Pancetta Wrapped Pork

This is another pork tenderloin recipe, it’s nice (don’t forget I hate pork) and I would cook it again but I preferred the other recipe with the apples. I suppose with everything it’s all about taste, I personally found the sage leaves somewhat bitter tasting, which wasn’t very pleasant. On the other hand I suspect if you were to caramelise really thinly sliced apples in butter and brown sugar until soft and then carefully lay the apples on the pancetta/bacon, in the same way as you would the sage, then pour the juices over the top and wrap it all up in the same way sealing in the apples and as much of the juices as possible, cooking it in the same way, I suspect that I would like it more than the sage. I normally love sage so I am not sure what it was about this that went wrong or I wasn’t keen on.

Pancetta Wrapped Pork

12 Pancetta Slices/Bacon

Salt and black pepper

12 small sage leaves

325g Pork Tenderloin

1tbsp Olive oil

1. Preheat your oven to 180˚C/350˚F. Cover your chopping board with cling film, it needs to be as flat as possible. Place each one of you pancetta slices slightly over lapping onto the cling film and then sprinkle with a generous amount of salt and pepper, laying a sage leaf evenly along the centre. Place your pork onto the edge of the pancetta and using the cling film to aid you, roll the pork tightly into the pancetta, peeling back the cling film as you go.
   
    
2. Take a piece of foil, large enough to wrap the pork, lightly oil the foil and season with a little more salt and pepper, carefully roll the pork in all the seasonings and then tightly wrap the foil around the pork, twisting the ends so it looks like a Christmas cracker.
   
    
3. Put the meat in the oven and bake for 15-20 minutes, then remove the foil and turn up the heat to 200˚C/400˚F and put it back in the oven until the pancetta is crisp and the meat is cooked through.
   

Swedish Meatballs, with Cranberry Jam

This is another really good recipe the original recipe said to use half and half mince/ground (beef and pork) but I used bacon instead of the pork, I finely chopped it but in retrospect I would probably have been better off if I had whizzed it in the food processor, not until it was mush, but so that it was more of a mince/ground consistency. These turned out to be the best meatballs I have ever made. I very nearly didn’t put the cranberry jelly on it. I am glad I did though because it really makes the dish. I served it with roast potatoes, green veggies and cauliflower. It would have been perfect had I served it with mashed potato I think, with the meatballs and sauce on top.

Swedish Meatballs

For the meatballs

Handful of mixed herbs

300g bacon, finely chopped  (or whizzed)

300g minced/ground beef

1 large egg

75g dried breadcrumbs

1tsp ground allspice

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Olive oil

For the sauce

Juice of half a lemon or a dash of concentrate

300ml beef stock

1tbsp flour

60ml double cream

 cranberry jelly/jam

1. Put some of the herbs to one side and the rest into a large bowl along with all of the meatball ingredients bar the oil. Using your clean hands (because I love using my hands in squelchy stuff) mix and squeeze until it is well combined, if you feel the mixture is a little dry add a little milk. Roll the mixture into little balls and put them on a lined tray into the fridge to firm up for about 30 minutes.
2. Heat a large skillet, add the oil and cook the meatballs gently for 10-15 minutes, tossing once in a while until they are cooked through.
3. Transfer the meatballs to kitchen paper to drain. In the same pan you used to cook the meatballs, add the lemon juice, some of the stock, the flour and cream, season with salt and pepper, bring to a boil and then reduce the heat; you want a thick consistency that will stick to the meatballs. Return the meatballs to the pan and stir to coat them in the sauce add the remaining herbs. Serve with potatoes, or rice and vegetables with a dollop of cranberry jelly/jam on top.  

PIZZA

I love pizza; it is one of my favourite junk foods. For me when I am feeling blah, or poorly or just have midnight munchies I always go for a bread type snack, something about it is just comforting, reminds me of the better times when it was just me and my Mummy. I love toast for example, hot and slathered with lots of lightly salted butter or margarine like Utterly Butterly. As a child St Ivel Gold was my favourite. My Mummy didn’t buy it very often but when she did it was a welcome rare treat. I associate it with happier times I remember watching her one day buttering her toast and she looked at me smiled and said “Every now and again, Rebecca, there is nothing nicer than hot toast with lots of melted butter” I have to agree. I also believe that this was the beginning of my ‘dough’ obsession; I still savour every bite and feel comforted when I eat it.

The best pizza I have ever eaten was in America of course, Papa John’s BBQ Chicken and bacon ranch, whenever we ordered pizza that was what it would be and the garlic butter dipping sauce, heaven! As with most things in life I have discovered that all good things come to an end, eventually. America was one of them, I felt at home there and if it had been possible for me to stay I would have done. Never mind there is absolutely no point dwelling on that, I have brought lots of experiences away with me and different ideas about food that would never have crossed my mind before, and thankfully I am able to replicate the Chicken and bacon pizza that we loved so much. I have made three of these pizzas the first two were simple, one with ham the other with shrimp, all three were with store bought pizza base. I had made an attempt at pizza dough but it was too sticky and stuck to EVERYTHING, I did manage to get some of it on to baking paper (also a bad idea) and baked it to see what it would have tasted like… I wish in one way I hadn’t bothered, 95% of it was glued to the baking paper and therefore inedible but that little bit we did try was delicious, in fact I would go so far as to say that it was the best I had ever tasted….. Oh so bitter sweet disappointment. I will try again, I am just not quite brave enough yet. The BBQ was my favourite, sods law though I’ve lost the recipe, it very nearly captured the Papa John’s pizza, I even managed to make the garlic butter dipping sauce….. Gutted…. Here are the other two recipes though.

