spork me

Chili Orange Sage Pork Belly with Braised Peaches and White Beans

Not to brag (only a little), this was the best pork belly I’ve made so far, and the beans went with it incredibly. Not a ton of ingredients but they work really well together, and it only takes a few minutes to throw together.

Ingredients (pork belly):

1 pork belly
1 red chili, sliced
1 orange, juice and zest
10 sage leaves
3-4 star anise
Salt and pepper

Arrange the ingredients (except the pork) on the bottom of a glass pan that will fit the pork belly nicely, including the orange juice. Score the skin of the belly about 1cm apart, not cutting the meat. Place it meat side down in the pan, rub the skin liberally with salt, and chuck it in the fridge overnight.

When it’s time to cook, bring to room temperature (about 30 minutes) and pre-heat the oven to full heat. Bake for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 150C / 300F. Cook for about an hour, then blast the heat again until the skin bubbles but not burns. Let rest for 10 minutes in its own juices before serving.

Ingredients (white beans):

1 can of white beans, drained
1 cup of chicken stock (homemade, if you have it)
2 peaches, pitted and sliced thin
2 tbsp harissa or chili paste (or just mash some chili and garlic with cumin and coriander seeds)
1 red onion, sliced
1 punnet of grape or cherry tomatoes, cut in half
10 sage leaves, chopped
1 cup chopped flat parsley
Juice of 1 lemon
Olive oil, salt and pepper

In a pan with a touch of oil, slowly caramelize the onions, about 10 minutes, until very soft. Add the harissa paste and peaches, cooking for 5 minutes more. Stir in the white beans, sage, and stock. Reduce slightly before adding the tomatoes, then cook to a thicker sauce. Add the parsley and lemon juice, cook 2 minutes more, season with salt and pepper, and serve.

Orange Chili Duck with Cabbage Pasta and Anchovy Breadcrumbs

The pasta is based slightly off this recipe, the best bit being the delicious albeit weird sounding anchovy breadcrumbs. They’re amazing and would work in quite a lot of dishes to add a bit of crunch and salt, and only take 5 minutes to make.

My version of the pasta used a different type of cabbage and likely wasn’t nearly as nice as that recipe, so I suggest you just make that. The breadcrumbs recipe though, I will copy over, as you can put them on anything.

Ingredients (duck):

1 orange, zest and whole orange in half
Sea salt
1 red chili, chopped
2kg whole duck

In a mortar and pestle, mash the zest, salt, and chili. Spread and massage this into the skin of the duck. Put the orange halves in the duck cavity, and tie the legs shut with some butchers twine. Cook at 180C / 350F for about an hour, until the skin is crispy. If it’s not crispy yet, crank the oven and cook for 10 minutes more.

Ingredients (anchovy breadcrumbs, from the New York Times):

1/2 cup breadcrumbs
4 anchovies
2 garlic cloves, diced
2 tbsp butter

Melt the butter and add the anchovies. Cook and mash until you had a paste, then add the garlic and cook for another minute or so. Add in the breadcrumbs and coat with the butter. Cook until golden brown, stirring occasionally. Serve with absolutely anything.

Drunken British Bucket Turkey

Or otherwise known as Orange Bourbon Tea Brined Turkey roasted with Molasses Bourbon Orange Butter.

Just… wow.

Anyway, follow the directions here for the brine, then follow these easy steps to inject your turkey full of goodness to bake.

Ingredients:

Brined turkey
1 stick of butter
Zest and juice of 1 orange
1/4 cup bourbon
1/4 cup molasses
Cayenne pepper
Salt
2 springs of rosemary
2 bay leaves

Put the butter, orange zest, half the orange juice, bourbon, molasses, cayenne pepper, and salt in a blender. This works better if the butter is at room temperature, but whatever. Blend. It may not combine entirely, but that’s ok. Refrigerate it for a bit if you need to.

Make a pocket under the turkey skin, and mash the butter mixture all up in there. Put 1 bay leaf and 1 sprig of rosemary on each side, over the breast. Squeeze the remaining orange juice over the skin, and season the outside, and the cavity of the bird, with salt and pepper. Stuff the orange rind into the cavity, and bake for however long a bird of the size you have needs to bake. Cover it for the first 3/4 then remove the cover for the last 1/4. Let it rest for 30 minutes, covered, before serving.

Chipotle Beef Tacos with Cabbage and Carrot Slaw, Black Beans and Tomato

Based off the carnitas recipe I use, but with some extra chili and stronger flavors. My new favorite taco recipe; the slaw is more of the same from the Chow recipe I used, and the beans are leftover soup, reduced.

