 |
| Porky goodness |
Come Friday night all I want is a glass of wine and a little peace and quiet. “Easier said than done,” the mothers of the world cry in unison. Well surely a cheeky crisp white sav Blanc is easy enough to rustle up, and with a just a moments forethought the dinner can magically happen too.
Alarmingly the secret to being cool on a Friday night
involves actually thinking about it on a Wednesday. Yes that’s right it takes me two days preparation
to be a fun mummy.
This is the route I took last weekend, and it worked spectacularly
well.
Basically as I was doing some sort of mid week frenzied mad
dash around the market I spied pork roasts for a good price. One ended up in
the trolley, on arriving home it didn’t even make it to the fridge – I just popped
it straight in the pan and left it to do its thing, whilst I bellowed and
nagged my way through the joys of homework and lunchboxes.
Not that I am a booze hound or anything, but I did use
alcoholic ginger beer as my braising liquid.
It perfectly set the tone for the
laid back mood I was dreaming of and created a sweet succulence that was pretty
damn fine. You could just as easily substitute cider, but for preference I
would stick with something that has the moody dry sweetness that only a 375ml
brown bottle can.
Pork in Ginger
Beer
1 pork shoulder roast (mine was 1.8 kg)
1 leek
A couple of cloves of garlic
¾ bottle of “Ranga” alcoholic ginger beer (about 300ml)
1 bay leaf
2 whole cloves
a pinch of sage and thyme
1.
Preheat oven to 160c
2.
In a large cast iron skillet sear the pork to
give a nice bit of colour to the two flat sides, add in the leek, garlic and herbs
and sizzle till fragrant. Pour in ginger beer and season well with a good
sprinkling of salt and pepper.
3.
Cover the dish with a tight fitting lid then
cook for 3 hours or until the pork starts to fall apart when gently poked.
4.
Leave to rest and flavours to develop in the
fridge for up to 3 days. When ready to serve, heat on a stove top, then take
the pork out to trim off fatty bits and shred the pork into large chunks using a
fork. Place the pork back in the cooking liquid and serve with crusty bread and
leafy green – and a big glass of THANK GOD ITS FRIDAY WINE!!!
