Last night was the first slow cooker meal of the autumn/winter, prompted by a glut of beans.
It was such a treat to come home from tidying the allotment during the tail end of Storm Amy in southern England to dinner already cooked.
Serves a hearty 4
4 cooking chorizo (I used 8 mini chorizo, or use 200g cured chorizo cut into 8)
1 large onion, peeled and thinly sliced
2 large garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
2 bay leaves
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
A pinch of hot chilli flakes
2 cans beans (black, borlotti, pinto, cannellini), or 250g dried beans, soaked and cooked
If using dried beans, soak and cook these before hand. Keep the cooking water.
Brown the pork belly and the whole chorizo in the olive oil in a frying pan over a medium high heat, and place in the slow cooker in a single layer on the bottom of the slow cooker that is warming up.
Turn the heat down under the frying pan and gently fry the onion and garlic until soft and translucent. You can brown the chorizo now if it didn’t fit in the frying pan with the pork belly. Add a little more olive oil if required. Spread over the pork belly in the slow cooker when soft.
Heat the liquid from the cans of beans or the equivalent of two cans of cooking water (about 400ml) in the frying pan, together with the vinegar, chilli flakes, and bay leaves. When boiling pour over the pork belly and onion mixture. The liquid should just cover the pork belly at the bottom of the slow cooker (don’t worry about covering the odd piece of chorizo or onions). If it doesn’t cover the pork, add little more boiling water from the kettle but go easy. Slow cooker dishes can be quite watery as they do not reduce like casseroles in the oven or on the hob.
After 5 hours on High, stir in the canned/cooked beans. Leave for another hour on High to heat the beans through.
Serve with white rice and a Kale Chimichurri (see separate recipe).
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