Ingredients:

800 grams of beef (I had a prime rib roast), in 2 by 2 inch cubes
2 oranges, juiced and rinds retained
3 bay leaves
2 tbsp thyme leaves
1 onion, quartered
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 chipotle chili with 2-3 tablespoons of adobo sauce
1 mulato chili, in 1 cup of boiling water
1 small red chili
3 garlic cloves, crushed
Salt, to taste

In a pan (or your slow cooker if you have an option to saute), brown the beef in the vegetable oil. Blend the chilies with the adobo sauce, and about half the retained water from “reviving” the mulato chili. Mix that with the rest of the ingredients in the slow cooker, including the orange rinds. Cook for 6 hours (you can use the pressure cooker to speed this up if you need). Spoon off the excess fat, remove the orange rinds, bay leaves, onion, and garlic, and shred the beef into the sauce. You may need to cook down the liquid a bit. Serve with cabbage slaw, black beans and cheese.

Master Stock Beef Cheeks with Spicy Rhubarb Sauce, Orange Salt, and Braised Fennel

Oh. My. God. This had to have been one of the best things I’ve ever eaten. After taking the master stock class at the Urban Food Market, I was keen to try out a few of the recipes I came home with, as well as cook up some crazy good looking beef cheeks I picked up while I was there.

Firstly, I found out how wrong I’ve been about chicken stock. Make your own, and make it with uncooked bones or chicken, and not your post-roast leftovers. I grabbed a kilo of chicken bones to replace the whole chicken in this recipe, and it was really easy and so much better than store bought stock.

With that, I put together the first round of master stock with some lamb ribs. Urban Food Market has graciously put their recipe online so you can try it at home, although I’d highly recommend the class.

The rhubarb sauce is from the Jamie Oliver App I was raving about, but with a bit of chili to spice it up. The orange salt was made by drying some orange peel in the oven and smashing it with some sea salt. And on the bottom there’s some spaghetti with olive oil, chili and garlic, to soak up all the sauces.

Ingredients (beef cheek):

2 pieces of beef cheek
Salt, pepper, olive oil
Enough master stock to cover it

Season the cheeks and brown very well in olive oil. This will keep it from falling apart in the stock.

Bring the stock to a boil, add the cheeks, and simmer on low for 5 hours (I did mine at the same time as the lamb ribs, which I pressed for the next night).

Remove from the stock, and bake on super high heat for no more than 5 minutes, to create a crispy outside. Let rest for 10-15 minutes before serving.

Ingredients (braised fennel):

1 fennel bulb, cut in half, then in half, then in half, so you have about 10-12 pieces held together by the core
1 tbsp fennel seeds
3 sprigs rosemary
2 cups white wine
A scoop of masterstock, if you have it
Olive oil, salt and pepper

Brown the fennel in olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper, in batches. It’s ok if it’s not cooked through, as long as it’s got some color on both sides. Add it all back to the pan with fennel seeds, rosemary, and the wine. Cook for about 15-20 minutes, flipping the fennel halfway through. Serve and season with orange salt.

Osso Bucco with Pea, Lemon, Mint and Goat’s Cheese Fettuccine, and Crispy Brussel Sprouts

This is inspired by the Maggie Beer beef cheeks recipe I made a few weeks ago, it worked pretty well with the osso bucco and I went lighter on some of the ingredients so the veal didn’t get overpowered.

Ingredients (osso bucco marinade):

4 pieces of thick cut osso bucco
4 roughly chopped garlic cloves
4 sprigs of rosemary
4 bay leaves
Rind of 1 orange
2 tbsp juniper berries
Salt, pepper, olive oil

Toss together the day before cooking.

Ingredients (osso bucco):

Osso Bucco, removed from marinade
1 chopped onion
2 chopped carrots
1 cup red wine
Juice of 1 orange
2 cups of beef stock

Sear the osso bucco in a hot pan with a bit of olive oil, then remove, cleaning the pan of most of the oil. Saute the carrot and onion until soft, seasoning with salt and pepper. Mix in the liquids and bring to a simmer before adding the osso bucco back in. Cover and cook on low for 2 hours. Before serving, remove the osso bucco and reduce the liquid so it forms a sauce.

Ingredients (brussel sprouts):

3 cups of brussel sprouts, sliced in half
Zest of half a lemon
Salt, pepper, olive oil

Mix and bake for about 30 minutes, turning halfway through, until crispy.

