Pulled Pork with Prunes and Polenta Toasts

I find designing main courses quite hard. To cook something exciting- not just some meat, some potatoes/rice/beans, some veg, perhaps a sauce- really requires some thought. Traditional cooking can taste lovely, but something like cassoulet or a homely stew is not fundamentally interesting. Even recipe books are not that inspiring here. It might just be that, in some sense, cooking has evolved to suit our tastes, and our body likes to have protein, carbohydrate, and vitamins and minerals all in the same meal. But that doesn’t make the meal novel and creative. Starters and puddings are much more fun, since you can play around with ideas, and there aren’t many preconceptions as to what the course should be like. So recently, I’ve tried taking different things I have used in starters, or as part of other meals, and combining them to make a fancier main meal. Perhaps a little strange some times, but much more interesting.

My latest attempt has been using pulled pork. Pulled pork is slow cooked pork, which become tender enough to pull apart, and is then mixed with a sauce or spices. Normally I make this as a fajita or sandwich filling, and it’s great for feeding a crowd, as you start off with such a large piece of pork. The sauce I use in the pork adds a huge amount of complexity- chocolate, smoke, spiciness, earthiness, sweetness, and nutty flavours are all there. It’s always gone down very well with friends who have ended up with some for lunch, so why wouldn’t it make a good main course? Since it is a little similar in texture to pork rillettes, or a course pâté, I thought some sort of bread/chutney would help bring out the flavours.

Polenta toasts are to be the accompaniment here. In the same way you might have pâté on toast as a starter, this makes the main course ‘strange pâté on strange toast’. Polenta is maize flour, so making toast out of it is not completely out of left field. I’ve also tried polenta chips before, which have worked very well. You end up with a crispy yet granular texture, but a much denser texture than normal toast. Also, the process cooking polenta is great fun, as it can only be described as ‘volcanic’- if you do cook it, be sure to put a lid on the saucepan. Once cooked and set, just finish off under a grill, or frying pan, to get your thin and crispy toasts.

With some roast cherry tomatoes and prunes to provide the ‘chutney’, the course is complete. I really liked it, as did the others who had it, but I will admit the texture of the polenta was a little strange with the smooth pulled pork- definitely an interesting course. If you are wondering what to cook, it can be as simple as just taking your favourite starter and turning the dish into a main.

Pulled Pork with Prunes and Polenta Toasts

Serves 6, with a good amount of pulled pork left over. Takes a long time, but the results are well worth it. The recipe for pulled pork is based on one from BBC Good Food.

Ingredients
1 pork shoulder (~1.5kg)
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 litre chicken stock
1 orange
1 cinnamon stick
1 sprig thyme
2 onions
250g pack cherry tomatoes
2 corn tortillas
50g flaked almonds
50g raisins
2tsp each ground coriander, cumin
1tbsp chipotle chilli paste
25g plain chocolate
9 prunes, best quality you can reasonably get
200g uncooked polenta
1 litre vegetable stock
24 cherry tomatoes, best quality you can reasonably get
oil, for frying

Recipe:
1. Soften the pork. In a large casserole dish, mix the chicken stock, tomato purée, zest and juice of the orange, and cinnamon stick. Add the pork shoulder, top up with boiling water, then simmer for approximately 5 hours, until the pork is tender and falling apart. Remove the pork from the casserole, allow to cool, then pull apart with your fingers, discarding the fat.
2. Make the sauce. Dice the onions, fry, then add, with the chocolate and chipotle sauceto a food processor. Dry-fry the tomatoes until they blister, fry the tortillas, and add to the food processor. Heat some oil in a pan, add the coriander and cumin, then the raisins and almonds. Heat until the raisins absorb the oil, then add to the food processor. Whizz until coarse, and add around 3tbsp of the pork stewing liquid. Mix the sauce into the pork.
3. Make the polenta toasts. In a pan (with a lid on), heat the polenta along with 1 litre of vegetable stock, stirring occasionally. The polenta will spit, so make sure to keep the lid on. After an hour, pour onto a baking tray to cool, spreading as thin as possible. When cooled (~1hr), cut the polenta into triangles. Heat some oil in a frying pan, and fry the polenta toasts for around 4 minutes each side until crispy. You can also do these in a griddle pan for prettier toasts, but I found the charred effect taste too strong.
4. Assemble the dish. Roast the good quality cherry tomatoes for around 30 minutes. Put some pulled pork in a mug, then turn over onto a plate. Slice the prunes, and place them on top, then add the roasted cherry tomatoes and polenta toasts.

