Chorizo, pepper and pork stew

Last Saturday night, I thought I was going to Flo’s for a quiet cuddle with her staffie, Dexter and then I got a call at 4 o’clock demanding that we spend the evening at mine. With little food in the house I was forced to dive into the freezer and luckily I found us some lovely looking pork steaks. 

I’m not mad about pork and generally have little inspiration about how to cook it – it’s a chicken and egg situation, I’m not sure which came first. I would have liked to try the Nigel Slater spicy pork recipe I’ve had knocking around for months but that required a) trip to Coop for ingredients and b) marinating overnight. So I improvised with what was lying around. I browned the pork in very hot oil and put aside. I fried some onions, leeks in the same pan. I poured in and bubbled-off some apple juice. Then I put the pork back in with some chicken stock and simmered for half an hour. I served it with baked potatoes and broad beans. The result was dull. It was not offensive; in fact it satisfying in a bland kind of way, Flo said she liked it (and I believe her because she has never been afraid to be critical about my cooking, or anything else). But I would not cook it again or write down the recipe.

There was a good deal of this pork dish left and Tuesday evening came and something had to be done about it. This time I had slightly more vision: it could be transformed into Spanish-style, tomatoey, chorizoey stew. And it worked. This is what I did.

4 red peppers

a head of garlic

200g chorizo in sauage form

400g tinned tomatoes

ground paprika

ground coriander

ground tumeric

(4 or 5 pre-cooked pork steaks in some stock)

Put tinned tomatoes in small saucepan with a tiny sprinkle of sugar and simmer for about half an hour until the almost the consistency of puree.

Thinly chop peppers, garlic and cube chorizo. Fry up together (you will need little oil because of the fat in the chorizo) for a couple of minutes until peppers soften slightly.

Add the tomato and the meat to the peppers, garlic and chorizo. Add the spices: be generous as you like with the paprika, slightly less so with tumeric and even less so with the coriander. Stir and simmer for 20 mins or until tastes good enough to eat. Serve with rice.