Pork and Apple Casserole .

Ingredients

500g diced pork

1 onion, sliced

1 Braeburn apple, peeled and sliced

420g can Wattie's Condensed Tomato Soup with Diced Tomatoes

1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar

1/2 cup chicken stock or water

1 sprig sage

Method

Preheat oven to 180°C. Heat a dash of oil in a flameproof casserole dish. Add the diced pork pieces and brown over high heat. Remove from dish and set aside.

Add the sliced onions and continue cooking until they start to soften. Add the apple slices and cook a further minute. Return the pork to the pan.

Stir in Wattie’s Condensed Tomato Soup with Diced Tomatoes, balsamic vinegar and stock. Bring to the boil. Add sage. Cover, transfer to oven and cook for 1 hour or until meat is tender.

This a recipe on one of those tear off cards you can get from the supermarket.

It is a Food in a Minute recipe and found on the website.

So I said I wasn’t going to change the recipes? well once again I did.

I didn’t have any Condensed Tomato Soup with Diced Tomatoes so I used a tin of Home Brand diced tomatoes and a tablespoon of tomato paste.

I didn’t have a ‘flameproof casserole dish’ either so I cooked it in a large frying pan and then poured it into my casserole dish and baked it in the oven for just over an hour.

I made sure all the pre-diced pork pieces I had bought were about the same size.

It didn’t say how to slice that apple (‘what?’! you say) I mean I cut it in half, took the core out and then cut it into slices about 4 millimetres thick. I don’t have readymade stock so I used ½ teaspoon of dry chicken stock powder in half a cup of water.

I also didn’t have fresh sage (I must get my herb garden sorted) so I used a half a teaspoon of dried.

Katrina and I liked this and there was enough left over to use with a bit of cream added as a sauce over penne pasta for another meal.

Orange Pork Rolls with Spiced Potato Wedges

Orange Pork Rolls

2 cup soft breadcrumbs

1 small onion

1 clove garlic

2 teaspoon chopped fresh sage

8 slices pork schnitzel

1 onion

2 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoon oil

2 teaspoons wholeseed mustard

1 cup orange juice

1 tablespoon sugar

1 orange

1 tablespoon cornflour

2 tablespoons water

Place breadcrumbs in a bowl.

Peel onion and chop finely.

Crush garlic, peel and mash.

Add onion, garlic and sage to the breadcrumbs.

Stir to combine.

Place a piece of plastic wrap over one piece of schnitzel. Roll with a rolling pin until meat is very thin. Repeat with remaining schnitzel.

Spoon a little of the breadcrumb mixture on to one end of the schnitzel. Roll up like a sponge roll. Secure with toothpicks

Peel and chop the second onion.

Heat butter and oil in a large frying pan.

Add pork rolls and brown all over. Remove and set aside.

Stir in onion and cook until clear.

Return pork rolls to pan.

Add mustard, orange juice and sugar.

Cover and cook gently for about 15 minutes or until pork rolls are cooked.

While rolls are cooking, pare a few strips of rind from the orange. Cut into fine shreds. Halve the orange and cut into thin slices. Add to the pan.

Combine cornflour and water, mixing until smooth. Add to the pan and cook, stirring until mixture boils and thickens.

Serve immediately.

Spiced Potato Wedges

2 tsps paprika

1 tsp salt

1 tsp oregano

1 tsp thyme

¼ tsp chilli powder

Freshly cracked black pepper

Potatoes

Combine the spices and mix well. Use potatoes roughly the same size and cut each into eight wedges.

Pour 2-4 tbsp oil into a baking dish, add the wedges and toss to coat well with the oil. Sprinkle with the spice mixture.

Bake at 200°C until cooked, turning often, 30-40 minutes

OK so I said I was going to cook the recipes as per the instructions – well I have deviated already.

I cooked both these dishes last night.
I had some pork schnitzel so I found this recipe in a collection of citrus recipes torn from the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly; 7 August 2000. While reading it before I stated I thought, “What can I do with the potatoes to accompany this?” I found an old newspaper cutting titled “Tart up your Potatoes” with suggestions from Margaret Wotherspoon, and thought I would try the spiced wedges.