Cajeta and Cinnamon Ice Cream

Ice cream is a great way of taking leftover dessert you’ve made and getting another dessert out of it. Any sauces you’ve made, like a caramel sauce, fruit purées, or melted chocolate will all go into an ice cream for a second life. You might want to make double quantity of the sauce you’re planning so there is some left at the end. Similarly, if you’ve got some fruit close to the end of it’s life, an ice cream is a good place to go. Given how easy ice creams are to make, and how long they keep in the freezer, you can make ice cream whenever you want, and keep it for a rainy day. So when I had a lot of cajeta made over from making a tres leches cake, that’s exactly what I did.

When making ice cream with something you have leftover, the one thing you have to be careful about is the sugar content. It’s important to have enough sugar in your ice cream to get the creamy texture you want, but equally way too much is going to make it taste unpleasant. With the cajeta, there is already a lot of sugar present, so I haven’t actually added any at all, and the texture was absolutely fine. With a fruit purée, you’ll have used a little sugar in making the purée, so you’ll want to reduce the amount of sugar added in afterwards. A bit of experience is helpful here, but it is hard to go too wrong with ice creams, you’ll always get something fun to eat- it’s cream and sugar after all.

Some notes on ice cream making from ‘Blackberry and Port Ice Cream’: “You can make ice cream without an ice cream maker, but it is tricky. The keep to making a good ice cream is to get small water crystals forming, as this creates the smooth texture you want. Ice cream makers work by churning the ice cream as the cream mixture is freezing, to stop large water crystals forming, and to create this churning effect by hand requires a lot of patience- you put the cream in a tub in the freezer, then every ten minutes, give it a good stir with a fork, then put it back. I’ve had ice cream made this way, and the texture has been fine, but the effort that goes into it is considerable. I use this Cuisinart ice cream maker, which I got for Christmas a couple of years ago, and I’ve been very pleased with it. It requires pre-freezing a bowl, typical among the cheaper ice cream makers- so make sure you get a large bowl that can cool down your cream quickly. The bowl with this machine is quite large, make sure your freezer can fit it inside.”

Cajeta and Cinnamon Ice Cream

This will make a litre of ice cream. I’ve included the cajeta/dulce de leche recipe from before, for completeness. This ice cream is delicious by itself, but would go well with roasted winter fruits like pears, figs, or apples.

Ingredients:
1.5 litre cows’ milk
1 litre goats’ milk
450g caster sugar
1/2tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 stick cinnamon

Recipe:
1. Make the milk mixes. Put aside 500ml of the cows’ milk. In one bowl, put 100ml goat’s milk with the baking soda. Stir until dissolved. In a large pan, place all the other ingredients, and stir until the sugar is dissolved.
2. Make the cajeta. Bring the large pan to the boil, and simmer for approx 30 minutes. When it is beginning to brown, add the baking soda milk. The mixture will begin to froth, so move off the heat if necessary. Continue simmering and reduce down to approx 750ml.
3. Make the ice cream. Add 500ml cajeta to the 500ml milk that you put aside earlier. Put in the fridge to cool overnight, then make into ice cream with an ice cream maker, according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Cajeta and Tres Leches Cake

I’m a big fan of Mexican cuisine. This doesn’t mean burritos, tacos, or fajitas- while I’ll happily eat those every day, I mean more of the traditional Mexican cuisine: stews, beans, flours, and spices. When the missus and I holidayed in Mexico a few years ago, we went on a ‘sustainable tourism’ day, part of which was going out to one of the small rural villages, and tasting some of their traditional cuisine for lunch. What we had was not complicated cuisine- a spicy chicken stew with black beans and rice- but boy was it good: rustic, wholesome, and filling. Ever since, I’ve been a fan, trying to reproduce the cuisine at home. Whilst the flour that is used to make tortillas and tamales, masa harina, is not easy to get hold of, chipotle peppers, which are smoked jalapeños, have just started appearing in UK supermarkets, so cooking traditional Mexican food at home has become a little easier as well.

Cajeta, also known as dulce de leche in some parts of the world, is one of the flagship Mexican desserts, being declared the ‘Bicentennial Dessert of Mexico’ in 2010. It is essentially a sweetened milk syrup, heated to produce caramelisation and Maillard browning. Poured on ice cream, combined with custards, or made into candy, it’s not that far off a thick caramel sauce. To make a traditional cajeta, goats’ milk is used sometimes mixed with other milks- here I’m using 50-50 of cows’ milk and goats’ milk to balance the sweetness of the cows’ milk with the ..er.. unique flavour of the goats’ milk. After a friend gave me a couple of cajeta treats she bought from Mexico to the UK, I thought it was time to give making cajeta a go.

