very happily in winterless Asia.  But this I will say - I do not suit summer clothes.  The British gene, maybe?  I always look creased, sweaty glowing, fractious, in the summer.  I do not look cool and elegant, much a I aspire to that.  I find it much easier to be one step closer to chic in the autumn and winter.  I suit hats!  I suit structure!  Autumn clothes are my friends.

With autumn in mind, I decided to (yet again) defrost some pork from the freezer and turn it into something completely new for us.  Those of you following the pork saga will be delighted to know I am down to the last bag of it, which I reckon is earmarked for pork chilli.  Mushrooms always seem very autumnal to me, and so I made a Pork and Mushroom Ragout, very loosely based on Nigella's Mushroom Ragout from How to Eat, but very much simplified, as I wasn't in the mood to start with the three pans for one dish.  This was lovely - quite salty, even though I didn't actually add any salt - probably because the pork was salty to start with and I used stock from a cube (YEEEESSSS the last of the turkey stock from Christmas is also gone).  I would love to try this as a veggie dish, as was originally intended, as I think the mushrooms were the star here. 

I served this with polenta, which I tried to turn into cheesy polenta, but it's just so disheartening really, isn't it?  No matter how much butter and cheese I stirred in, all it tasted of was blandness.  "It looks like secret mash" said Andy sadly, peering in the pan.  Yes, but not as nice.

Pig's ear of a photo but a tasty, quick tea if by any chance you have a million bags of leftover pork knocking round in your freezer.

Mushroom and Pork Ragout
Inspired by Nigella Lawson, How To Eat

400g brown button mushrooms
300g leftover slow cooked pork
0.5 tablespoons olive oil
0.5 tablespoons butter
1 onion, thinly sliced
1 fat clove garlic, chopped
100ml red vermouth
1 bay leaf
generous pinch dried thyme
pinch cayenne
nutmeg
1 tablespoon flour
500ml chicken stock

Wipe the mushrooms, then slice them into thick pieces.  In a non-stick pan, gently heat the olive oil and butter.  Add the onion and fry until soft.  Throw in the garlic, bay leaf, and dried thyme, and fry for a few more minutes.  

Add the mushrooms and a pinch of cayenne to the pan and fry gently until cooked and starting to release their juices.  At this point add the pork, stirring until it is warmed through and sizzling.  Stir through the flour, making sure everything is evenly coated, then gradually add the vermouth, leaving to bubble for a minute or two to get rid of the harsh alcohol taste.  Slowly stir in the chicken stock, and give it a good grating of nutmeg.  Check for seasoning but it might well be ok.

Leave to bubble gently while you heat your disappointment of a side dish.

Serves 2

St David's Day Baking

Something that nobody tells you before you take up with a Welshman is how passionate, consuming and welcoming the Welsh community is, anywhere in the world.  Because of various connections we have out here, Welsh people now make up the majority of my expat friends out here.  As an Englishwoman this does mean developing a relatively thick skin at times, especially where rugby is concerned, but for the days of the year when mighty England aren't playing the boyos in red, it's a fun community to be part of.

St David is the patron saint of Wales, and today, March 1st, is his day, and therefore the Welsh in my life go all out to celebrate.  And who am I to miss out on a celebration, even one I'm clinging to tenaciously by the coat-tails?

Last year, as part of the Wellington On A Plate events, we started a bake club at the Welsh Dragon Bar, where Andy is the manager.  You don't have to be Welsh to join, you just have to love baking.  We all loved it so much that we carried on after the official events finished; now we meet once a month and take turns to pick a theme.  Lots of different nationalities, a range of ages and baking experience - the only thing that we all have in common is the firm belief that Baking Makes Things Better.  This month, Andy has asked us all to produce Welsh baking to sample and try.  Somewhat of a challenge for us non-Cymru-born bakers, but if there's one thing we love, it's a challenge.  I fancied something savoury, and so settled on these pies.  I left out the jelly from the original recipe for a few reasons - it was a step too far in the midst of a busy week, but mostly because I'm ambivalent and most people seem to be averse.

My list of favourite Welshmen is long and comprehensive and includes, amongst others, Colin Jackson, Gethin Jones, Steve Jones and Aled Jones (the latter we were involved in a Fawlty-Towers-esque farce with the night after our wedding when we accidentally tried to break into his hotel room.  Yes, it is a long story) but my most favourite Welshman of all is my lovely Andy.

These are for him.

