Lazy-cook dinner for one

I didn't post last week because I didn't have anything I considered interesting enough to write about. But tonight I made myself such a nice little dinner I thought I'd share it. It can of course be sized up to work for two or three or four, and you can play around with it to suit what you have handy.
            What I happened to have was: a nice piece of pork fillet, about 14 cm long and 4 cm thick - just right for me - along with some rich leftover sauce from the slow-cooked chicken I made last week, with apricots,  prunes and red wine, plus 5 rather ancient dried apricots which I'd had the foresight to soak in boiling water the night before, and two softish, longish Jersey Benne spuds, the last of a box.

I looked up The Lazy Cook (Harvey bought it, it was one of his favourites) to see whether I could flash-roast such a small piece of pork.







It seemed to be okay, so I heated the oven to 220C on fan forced, sprayed a small roasting dish with olive oil, and sprayed and salted the pork. Then I followed his suggestion about putting the pork on a bed of the soaked apricots, cut through into their separate halves.

I peeled the spuds, cut them lengthwise into 1/2 cm slices, put them flat on the tin around the apricots, sprayed them with olive oil and put the tin on the top rack of the oven. I cut up some pieces of broccoli to microwave separately. The apricot soaking water went into the sauce, ready to microwave in its Pyrex bowl.
         Then I set the table. I bought a new lamp recently, two halogens on a black pole, so I could stand it near my chair. It's always felt a bit too dim sitting there by myself, so the extra light was just what I needed to persuade me to eat properly, instead of having a tray on my lap.
          The Lazy Cook recommends 12-15 minutes for each inch of thickness. But when I tested the pork it was nowhere near the proper temperature in the middle - it should be 70C/160F, you certainly don't want rare pork. So I turned the potato slices and put it all back for another few minutes, while I cooked the broccoli and heated up the sauce. Then I took the tin out, checked the temperature and let the pork rest while I warmed my plate in the turned-off oven (with the potatoes on it to keep hot). It's these very small things that make all the difference, even when it's just for me.

So here it is, and it was absolutely delicious from start to finish. Well, the first slice was a tiny bit dry (it's been cut off already in the photo, as usual I started eating before I remembered to take one), but the rest of it was perfectly moist, marvellous with the apricots. The potatoes worked really well too, I wasn't sure if they'd cook that fast or maybe burn, but they were fine. I felt I'd taken good care of myself.

The ultimate comfort food

When I was young, there was only one kind of rice, short-grain, and it was mostly used for one thing - rice pudding. Made properly, it's very good. But I never much liked the skin on top, no matter how golden it was. And it takes two and a half hours in a slow oven, so it doesn't make sense unless you're cooking something else which takes that long.          
           One of the friends we had round in the weekend for corned beef doesn't eat gluten, so puddings can be a bit of a challenge. I was thinking about a lovely sticky compote of winter fruit, but what could I serve with it? It was too cold for ice cream.
           Then I had a sudden inspiration: rice pudding! Not the usual kind, though - I wanted the creamy sweet version you can cook much more quickly on top of the stove. I thought I had the recipe I wanted in my Lois Daish folder, and I was right. In fact it wasn't hers, it came from her friend Anne England, who was then (in 2000) running Two Rooms restaurant in Miramar. (I never managed to eat there, sadly, it had a great reputation.)

Two Rooms Rice Pudding
(Anne England via Lois Daish,
Listener, 1 April 2000)
(serves 4)

55g (3 tablespoons) short grain rice
(I couldn't find anything called "short" in the supermarket, so I used "medium" and that seemed to work fine. But I wonder if it would be even better made with arborio rice?)
30g (2 tablespoons) unsalted butter
1 teaspoon sugar
575ml (2 and 1/2 cups) full cream milk
4 tablespoons cream
3 tablespoons sweetened condensed milk (I used 4)
pinch salt
(I added a small teaspoon of vanilla paste, a thoughtful Christmas present)

Put all the ingredients in a saucepan. Slowly bring to the boil, then lower the heat to a bare simmer and cook gently for about 30 minutes (mine took a bit longer, I don't think I got it hot enough to start with.) While the rice is cooking, use a wooden spoon to carefully stir from the bottom of the pot. Push down from the sides of the pot too, where it could stick and burn. Serve warm or at room temperature. If you make it in advance and want to reheat it, you may need to stir in a little more cream or milk to loosen the texture.

With this, we had a winter fruit compote made of Otago dried apricots and golden kiwifruit. I pre-soaked the apricots in some reduced white wine combined with a sugar syrup, then cooked them slowly for about half an hour in a small saucepan, while I briefly pre-poached the peeled and halved kiwifruit in the microwave with a little of the soaking liquid. Then I put the fruit together in a shallow oval ovenproof dish, checked for sweetness and baked it all for about an hour in the bottom of a slow oven while other things cooked there. The idea is to get both the apricots and the kiwifruit thoroughly cooked, so they're soft, but keep their shape, and the liquid reduces to a lovely sticky syrup that isn't too sweet, so it doesn't kill the wonderful sharp notes in the fruit. But watch it to make sure there is some syrup, you don't want it to disappear. You can use other kinds of dried fruit as well, or other fresh fruits, but the dried apricots are essential.

The combination of this fruit with the soft creamy slightly caramel-tasting rice pudding was blissful.
Anne England finished her pudding off with a sugar glaze, melted with a cook's blowtorch. I don't have one so I didn't even try it, and I don't think it's necessary. Here's what Lois wrote: "At home, I am content to eat this pudding still warm from the pot, without the bother of glazing the top. The flavour is so friendly that I don't even serve fruit with it." I love that word "friendly" - that's exactly how it tasted. And the leftovers made a sublime Sunday breakfast.