Today is Tuesday, but I did all this stuff yesterday. We got back from England last week. We ate lots of good stuff that I hadn't had for ages. Sharp cheddar, fish and chips, toad in the hole, sausages, shepherds pie, steak and ale pie, scotch eggs and pork pie, for example!
I wanted to try my hand at pork pie. A bit beyond my usual stuff, and outside of my cooking comfort zone (which is, I suppose, asian). Anyway, this is the saga of yesterday.
First, I boiled some water with a carrot, an onion, sage, thyme and garlic.
Then I threw in some pigs trotters and boiled for three hours.
I took a kilo of pork shoulder and chopped it up into little bitty pieces. Did the same with some bacon, and mixed them together with some sage, thyme, garlic, a clove and some bay leaves.
I melted 200 grams of lard in the same amount of water, then added flour to make a dough.
I don't have a deep dish to make the traditional shape of a pork pie, so this shallower one will have to do. Cover the bottom and save some dough for the lid.
But save more than I did! Emergency! So, I'm out of dough. And this morning I'd been to three places before I could find lard, and I'd bought the last of it. So that was out. I remembered my Mum making a pie crust with butter and flour, so I tried that. Rubbed them together until they made crumbs, then added an egg and some water. It came out pretty good, but it looks a bit mutant.
The new, non-lard dough is at the bottom of the picture.
Then I cooked the pie for a couple of hours. You can see how the two different crusts came out a bit different. By now, I'd also taken the pigs feet out of the stock and cooked it down a lot. In this picture, I'm pouring the liquid into a hole in the middle of the pie. Then it goes in the fridge, where the liquid should turn to a yummy gelatin overnight.
The finished pie.
And that's it sliced open after sitting in the fridge all night. The meat has shrunk away from the edges, which is right, but then the gelatin was supposed to fill all the holes. It's done it a bit, but more on the bottom than the top!
Anyway, I tasted it and it's pretty damn good, and that's what counts.
So then I had these trotters which had been boiled, and it seemed a shame to just throw them away. So....
This is what they looked like. I was wondering what to do with them. They're fatty and rubbery. That made me think of pork belly.
The standard ginger, garlic and chili.
Fried in the wok. Pretty tasty, but messy to eat. Vero is not going to even try them.
Had a bunch of cilantro that I wanted to use up. And dinner was approaching. The pork pie wasn't ready. I had to cook something else.
I browned some beef with garlic and onion.
Browned some rice in some oil with some garlic, onion and green bell pepper.
Made some taco seasoning with paprika, cumin, chili, garlic and oregano. Chopped up the last little bit of sharp cheddar that we brought back from England, and some cilantro.
Added the spice mix to the beef, along with half a can of tomato sauce. Added the other half to the rice. Cooked that for a while until it got thick and almost no liquid was left.
Made a sauce by blending cilantro, garlic, cumin, chili and olive oil in the blender.
Assembled the enchiladas and baked them in the oven until the cheese melted. Topped with black olives.
Served with a little salad and a dressing I made from cilantro, honey and lime juice.
That was a lot of cooking for one day.
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