Cosy casserole

It's been a foul day in Wellington - non-stop heavy rain since last night. It's days like this that I'm cravenly glad not to have to go Out to Work, managing all the paid stuff on-line instead.
         Given the weather, and following last week's surfeit of takeaways, I thought it was time for a cosy casserole. We had some rapidly-going-soft tamarillos (not as pretty as the ones in the picture) and in the freezer there was a pack of pork pieces, so I put together a recipe that Harvey invented, only with variations, of course. It's called, with stunning originality, pork and tamarillo casserole!


Pork and tamarillo casserole

Approx. 500g lean pork pieces (cut them up if necessary so they're all as much the same size as possible - the bought pieces often vary wildly in size)
6 tamarillos (fewer if very large, more if very small)
1 large onion
2 cloves garlic
Some interesting liquid to cook it with - white wine, red wine, cider  - for this one I used leftover juice from cooking apples and the last of the bottle of port, plus extra lemon juice
Juice of 1-2 lemons (depending on how tart you like it)
Bay leaf
Salt and pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil

For the slow cooker:
- Heat cooker on high, with lid on, for 20 minutes while preparing the ingredients.
- Finely chop the onion and garlic and check size of pork pieces (they should be no bigger than 2 cm square).
- Put oil into cooker and add onion and garlic. Leave to sweat for a few minutes.
- Cut the tamarillos in half, scoop them out of their skins and halve again.
- Add the other ingredients, using just enough liquid to cover meat.
- Cover and cook for 5-6 hours on high.

Without a slow cooker:
- Either in a casserole dish that can go on the hob, or in a pan, heat olive oil gently and sweat onions and garlic till softened. Prepare the rest as above.
- On top of onions and garlic in casserole dish, add other ingredients and enough liquid to cover meat. (Check while it cooks - you may need to add more if it evaporates in the oven.)
- Cover and cook for 3 hours in a slow oven (170C).

Check to see meat is tender. If liquid is too thin, mix a little flour in cold liquid, add, and cook a little longer.
We had this with the everlasting mashed potato, but rice is good and so is couscous or orzo pasta. The colour is good and the flavour is deliciously fruity and tart.

Easter rabbit

The centrepiece of our Easter Sunday lunch was lapin aux pruneaux, rabbit with prunes, cooked by my friend Diane de Bellerive. Her version, she says, is based on "watching my mother prepare the meal for Easter Sunday in Valenciennes or at our country house in Janlin, le Nord-Pas de Calais. My relatives all came from this region, and spent the whole afternoon talking about their food experiences - when they weren't talking about politics. Between courses we kids would go and play in the garden, which was full of fruit trees and walnut trees. Other favourites for Easter Sunday were pigeons aux petits pois as an entrée (a specialité of my cousine Lucienne of St Souplet) and gigot d'agneau aux flageolets, my mother's succulent garlic and rosemary leg of lamb."

Lapin aux pruneaux à la Diane

1 rabbit of about 1.5 to 2 kg, cut into pieces (the butcher will do this if you ask nicely)
Salt, pepper
Dijon mustard and flour to coat rabbit pieces
1 level tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 small onions
150g carrots
150g smoked bacon cut into pieces
12 pitted prunes
3 tablespoons whisky
250 ml (1/3 bottle) white wine
1 500ml carton vegetable stock (or use home-made stock if you have it)
Thyme
Flat-leafed parsley

One hour in advance, soak prunes in warm water. Peel and chop onions. Peel carrots and slice into rounds.
Salt and pepper rabbit pieces and coat them with Dijon mustard and flour.

Heat oil and butter in a large cast-iron casserole and brown the pieces of rabbit. Once the pieces are browned, and the pan is still hot, add 6 prunes and then the whisky, and light it to flambee the rabbit. Remove rabbit pieces. Add the bacon pieces to the juices at the bottom of the pot. Add onions and sweat in the juices. Add carrots, thyme, and the other 6 prunes, and cook briefly.

Put back the pieces of rabbit and add white wine, then enough vegetable stock to just cover the meat.
Simmer over very low heat for 2-3 hours until rabbit is just ready to fall off the bone.
Check liquid - it should be slightly thick. If it is too thin, remove rabbit to a warm dish and turn up the heat to reduce and thicken the liquid a little. Remove any thyme stalks, return rabbit and sprinkle chopped flat-leaf parsley over the top.

Serve with small plain boiled potatoes, or fettucine, followed by a refreshing tossed green salad.

An Italian classic

This is my battered 35-year-old copy of Ada Boni's classic Italian cookbook, The Talisman. It was first published in 1928, and was a huge success. By the time it had reached its fifteenth edition, it ran to 866 pages and had 2000 recipes, but half of them weren't of Italian origin. When Matilde La Rosa did the English translation in 1950, she kept only the genuine Italian recipes. In 1975 it came out in paperback. I was living in London and bought it there. It was my first introduction to real Italian cooking - until then I'd only produced the vaguest of imitations, like scone-dough pizza and spaghetti bolognese made with a packet of oxtail soup.

Tonight my niece Jenny and her friend Mark were arriving back from a tramp up Mt Holdsworth, so I knew they'd be wanting solid comfort food. At lunchtime I put the slow cooker on and made an old favourite, Stufatino Alla Romana - Roman beef stew. I hadn't made it in the slow cooker before, but it worked very well indeed. We had it with mashed potato and a parsnip and carrot mash. Although I put in 700 grams of gravy beef, there wasn't much stew left over.

The original page with this recipe is well-stained and eaten through with little bookworm trails. (The creatures that ate it aren't really called bookworms, but I don't know their correct name.) Here's my version, slightly adapted over the years:

Ada Boni's Stufatino Alla Romana
(To serve four people)

1 onion, chopped into small but not tiny pieces
2-4 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
50 grams bacon, chopped into small pieces (the best kind is that solid lump of bacon you can buy from some specialty suppliers such as Moore Wilson in Wellington, but ordinary leanish bacon is fine)
700 grams cross-cut blade or gravy beef, cut into smallish cubes
salt and pepper
1 tablespoon (approx.) chopped fresh oregano
250 ml (a third of a bottle) robust red wine (not pinot noir)
1 tablespoon tomato paste (the translation says puree, but I'm sure that's wrong, it's too feeble)

If you plan to cook this either on the hob or in the oven, use a shallow casserole with a lid that you can put directly on the heat. If you want to use the slow cooker, use a frypan and transfer everything to the cooker for the long cooking part.
If using the oven, set it to 180C. If using the slow cooker, set it to high.
Saute the onion and garlic gently in the oil until slightly brown. Add bacon, fry briefly. Add meat, salt, pepper, oregano, and let meat brown gently. Pour wine over and cook until liquid is reduced by half. Add tomato paste and only just enough hot water to cover meat. (If you're using the slow cooker, put everything in it at this point and add more water only if it really looks too dry - you won't need much.)
Cover and cook for at least 2 hours, either on a very low heat on the hob (you will need a simmer mat for gas) or in the oven. Check halfway through to see if it's getting too thick and sticky, and add a little water if necessary. In the slow cooker it takes about 5 hours on high.
"The sauce should be dark and very savoury" says Ada. She recommends serving it with braised celery, but I prefer smoothly mashed potato and whatever other vegetable you fancy.