One approach to making cajeta seems to be to place a can of condensed milk into a saucepan with some water in, then leaving it for a number of hours over a medium heat. The base of the saucepan provides the heat for the caramelisation of the sugar in the condensed milk, and the boiling water, ironically, cools the can to prevent it exploding. However, it seems strange to make it this way- not only do you run the risk of exploding can and caramel on the ceiling, but you lose the important Maillard browning- but making the real thing is so easy. By combining milks, sugar, and a little baking soda, you can just leave it on the hob and let it do its thing; the end result for me, given the effort it took, was impressive.

Whilst spooning copious amount of cajeta into my mouth looked like an afternoon well spent, I thought I might find a Mexican dessert where the flavours and texture of cajeta are used. Enter tres leches cake. It’s a genoise sponge soaked in tres leches (three milks)- cream, evapourated milk and condensed milk. Here, though, to make a cuatro leches cake, I could add dulce de leche. The genoise sponge is made without butter here to keep the cake dry, so that soaking the cake in the milk mix won’t make the texture soggy, but nicely moist instead. The end result is a rich, dense cake, but full of milky, caramel flavours. Combined with a Grand Marnier topping, this cake was great to bring out as something different from the usual Victoria sponges, coffee and walnuts, or carrot cakes.

Cinnamon Cajeta

This recipe is taken from a great food blog I read, Joe Pastry. Makes approximately 750ml, and should keep for a few weeks in the refrigerator.

Ingredients:
1 litre cows’ milk
1 litre goats’ milk
450g caster sugar
1/2tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 stick cinnamon

Recipe:
1. Make the milk mixes. In one bowl, put 100ml goat’s milk with the baking soda. Stir until dissolved. In a large pan, place all the other ingredients, and stir until the sugar is dissolved.
2. Make the cajeta. Bring the large pan to the boil, and simmer for approx 30 minutes. When it is beginning to brown, add the baking soda milk. The mixture will begin to froth, so move off the heat if necessary. Continue simmering and reduce down to approx 750ml.

Tres Leches Cake

Again, this recipe is taken from Joe Pastry.

Ingredients:
For the cake:
85g flaked almonds
140g plain flour
Zest of one orange
1/2tsp salt
4tbsp butter
6 eggs
200g caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
For the syrup:
120ml dulce de leche
180ml double cream
60ml evaporated milk
60ml sweetened condensed milk
For the icing:
250ml double cream
2tbsp sugar
2tbsp Grand Marnier

Recipe:
1. Toast the almonds. Spread out the almonds on a greased baking tray and cook in an oven at 200°C for approximately 15 minutes until lightly toasted. Put the almonds in an electric mixer and whizz until they are in small crumbs.
2. Prepare the sponge. Sift in the flour, orange zest, and salt into the almonds. In a small pan, melt the butter. In an bowl you can put in a saucepan, beat the eggs with the sugar. In a large saucepan, pour in about 1″ of water, and bring it to the boil.
3. Make the sponge. Put the sugar and egg bowl into the pan, and heat until the egg mix is warm to the touch. Incorporate the melted butter, and fold in the flour mixture. Pour into a 9″ cake tin, and cook for approximately 30 minutes at 170°C, until a knife comes out clean. Leave to cool on a cooling rack.
4. Soak the sponge. Make the syrup mixture by combing the milks, cream, and dulce de leche. Place the cake on a plate, the pour a little of the syrup on top, using a pastry brush to spread it around, until the mix is soaked up. Repeat until half of the syrup is used. Then, putting another plate on top to assist you, turn the cake over, and repeat the syrup soaking with this side.
5. Ice the cake. Whip the cream until hard peaks, then add the sugar and Grand Marnier and mix well. Spread on top of the cake.

Spreading the dulce de leche syrup mix onto the cake.

Restaurant Review: The Royal Oak

I’m not a fan of the concept “gastropub”. Stuck in limbo between “pub” and “restaurant”, it doesn’t have the relaxed cosy feel of a pub, nor the sophistication of a restaurant. The food can be more about style than substance, and rarely is there a real ale in sight. There are many exceptions, of course, but if I hear a place I like has turned into a gastropub, it’s usually a place I won’t like for long.

What I am a fan of, though, is pubs with great food, which is where I would put The Royal Oak. Situated neat the split of Woodstock and Banbury roads in the city centre of Oxford, it used to just be another ordinary pub. Recently, though, it’s come under new management and they’ve gone to town on the food menu, and the results have really shown. This new menu, the chilled out atmosphere, and the fact it is open until midnight, mean it has become an attractive place to spend the evening, as many now do.