Ingredients (fettuccine):

2 cups of cooked fettuccine
1 cup of frozen peas, defrosted
1/2 cup crumbled goat’s cheese
Zest and juice of half a lemon
1/2 cup chopped mint leaves
Salt and pepper

Saute the peas in a bit of olive oil. Once warm, mix with the rest of the ingredients and season with salt and pepper.

Maggie Beer’s Slow Braised Beef Cheeks with Caramelized Fennel, Haloumi and Pomegranate

Either beef cheeks have become very trendy, or I’ve never noticed them before, but I see them out a lot and when I found some, thought it would be easy enough to make my own. It totally was, if you have the world’s sharpest knife to portion the cheeks. Tough does not begin to explain the texture of these things, but after some slow cooking they’ll fall apart.

I improvised Maggie’s Beef Cheeks recipe a bit since I was doing it all same-day. Essentially I slow cooked it with the marinade, and made some substitutions for the vino cotto (who has $20 for a small bottle of this stuff? Not me.). The combination of flavors was really nice and I’d definitely make it again.

The side was from that vegetarian cookbook I’ve been raving about called Plenty, which is starting to become a staple around my house.

Heirloom Tomato, Oyster Mushroom, Prosciutto and Mozzarella Pizza with an Orange Sauce

This is what happens when a few things go wrong with your pizza dough. I didn’t preheat the pizza stone enough, and I thawed the frozen dough in the refrigerator instead of the counter. It didn’t quite rise again and it was too thin and came apart. I also tried to make an orange sauce for a sweet base, which was tasty but the recipe wasn’t quite right. All up it was a nice idea for a pizza, but I’ll take a rain check on posting a recipe until I’ve figured out how to make a nice orange base.

Crispy Orange Duck Leg with Sauteed Kale, Red Cabbage and Raisins

I absolutely love duck. It’s really got to be my favorite meat, if only it wasn’t so bloody expensive. Every now and then I’ll see it at an ok price and treat myself; this was a delicious meal and the standout was this recipe I found for the red cabbage and raisins. I had some mixed dried fruit I used instead, but it was a great side for this dish and there was enough leftover that I had it with pork belly the next night (recipe, coming up!).

Kale was just sauteed with some garlic and lemon. The duck was lacking a bit of liquid so I’ve altered the recipe slightly to “what I would have done”.

Ingredients (crispy orange duck leg):

2 duck marylands
1 tbsp Chinese Five Spice
1 orange, quartered
1 tsp cinnamon
1 red onion, sliced
1/2 cup of orange juice
1/2 cup verjuice or white wine
Salt, pepper, and olive oil

Pat the top of the duck leg dry, and season the underside with the five spice, cinnamon, salt and pepper. Salt the top of the duck skin, and in a hot oven proof pan with a bit of olive oil, sear the duck skin for about 5 minutes until brown.

Remove the duck and saute the onion until soft. Squeeze in the juice from the orange quarters and throw the rinds into the pan. Add the juices, season with salt and pepper, and place the duck legs in meat side down. Roast in the oven for about 40 minutes at 170C / 325F. 10 minutes before the end of cooking, baste with the pan juices, and make sure the skin is super crispy (you may need to turn your oven, or the grill, up).

Orange Spiced Roasted Pork Belly

Pork belly seems to be one of those love or hate things. I love it. I can’t get enough of it. And I’ve generally found that when serving skeptics, as long as you succeed at crispy crackling so the meat isn’t too fatty, they’re fans as well.

Ingredients:

1 pork belly, scored almost to the meat, 1 cm apart (don’t follow what I did in the photo, it was poorly done at the grocery store and I didn’t bother to fix it… bad move)
2 oranges, 1 sliced and 1 quartered
3-4 star anise
5-6 cardamon pods
1 tbsp Chinese 5 spice
Ground pepper
5 cloves of garlic
Salt. So much salt.

The night before (or morning of, or however soon you can do it), mash you garlic in a mortar and pestle with some salt and pepper. Mix in the spices, breaking open the star anise and cardamon. In a baking dish, line with sliced orange, and squeeze on orange juice from the quarters (don’t discard it yet). Rub the bottom of the roast with the spice mix, and set on top of the oranges. Stuff the squeezed quarters on the sides, and generously salt the top of the pork, rubbing into the scores. Leave uncovered in the fridge to help dry out the skin.

Before cooking, wipe the top of the pork with a paper towel to remove any liquid, and set the oven to 240C / 425F. Bake on high for about 20 minutes until the top is very brown and the crackling has formed. This also will create liquid in the bottom of your roast, and the pork will literally be hanging out in its own juices. How cool is that?

Turn down to 150C / 300F for an hour. Baste and cook for 15 minutes more. Let rest for 15 minutes and serve sliced.