A Winter Recipe

This one is an original! (Well, I think so, anyway!) I couldn't be bothered with Easy Mac n Hotdogs tonight, nor tinned spaghetti (which was like gold when I was nursing my newly pierced tongue!), so I decided to get something out of mum's freezer (she said I could while she was away!) and I eventually thought... hmm... pork strips! But, what to do with them... I wasn't in the mood for the usual grilled/fried pork strips and rice job, so I thought... why not a stew? Read on!

Ingredient Things:
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4 Pork Strips, cut into 1 inch chunks
1 small onion
2 carrots
1/4 - 1/2 cup of Risoni pasta (the one that looks like oversized rice!)
8-10 Button mushrooms
1 tsp Marmite/Vegemite/Bovril or substitute*
2 chicken stock cubes
1 tsp minced garlic
Soy Sauce
Ginger Powder
2 tsp sesame oil (optional)
Olive Oil
2 cups water
1 tsp cornflour

* If you can't get this, I half pity you. Half due to the fact that I sometimes find *mite to be a bit revolting, because people spread it too damn thick on toast and it's VERY salty in large doses. But, it's handy for having in the cupboard for flavouring dishes from time to time, and if you just HAVE to have your *mite on toast fix (so long as it's spread thinly! But then everyone's taste is different).

Methody Thing
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1: Dice the onion into small pieces.
2: Peel the carrots and slice them into rings. Not too thin and not too thick. Be a bit "rustic" with it. It's not haute cuisine, it's a freakin' stew!
3: Chop the mushrooms into chunky pieces, similar in size to the carrots.
4: In a medium saucepan, pour a couple of splashes of Olive Oil, as well as the 2 tsp of sesame oil. This is entirely optional, as I was just using what was in the cupboard. Add the minced garlic and the ginger. (Ok, so the recipe started out slightly asian to begin with, but didn't end up that way.)
5: Once the garlic starts to fry, add the onion and carrots. Stir periodically until the onion goes translucent.
6: While the onion and carrots are cooking, dice up the pork strips into chunks. If you want to be picky and cut the rind and fat off them, go ahead, but the point of this recipe is winter comfort, not healthy eating. 2 of the pork strips had bones in them, so I separated the meat from the bones and tossed the bones into the saucepan to cook with the carrots and onion while I finished cutting the meat. By the way, if you've ever found raw meat to be a pain to cut up, do it when it's frozen. It's a lot less slippery, you can do it beforehand so the meat can defrost, and you may save yourself a band-aid in the process! :P
7: Once the bones are in the saucepan, splash in a bit of soy sauce and stir it through.
8: When the meat is all diced up, add to the mix and stir through. Allow the meat to start to brown a little.
9: Once the meat starts to brown, immediately add 2 cups of cold water.
10: Add 2 chicken stock cubes, crushed. Cover the saucepan and bring to the boil.
11: As the stew comes to the boil, add in 1 tsp of Marmite (or substitute).
12: Replace lid and reduce heat, then simmer for roughly 1/2 an hour.
13: Add in the 1/4 - 1/2 cup of Risoni. (I didn't actually measure this, I used what was left of a packet)
14: Let simmer for another rough 1/2 an hour until the pasta has cooked. This was done as an afterthought to partially soak up some of the liquid.
15: Taste test one of the pieces of pork... it should be nice and soft and tender!
16: Dissolve 1 tsp cornflour in roughly 4 tsp cold water and then add to the saucepan to thicken what's left of the sauce, and be sure to stir quickly!
17: Turn off the heat, and serve into a bowl. Will serve at least 2 hungry people!

Miscellany:
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There weren't any beef stock cubes in my mum's cupboard, hence why I used chicken. The sesame oil was originally thrown in because I was thinking of it being an asian-type recipe, but as I kept going, realised it wasn't except for the use of soy sauce and the sesame oil itself. I think of stew as being a fairly "rustic" dish (there's that word again), and you don't really need to take too much care with how things are sliced/diced. As I said, it's a freakin' STEW, not haute cuisine. It's not something you're going to be serving to snooty customers paying $500 a head for a nouvelle cuisine style "meal" served in a pathetic little heap with an anaemic looking garnish on a giant sized plate! This is tasty food for a cold winter's night, something that I am enduring many an instance of at the present time!

I hadn't eaten all day, so I will admit, I had 2 servings of it, but meh, I was cold and hungry... this house is like a freezer, and it's so unlike the house I grew up in... I miss the blue carpet!

Yours,

Frostilicus :P