Food 9/10: I’ve now been here enough to try a few different things on the menu. My favourite has been an ox cheek pie, but since the menu changes frequently, I imagine to make use of food that is in season, the ox cheek pie wasn’t available when we visited recently. Instead we ordered from the set menu- two courses for £8.50 or three for £11.50- and between us settled on chicken and chorizo skewers, pea and watercress risotto, hake fishfingers and chips, and chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream. The results were very good, the risotto being creamy and fresh and the skewers crispy and flavoursome. Superb value for money, particularly.

Drinks 8/10: A great selection of real ales, including a particular favourite of mine, Doombar. They’ve also got a couple of proper ciders on tap, Aspall’s and Addlestone’s, with the latter being a cloudy cider, a nice touch for cider fans. The whisky shelf is well stocked as well, with many regulars and a few irregulars.

A look at the wine side of things suggests The Royal Oak is more “pub” than “gastropub” though. Hard to find a wine list around the place, most are usual pub fare for wines. This isn’t necessarily a problem, given the great selection of other drinks here and the atmosphere, but don’t expect anything great.

Atmosphere and Service 7/10: The Royal Oak is a little in the mould of a country pub, with wooden pillars and old comfy chairs abound. With many smaller rooms and lower ceilings, there is a cosy feel to wherever you are. The few picnic tables make for nice sitting outside, if the sun ever returns to Oxford.

The staff there are friendly as well. Checking that everything was fine with our food was a nice touch. Not serving our meals with our request, though, was not. We wanted the starter to come out with one main, and the other main to come out with the pudding, as we were in a little bit of a rush, and when they came out as you might expect- starters, mains, puddings- we became pushed for time. Otherwise though, not a problem with the service. It is still a pub, after all.

Here, restaurants are reviewed based on some idea of restaurant expectation, not objective quality. If the latter was used, anywhere moderately affordable would look like an undesirable place to eat, given it would have much lower numbers than hugely more expensive restaurants. So if a hamburger restaurant was being looked at, 10/10 would represent a top hamburger restaurant, and 5/10 might represent a poor one. So a top class French restaurant could have lower numbers than a hamburger restaurant, but be more desirable to eat at, as it is held to higher standards. It makes sense, trust me.

Restaurant Review: Mission Burrito

One week last year, I was in the Mission District in San Francisco, eating a burrito, on the way to play bridge. The next week, back in Oxford, I was in Mission Burrito, eating a burrito, on the way to play bridge. So I’d like to think I have some base for comparison when looking at a place that is named after this Californian hot-spot for Mexican cuisine.

With the busy student life in Oxford, burritos from Mission Burrito have become key to me for getting a meal in around afternoon and evening activities. Reasonably priced at just under £6 for a burrito, prices are student friendly, and a few minutes is all you’ll need to wait for your burrito to be made. But for me, the biggest attraction is that burritos here will keep you going through those evening commitments- you won’t be hungry for a while after eating one of these.

Food 9/10: Much like Subway, in the sense that you choose your basic meal then customise it, you can start with a burrito (rice and pinto or black beans), fajita burrito (rice, peppers, and onions), tacos, or a salad or rice box. You filling is then steak, chicken, vegetarian, or carnitas (slow roasted pork). Finish it off with salady bits, sour cream, guacamole, cheese, and salsa, and you’re good to go.

I’ve never had the vegetarian, but everything else has been more than up to scratch. The carnitas is particularly soft and flavoursome, and the pinto beans are cooked to just the right texture, so these two end up being my usual burrito combination. I rarely order the cheese- I find it gets drowned out with all the other flavours- and the chipotle salsa, while at the right heat, could have a bit more of a smoky flavour, given that chipotles are just smoked jalapeños. All in all, though, the food is excellent, you can tell all the ingredients are fresh and well sourced, and that a lot of effort has gone into making sure the product is a good one.

Drinks 9/10: Not a significant part of the experience for me- in fact, I rarely order a drink. However, if you do want to sit down and enjoy a drink with your meal, the drinks selection complement the food and atmosphere well. In addition to the usual fare like Coke, they have a few of Mexican beers, like Corona, and frozen margeritas. Also, they’ve recently started importing American root beer, which has been tricky to find in Oxford otherwise. Hard to ask for much more from drinks, I feel.

Atmosphere and Service 8/10: There are many nice touches to make it seem like Mission Burrito came right out of California: the red baskets your burrito is placed in, the nice wooden tables, or the pictures of the Mission District on the walls. The staff are friendly; I’ve often seen them giving helpful suggestions to people in front of me who don’t know quite what they want to order. There can be quite a lot of variation in the size of the burrito, however- some servers are more generous than others- so it can be sad if you end up with a smaller burrito. But overall, it’s relaxed environment, which is just right for that quick evening meal.

Mission Burrito. There are two branches in Oxford, one on King Edward Street, one on St. Michael’s Street.