Getting porky

This is another Sunday night blow-out, sorry. For those of you worrying about my waistline, I must emphasise that the rest of the week is defiantly anti-feast (I'm writing this having ordered a takeaway curry, because I absolutely cannot be bothered even to chop an onion). I'm definitely a bit bored/stressy this week, which is not an ideal combination - worried about everything, yet totally uninspired. Sunday night is an antidote to this - setting an actual table, getting out matching cutlery (where possible, goodness knows where all the knives go), maybe even lighting a candle or two.

This week we chose Mexican, with recipes from Thomasima Myers' 'Mexican Food at Home'. It's pretty good, despite the general unavailability of the right types of chilli anywhere in my vicinity - lots of substitutions coming up - and it being a trifle overcomplicated at times. The menu was pork pibil, with Mexican green rice and pink onions. 

First, fail to notice that the recipe is for 10-12 people, and buy enough pork to feed half the county (3lb). Honestly, I'm not sure what I was thinking while shopping for this, we're big eaters but this is basically a whole piglet. Anyway, buy a lot of pork - the recipe said neck, but I could only get shoulder. Hack into large pieces and marinade overnight in:

1 tsp allspice berries (I didn't have any and went with mixed spice)

2 tsp freshly ground cumin seeds (I do have these, but also had ground cumin, so...)

Half a tsp cloves

1 tsp peppercorns

100g anciote paste (I actually had some of this buried in a cupboard, no idea where I got it)

3 tbsp cider vinegar

1 medium onion, roughly chopped

3 fat garlic cloves

1 tsp dried oregano

3 bay leaves

2 tbsp sea salt

3 tbsp olive oil

Juice of 6 oranges (about 450ml, mine came out of a carton)

Warm the spices in a dry frying pan, then grind to a powder. Place in a blender with everything else (you are supposed to add the orange juice slowly but this supposes that you have a proper blender and are not squashing stuff in a mini-chopper). 

The recipe suggests that you pour 2/3 of this over the pork and freeze the rest, but I just lobbed it all in. Marinade in the fridge overnight.

Next day, preheat the oven to 130/250/gas 1. Transfer the pork and marinade to a big casserole dish add 1 habanero chilli (or scotch bonnet in my case) and 50g butter and cook for 3-4 hours until the pork is soft and falling apart. I shredded mine so it was more of a pulled pork consistency and then boiled it merrily on top of the stove for 15 minutes to bring down the liquid caused by the additional marinade.

To go with it, we had green rice. This involves zizzing garlic, onion, coriander and parsley into a pleasing mulch, then frying it in olive oil and adding it to cooked rice. The recipe suggested that the next step was to put the whole lot in the oven to bake for 30 minutes, but I didn't, it seemed like overkill (and my timings were out).

Pink pickled onions involves two red onions, sliced thinly and blanched with boiling water. To these, add the juice of 2 limes and 1 orange and one habanero (scotch bonnet) chilli. Season well and leave in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Well, it was all very porky and delicious. Spicy but not in a hot way. Very filling, of course, especially as we added crisps (tortilla chips) and sour cream. There were leftovers.