Cochinita Pibil

Cochinita Pibil is a recipe I’ve been wanting to try at home for a long time after trying it at Wahaca and has been made possible by the haul of  Mexican ingredients The Man and I brought back from New York. Some girls would have demanded a trip to Tiffany’s; I made sure we visited local stores and markets to pick up some hard to get items, luckily our luggage came in bang on the weight allowance flying home.

A traditional Mexican dish, Cochinita Pibil involves slow cooking pork, or sometimes a whole pig, in a deep red citrusy sauce until it is meltingly tender.

The key ingredient here is Achiote (annato) powder which gives the dish its red colouring, and is also used in much smaller quantities to colour Red Leicester cheese. The recipe I used is a tweaked version of this one from Helen Graves. I love her blog, her recipes have never let me down and always deliver on taste.

I had wanted to use a big slow cooking joint of meat that I could cook for a long time and would leave  plenty of left overs, but in the end I plumped for four pork shoulder steaks and cooked them low and slow.

The smell that filled the flat as it was cooking was insanely good and had The Man hanging round the kitchen looking longingly at the oven. The end result was awesome,  wonderfully juicy and messy to eat piled on tacos and secured the highest level of praise from The Man “a triumph”!

Method

First off make the achiote paste although you can buy a ready-made version at Mex  Grocer.

2 tablespoons achiote powder
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
Pinch black pepper
6 whole allspice
1.5 tablespoons water

It should look something like this,  it is VERY RED but don’t be scared.

To this I added;

4 cloves of garlic finely chopped,

1/2 tsp dried chillies

2 tbsp orange juice and 2 tbsp ( the recipe should use Seville oranges, so no need for the lime but I couldn’t get my hands on any)

I added this along with the meat to the achiote paste and left to marinate in the fridge to a few hours ,although it really deserves to be left for much longer; 24 hrs would be fantastic.

When it’s time to get cooking, pre heat the oven to 150c. In a large pan with a lid brown the pork steaks, reserving the achiote paste. When the pork has a good level of char on each side add the left over paste to the pan along with a further 100ml of water and 100ml orange juice.

Place the lid on the pan and place in the oven for 3 hours checking occasionally and toping up with orange juice if it looks like getting too dry. After 3 hours remove from the oven and shred the meat, it should be so soft it falls apart with pressure from a fork.

We ate them with red onions “pickled” in lime juice and spicy salsa but I wish I’d made guacamole too.

January on the allotment

January is the month I usually start to tidy up the allotment after the ravages of winter, I spent this afternoon spring cleaning the shed, digging over the vegetable beds, rescuing our very over grown strawberries and generally taking stock. I got a bit carried away and did more work than one person probably should so I’m typing this while nursing a medicinal G&T.

Sundays on the allotment also come with the ammusing accompaniment of local league football being played just over the fence; today it seemed very important that man called Gary should “keep his head up”. I’m not sure what that meant and from all the shouting going on neither did Gary!

Although the winter so far has been much milder than the last one, it has been very windy and there has been one major casualty on the allotment, the greenhouse. Here it is…

Doesn’t it look sad! The Man and I found it with the cover completely ripped off by the winds a few weeks ago and all we could do at the time was pick up the plastic cover which luckily hadn’t gone too far and stuff it in the shed. For reference here is the view in January 2011.

The Man thinks it’s fixable, but I’m not sure where to start.  I’m impressed it has held together for the three years we’ve had it, we snapped part of it on the day we put it up, it had to be majorly re enforced last year, and the other allotment holders around us looked pretty sceptical when they saw it. We shall see, I hope there is life in the old girl.

On a brighter note the rhubarb is starting to come through.

The first thing we planted and still coming back for more.

Despite the hard graft which always accompanies the first proper session on the allotment in the New Year it’s nice to return to something cyclical, look back at where things were last year and what might be this year. One thing is for sure Cabbages are now added to the list of things I won’t bother with again (soon there will only be weeds on this list), but something has been eating them despite all my attempts at protecting them so I’m giving in if I can’t eat them then nothing else is going to!

Love Food Hate Waste: left over Christmas Cake

Do you still have a house guest left over hanging around after Christmas? No…check your cake tins, I once found a remnant of forgotten Christmas cake lurking in a tin in March! It probably had so much booze in it that it would have been edible but I just couldn’t face it. That story probably means I’m a very slovenly house keeper, but since I make my own Christmas cake I’m more keen than every to use it up and not let it go to waste.

If you have thrown out any left over Christmas cake shame on you because you are missing a real treat. Warm Christmas cake with Christmas pudding ice cream. Oh yes dear reader, it may be January, chocolate rabbits and eggs may have appeared in the shops already and this may not even be a recipe but you will thank me for it!

Ingredients & Method

For the Christmas Pud ice cream I used a tub of butter scotch ice cream but vanilla would be fine; allowed it to soften and then stirred through the crumbled remains of a Christmas pudding. Re freeze, and you’re done.  Don’t worry if you haven’t got any left, serve this with any ice cream you like.

Cut a portion of Christmas cake, place in a bowl and warm it (I use the microwave for speed).

Serve with a dollop of ice cream.

I find this a particular pleasure with a drop of whisky, when all the decorations have come down, Christmas and New Year seem a long time ago, the Weight Watchers ads are on TV and things feel a bit grim. Perfect pick me up I’d say! Thrifty too if you’re feeling the pinch after the festive season.

