More Fruity Experiments

This week I have tried a couple of new meals, using more fruit. Yesterday, we decided to try a meat free meal, technically not vegetarian, as I ended up using Chicken stock rather than vegetable stock. I tried out cooking Jack Monroe’s Peach and Chickpea curry. I added in the left over vegetables (Swede / Turnip and Carrots) from Sunday’s stew. My Wife didn’t want something very spicy, so i toned down the spices I put in. I must say, it went down very well in our house. There was enough left over for my lunch today, so i used a couple of pitta breads and reheated the remnants. If anything it was even better!

Peach and Chickpea curry.

Tonight, I needed to use up some pork loin steaks, and some apples, so I had a search around and found some Fruity Pork Steaks on BBC Good Food. Again, I adjusted the recipe to match what I had in the cupboard.

Ingredients

• 4 Pork loin steaks, boneless and trimmed of fat.
• 2 tsp Lebanese seven spice *
• 1 tbsp rapeseed oil *
• 4 small red apples, cored and cut into eighths.
• 2 tbsp apple sauce *
• 1 tbsp Balsamic vinegar *
• 200ml Chicken stock

Note: anything marked with a * shows ingredients that I changed, either because i did not have the required ingredients for the recipe, or because I prefer the ingredients I used.

Method

Fruity Pork Loin Steaks

1. Dust the pork steaks with the Lebanese seven spice powder.
2. Heat half the oil in a pan and fry the pork for about 3 minutes on each side.
3. Transfer to a plate.
4. Add the remaining oil to the pan and reduce the heat.
5. Add the apples and cook for 3 minutes.
6. Add the apple sauce, Balsamic Vinegar and Chicken Stock.
7. Bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes, allowing the sauce to become syrupy and the apples to soften and become tender.
8. Add the pork back in, allow to slowly reheat and become coated with the sauce.

Fruity Pork Loin with Lemon and Lime Couscous.

I served the meal with lemon and lime couscous (Couscous, 1 1/2 tbspn lemon juice, 1 tbsp lime juice, add boiling water to make up couscous as normal)

It was, to be fair, pretty good, though the balsamic vinegar did make the apples a little bitter, but we had 2 cleared plates. So I will try it again with white wine vinegar next time.

M