So after the last Random Recipes challenge where we made the first or last recipe from a randomly selected book, of course we had to have a challenge from Dom to made the middle recipe from a randomly selected book. Only I didn't see it coming - I really am quite dense sometimes.
My randomly chosen book this month was Meat by Hugh Fearlessly-Eats-It-All which has 523 pages up to the directory so the middle page is 261. This is a page of text about slow-cooking. I chose to move forwards to the first recipe in the slow cooking chapter and it was Aromatic Pork Belly Hot Pot. Mmmm, perfect, I am a huge pork belly fan.
And, luckily, the recipe is here at the BBC.
Lovely recipe - worked perfectly. Ideal comfort food. My only gripe with it is that it doesn't have enough vegetables for me to be using this as a regular family meal so next time I'll simply add some bean sprouts or Pak choi or oyster mushrooms to veg it up a bit. Lovely cheap meal too with the belly pork.
Along similar lines but with pork fillet instead (although you could do a mix of the two recipes if you wanted to use pork belly) is Nigella's Vietnamese Pork Noodle Soup from Kitchen. It uses a lot more vegetables and is particularly tasty which is probably why Little Macaroon recommended it to me. If you don't have Kitchen, you can find the recipe by googling.
Away to try and figure out what next month's random recipe challenge is going to be. I haven't a hope!
I'm such a nerd that I've started off some spring onion seeds (hope they don't mind that it isn't spring) and I've got some pak choi seeds kicking around somewhere, so that I can grow my own version of Nigella's noodle soup. I've found an amazing-looking local butchery website for the pork too (have you tried Donald Russell butchers before? I'm dying to). But I'll probably give myself e.coli if I try to sprout beansprouts...
ReplyDeleteI used Donald Russell a lot in the old place where we had a Chest freezer. Bernie also recommends Hirds butcher on Rosemount - says he is a real butcher and might be able to do your pork bones.
ReplyDeleteLet me know how the spring onions go - reckon they would be good or a pot in our garden. Lou.
I have made this dish and it is fabulous although I remember it being super salty!?! Very nice pick for RR this month. Good old Hugh eh? I like your style of moving forward to find the recipe. I wonder what you've have got had you turned the other way? Thanks so much for taking part. Xx
ReplyDeleteWe didn't feel it was too salty but that may be because we are salt fiends and possibly a bit immune to salt now!
ReplyDeleteWould have been roast woodcock if we had gone the other way. Not sure where I would have got that from so glad I stuck with the slow cooking section.
Lou.
Lovely savoury dish. I could just do with a bowl of that right now. Oddly enough, it's very similar to a recipe that I've made a number of times before - I tore it out of a magazine in the late 1980s but I don't know who created it. It just proves that you can't keep a good recipe down.
ReplyDeletePhil, it's a good dish for umami, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteIt's funny how I now have to start paying attention to where recipes have come from now I am blogging but I still have my mounds of anonymous recipes pulled out of magazines from pre-blogging times. Actually, I hope Dom does more RRs where we get to work through our stash of cuttings.
Lou.
This looks yummy. I've not cooked pork belly for ages - you've inspired me!
ReplyDeleteIt looks delicious, I really must try cooking pork belly at some point. More veg is always good though!
ReplyDeleteRuth - I'm inspiring, me. :)
ReplyDeleteCaroline - Yes, we've just had a veg stir fry for tea. Can't get enough veg. :-)
Looks gorgeous, pork belly is one of my favourite cuts. Absolutely delicious, especially when slow-cooked to unctuous melt-in-your mouth tenderness. Hugh's recipe is very similar to a traditional CHinese way of cooking soy-braised pork belly. To dom, I think if you add a touch more sugar to the recipe, you'll find it counters the saltiness much better. Oh, and hurray for more veg! (:
ReplyDeleteI have made this dish too and LOVE it. It is one of my favourite ways of eating pork belly. I actually went to an uber posh restaurant the other day and was served a very similar dish, albeit in a very dainty and refined way. Can't help thinking they might have had some inspiration from old Hugh......
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