PIZZA

2 store bought pizza bases (unless you can make your own)

150ml tomato sauce

2 balls mozzarella torn into pieces

A bunch of basil

Salt and black pepper to taste

Olive oil

2 handfuls of rocket

The juice of ½ a lemon

9 slices of prosciutto

100g cooked, shelled shrimp

Parmesan to serve

 

1.      Preheat your oven to 220˚C/430˚F. If you are making your own pizza base now would be the time to do that. Working quickly, spoon enough tomato sauce to cover the pizza base, into the middle and working towards the edges spread it evenly out, leaving the outside edge clear. Scatter the pizza with mozzarella and basil, season to taste with salt and pepper and drizzle with a little olive oil.

2.       Bake your pizzas in the oven for 8-10 minutes, until the base is golden and crisp.

3.      Take the pizza out of the oven and drape one with the prosciutto and scatter shrimp on the other, scatter the rocket over both and a squeeze of lemon juice another drizzle of olive oil and sprinkle on some Parmesan…

Sautéed Potatoes with Tomato and Bacon

Most of the time I follow a recipe, as I've said before I alter them slightly to suit our tastes, but sometimes I get the urge to just throw stuff together. The problem is I tend to think of everything in portion size, my portion and Glen's portion and I forget to write down exactly what I have done - how much of what and as for why? I have no idea. This next recipe was one of the few occasions I knew exactly what I did. Two potatoes - one each, four rashers of bacon (slices) - two each, three tomatoes - one and a half each, dash of hot sauce - mostly because hot sauce was my new thing at the time, 1 tsp minced garlic - Americans have it definitly right when it comes to grocery shopping, you can buy massive jars of minced garlic, and none of that rubbish in vinegar that you get in England, nope this stuff is preserved in like a brine type stuff. One teaspoon of savoury - the sprinkle lid was broken so I stuck in a teaspoon, three tablespoons of red onion. I keep saying I'm not very creative, that my artistic vision is circumscribed by my own negativity, when in truth if I was really that uncreative I wouldn't be able to cook at all, neither would I be able to put pen to paper. I find that if I break things down into pieces, rather than looking at things as a whole, it makes things easier for me to find, the inspiration I need, to develope my idea into the final product whether that's a meal or one of my pieces of writing.

Sautéed Potatoes with Tomato and Bacon

2 potatoes, chopped into bite sized pieces

4 rashers of bacon, diced

3 tomatoes, diced

dash hot pepper sauce

1 tsp garlic, minced

1 tsp savoury

3 tbsp red onions, finely chopped

salt and pepper to taste

1. Par boil the potatoes, meanwhile gently fry the bacon and red onion, when the potatoes are done pat dry and add to the bacon along with the remaining ingredients, fry until the potatoes are lightly browned.

I like this for it's simplicity, great for lunches, or light suppers!

Stupid Little Mistakes - Farmers Bacon

This is a classic example of why reading a recipe is important before you even take the meat out of the freezer, unless you are a veggie in which case you won't be taking meat out, but you get the idea. The night before I made this recipe when I took the piece of bacon out of the freezer, I was thinking, nice, quick, hassle free meal for the next day... You can imagine therefore my complete horror, when I discovered that it was going to take about two and a half hours - Argh! It's well worth the effort and leaves you with enough leftovers, so it wasn't a complete disaster. As it turned out on this occasion it worked in my favour as something unexpected came up the next day, and leftovers came in handy.

Farmers Bacon

750g slab of lean bacon

a few parsley stalks

6 black pepper corns

1 bay leaf

4 potatoes cut into chunks

4 carrots coursely chopped

chopped parsley to garnish

Cheese Sauce

3tbsp butter

45g flour

200ml milk

90g grated cheddar cheese (or your favourite)

salt and pepper

1. Put the bacon into a large sauce pan and cover with cold water, put the saucepan on a high heat and bring to a boil. Once it's at boiling point, take it off the heat and drain away the hot water, (you're getting rid of some of the saltiness) rinse under running cold water, then place back in the saucepan with fresh cold water. Add the parsley, pepper and bay leaf, bring to a boil again, then turn down the heat and simmer for 45 minutes.

2. Now add the potatoes and carrots and return to a boil again. Cover, turn down the heat and simmer again gently until the meat and vegetables are tender, this should take about 20 minutes or so. Once it's all nice and tender, drain the water, keeping the cooking liquid. Let the bacon cool slightly.

3. Remove all the fat from the bacon and cut it into bite sized pieces, place it and the vegetables into a shallow oven proof dish and keep warm.

4. In a small saucepan melt the butter, mix the flour with a little of the milk, pouring the rest of the milk into the saucepan, once it starts to boil gently add the milk with the flour continuously stirring, remove from the heat and stir in 250ml of the cooking liquid you kept, bring back to a boil and then add 3/4 of the cheese stirring constantly until the sauce thickens. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

5. Pour the cheese sauce over the meat and vegetables, top with the remaining cheese and bake at 180C/350F until the cheese has melted and it's bubbling, about 30 minutes in total. Garnish with the remaining parsley.