Looking at the pork recipe now it is basically pork rolled up with a stuffing cooked in an orange sauce. It seemed to suggest an awful lot of stuffing and I only had 6 pieces of pork (three of us to feed) so I halved the recipe. I still had some left over so Ihave frozenit.
You can freeze bread stuffing for about a month but not in a stuffed chicken as they freeze and thaw at different times so you run the risk of poisoning - so I have been told.

I don’t know, I didn’t seem to understand how you could “Crush garlic, peel and mash’ so I peeled it and cut it in my turbo chef. Then I realised if I had crushed the clove in the garlic crusher first then I would have to remove the skin and mash the pulp a bit. So do whatever suits you!
Unfortunately my sage seems to have died on me so I used half the amount of dried (dried herbs are stronger than fresh).
I was surprised at how much bigger the schnitzel got when I rolled it out and it was easier to add the ‘stuffing’ and roll it up as I did it, rather than handle the meat twice. Having the toothpicks made it very easy for handling the meat without touching it.

The rest of the instructions were very straight forward. I discovered I really had cut too many strips of orange peel and you do have to make sure it’s just the peal and not the white pith as that is bitter. I just used a potato peeler. The same goes for the orange segments.
Now it didn’t really say, but I took off all the peel and pith from the orange and just used the fleshy part.

I started the potatoes before the meat.
I had peeled them and cut them into small chunks, only to read the recipe again and see they are not peeled and are cut in wedges (well dah! It is called Spiced ‘Wedges’) so I had already started it wrong, as per instructions.
I like to toss the potatoes with my hands so all the oil is covering the potatoes and the pan.
I sprinkled the spicy mixture over the potatoes and when I turned them the first time in the cooking process, I made sure the other sides got coated too.
I probably turned them (well gave them a good shake in the dish) about four times in the whole cooking time so they wouldn’t stick to the pan.

I was surprised at how much time I spent in the kitchen preparing the meal, but if I was doing it for guests it would be a recipe I had at least tried a few times before so I would have known the process more.

It had quite an orangey taste but wasn’t sweet.
The wedges were nice with it and the sauce added flavour to them.

I would try this again, and definitely the wedges more often.

Butter Pork

I was in a rush so a bit blurry

Preparation: 5 mins

Cooking: 25 mins

Serves: 4

Ingredients

25g butter or ghee

1 onion, peeled and finely diced

3 cloves crushed garlic

1/2 teaspoon each ground chili powder, coriander, ginger, garam masala

500g Trim Pork pieces

1 capsicum, sliced

1 tablespoon tomato paste

3/4 cup cream

Method

Melt the butter and cook the onion and garlic until onion softened.

Mix the ground spices together and toss in the pork pieces and coat.

Add the pork to the onion mix and cook until browned.

Stir in the capsicum and tomato paste.

Stir in the cream and simmer 10 minutes until pork cooked through.

I like butter chicken so thought I would try this.
I got it from the NZ Pork website a while ago.

I bought pre-diced pork pieces and just had to cut a few in half as they were a bit big and I wanted them to be all an even size. If they are too big they take longer to cook and become tough.

It seems like a lot of butter but "hey!" it is called BUTTER pork!
I have bought myself one of those Tupperware turbo chef's which is great for chopping onion up small.

My family are not keen on hot things so I did change the recipe slightly.
I have HOT ground chilli powder so I only used 1/4 teaspoon. Maybe if I have mild I would use a 1/2.

I cooked this in my electric frying pan so the browning of the pork only took about 10 minutes max.

I used a green capsicum and thought I was saving money by buying a jar of tomato paste as it was cheaper than the two single pack, but see it has to be used up in 14 days once opening. I might have to find some more recipes that use it seeing as how I have it!!

And the cream, well what more can I say. With all the butter and now cream one wouldn't recommend this to heart patients!

I served it with rice and broccoli (to give some colour to the plate)
I loved it and Katrina ate all hers but Harry picked at it and hardly ate anything, but he can be like that with something different.

It's a keeper - for when Harry is out.