Jamie Oliver’s Dan Dan Noodles

The Man and I have a major cook book habit; whilst this means we are never short of inspiration, it does mean we tend to forget books we have had for a while. Whilst this means that yes there are a number of  infrequently used books taking up a lot of shelf space,  it also means that you get the joy of rediscovering a cracking book you had sort of forgotten about, in this case Jamie’s America.

I loved this book when I we first got it, but haven’t  cooked from it a great deal as I’m easily distracted by new cook books. However, after out trip to New York I decided to have another look and see what Jamie made of it. The book provides a number of Mr Oliver’s (i.e not necessarily totally authentic) takes on key New York dishes and I settled on his Fiery Dan Dan Noodles* as a feisty, New Year pick me up of a dish at the end of the dreaded first week back at work!

I was really pleased with the end result, a quick, tasty, spicy dish that I thinks will become part of the Hungry Sparrow repertoire. The only issue I had, and this may be due to me using a not very spicy chilli oil and Szechuan pepper that is loosing it’s spice but I didn’t find is as searingly hot as Jamie warns it might be, which was puzzling as I’m sure I halved the recipe quite carefully. The Man and I do like spicy food but I’m sure we haven’t burned our taste buds off too much.

Ingredients

• 1 stock cube, chicken, veg or beef
• 250 g wheat noodles (quite thick ones)
• 200 g of minced beef
• 1 tbsp of honey
• Could of handfuls of green veg (I used broccoli and pack choi)
• 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 2 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 1 tsp of Szechuan ground pepper
• 3 tbsp of chilli oil
• 2 spring onions, chopped
• 1/2 lime quartered ( put the rest in a gin and tonic as you are preparing and cooking)

Method

• Put the stock cube in a big pan of water and bring to the boil ( this will be for the noodles later)
• Dry fry the beef in a large pan until dark and crispy ( about 10-15 minutes), add the honey, stir for 30 seconds, then set aside.
• Place the noodles in the now boiling stock and cook as the packet direct, with a couple of minutes to go remove a cup full of the water and throw in the veg and cook until done to your liking.
• Drain the noodles and vegetables then return to the hot pan with cup of stock, garlic, soy sauce, Szechuan pepper, and chilli oil.
• Divide this between two bowls and top with the crispy beef ( re heated if you like) and the chopped spring onions.
• Serve with a quarter of lime to squeeze over the top.
• Don’t bother trying to eat tidily, this isn’t a first date dish (or maybe it is depending on your outlook).

* A quick Google suggests this version is very far removed from actual Szechuan Dan Dan Noodles, it is however a great recipe, if not one for pureists.

A Refreshing New Year

I love Christmas and New Year but there comes a point when I know I should eat something other than mince pies and drink something other than gin and tonics! I look in the mirror and my skin looks awful and the extra pounds are all too obvious. I think it happens to a lot of people at this time of year, hence the popularity of detoxing. I would never advocate detoxing Ben Goldacre does a much more eloquent job of explaining why here but there is a point after Christmas when I need to return to a more sane way of eating, for the sake of my health and my wallet. This salad is from the River Cottage Veg Every Day book and is colorful, zesty, light enough to feel like it’s doing you some good but the avocado makes it a little more substantial. It’s very quick to prepare and the only fiddly bit is preparing the grapefruit.

Serves 2

• 1 ruby or pink grapefruit
• 1 avocado
• 1⁄2 small or medium red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
• A small handful of coriander leaves
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Slice the top and bottom from the grapefruit. Stand it upright on a board and work your way around the fruit with a sharp knife, cutting off the skin and all the pith. Now hold it in your hand over a bowl to catch the juice and slice carefully down between each segment to release from the membrane, letting the segments fall into the bowl, be careful with the knife while doing this! Squeeze the juice from the remaining membrane in too. Halve, and stone the avocado, cut lengthways into thin slices. Arrange  grapefruit segments  and avocado on a plate and pour over the saved juice. Sprinkle a little salt and the chopped chilli over the salad. Finish with the coriander and a generous splash of olive oil.  Serve straight away.

The Hungry Sparrow goes to New York

The blog has been quite quiet in December partly because I’ve been very busy,  partly due to poor planning if I’m honest, and because The Man and I have been on holiday to New York. I don’t want to waffle on about it, apart from to say it was amazing, if slightly disconcerting to be in a city you have seen so often in films, on TV in books etc. However, it’s fair to say food featured pretty heavily in what we did so here is a quick canter through some of the highlights.

Lox Special on a pumpernickel bagel in Brooklyn; salmon, cream cheese, red onion and capers.

Fresh and tasty vegan sandwiches from Peace Food Cafe , spiky service though perhaps they were having a bad day.

Chippotle turkey at the trendy and packed  Westville East

A Kasha (buckwheat) Knish,  substantial Eastern European Jewish food designed to keep out the cold of a harsh winter. We also ate them from Yonah Schimmel Knishes, tasty pastry cannon balls; it’s a good job we did a lot of walking to burn them off.

Tacos from Brookly Taco Company, hot sauce mandatory!

Green mango chips with chili sugar salt at Fatty Crab, wow!

Moreish but lethal cocktails from Temple Bar, The Man and I got very merry on these.

So those are the highlights, a nod should also go to this fab food tour  of the Lower East Side that the Man found online which filled a damp afternoon with interesting sights, smells and tastes! We also managed to have brunch at Shopsins somewhere I’ve wanted to go since The Man bought me this book. I loved it and it was every thing I sort of hoped it would be, but there are no photos as we followed “the rules”. Some people hate it and I can see why that might be, a read of the Google Reviews sums up the two schools very well. For what it’s worth I loved the food and they were borderline friendly to us!