Pork, Leek and Cumin Welsh Dragon Pie*
*Contains no dragon but does breathe a bit of fire
Adapted from Andy Bates

500g pork mince
1 large leek, washed and sliced
50g butter
2 teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Salt and pepper to season
450g plain flour
170g butter
200ml water
Pinch salt
1 egg, beaten

Preheat the oven to 180C.

In a large, nonstick frying pan melt the butter over a medium heat.  Gently fry the leeks until soft but not browned, about 5 minutes.  Add the cumin and cayenne, cook for a further 5 minutes.  Spread out on a plat to cool.

In a large bowl, mix the cooled leeks with the pork, and season well.  Divide into four equal balls.  Put in the fridge until needed.

To make the pastry, measure the flour and salt into a large bowl.  In a small pan, bring the water and butter to a boil, pour into the flour and mix until combined into a smooth dough.  Divide this dough into four balls.

Take the first ball and split off two-thirds.  Roll this out into a circle wide enough to fit a small pie tin and overlap the edges.  Carefully fit the dough into the tin, pressing it into the edges.  Roll the remaining one-third into a size large enough to make a lid.  Repeat with the other four balls.

Place one pork ball into each tin.  Brush beaten egg around the edge of each tin and fit a pastry lid on, pressing and pinching to make sure the pastry seals.  Trim off the excess pastry and neaten up the edges.
Make a hole in the top of each lid and brush with egg.

Place on a baking tray and bake for 1 hour.  Leave to cool and refrigerate before serving.

Makes 4 generous-sized individual pork pies.

Reinventing the wheel: Slow cooked Pork sandwiches

As part of my new food business, I have a stall at one of the Wellington markets.  This means early starts on Saturday mornings.  Not so much of an issue to early-bird me; very much an issue to my night owl husband who, for logistical reasons too dull to go into, takes me down to the market and drops me off with all my stuff, returning later in the day to collect me.  And as much as, when I was signing up for this, I tried to convince him with breezy renditions of "it'll be fiiiiiiiiine", I know that early starts on a Saturday are, for him, in the same level of hell as, say, if I suggested we take one of those free salsa dancing lessons they're offering at the waterfront.  The fact that he never whinges, not once, about all of this just proves what a good'un he really is. 

One of the ways I try to bribe him to stay in his non-complaining state is to treat him to the leftovers of my toils.  I know, right, doesn't sound like much of a treat.  You could be right, up to a point.  One of the products I sell is slow-cooked pork sandwiches with apple sauce.  The pork is cooked slowly overnight, with no other ingredients than water and salt, and it is moreish, melt-in-your mouth delicious.  I can't resell any pork that is left, so I bag it up and freeze it, for use on a day other than Saturday when I can't even look at any more slow-cooked pork.

One of the most successful dishes I've found is a pork chilli.  Converting even sceptic Andy, who is the Chilli Con Carne boss of me, he now prefers pork chilli to the beef he's used to.  I promise to put the recipe up here soon because, truly, it is wonderful.  We've had a run of chilli though, so I was looking for something different to do.  My mind returned to the sandwiches - what if I made them for us but just changed up the additional ingredients, to make it altogether more Italian in flavour?  

And listen, as much as I know that leftover recipes are somewhat limiting for the regular reader, it might help someone out there - I know the words "leftover slow cooked pork" must be one of my top Google searches, so I'm sending this out there because for all I know, you too have bags of pork sitting in your freezer.  And you know what?  These sandwiches are so good, you might want to consider cooking some pork just so you can turn the leftovers into this.  They're that tasty.

Italian Slow Cooked Pork Sandwiches

300g leftover slow cooked pork

1 clove garlic

2 spring onions

Handful of flat leaf parsley, choppe

1 sprig rosemary, chopped

2 sprigs thyme, chopped

Squeeze of lemon juice

Olive Oil

Cheddar

Blue Cheese

2 bread rolls

1 red chilli, chopped

Salad leaves

Preheat the grill.

In a small pan, heat the olive oil and gently fry the garlic and spring onions.  Add the pork, herbs, and a good squeeze of lemon juice.  Cook gently with the lid on until completely heated through, about 10 minutes.

Split the rolls, put one kind of cheese on each side of the rolls.  Pop under the grill to melt the cheese and warm the bread.  

Pile on the salad leaves, top with the pork and finally the chilli.

Keep a napkin to hand for this one folks, it's juicy!

Serves 2