Recipe - Pork and Veg Casserole

It's ages since I blogged a recipe, so I thought I'd pass this one on. Don't be put off by the name - this is actually really nice and the children asked when they could have it again; always a good sign! It's really easy. I would imagine that you can double it easily - if you can find a big enough dish - for freezing into portions.

I found the original recipe in one of those little booklets they produce to go with BBC Good Food magazine. The booklet concerned was a part Weight Watchers promotion. I've adapted it slightly because the original recipe says to use low fat cooking spray but the research I've done suggests that most people don't know what a "spray" consists of and overestimate, so I just use oil instead. 1 tablespoon across 4 people makes about 30 calories difference per serving.

The casserole is baked in the oven , but it would work in the slow cooker too. If you want to slow cook it, just follow the recipe but place the ingredients in the slow cooker instead of the oven. It should take about 6-8 hours on low. Don't forget to use less stock than the conventional recipe!

I found kidneys beans in chilli sauce in Waitrose/Ocado by the way but if you can't find anything like that, one of those tins of spicy baked beans would do. Alternatively, a tin of baked beans with some added chilli powder would also do. You can serve this with rice, jacket potatoes or some mash.

Pork and Veg Casserole
Serves 4

Ingredients

1 tbsp oil
450g pork shoulder, cut into chunks
1 large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
1 medium apple, peeled, cored and cut into chunks
2 medium carrots, sliced
200g swede, cubed
420g mixed beans in chilli sauce
400ml hot vegetable stock (300ml if cooking in slow cooker)

Method

1. Heat oven to 190C/170C fan/gas 5. Heat the oil in a large flameproof casserole and cook the pork, adding a handful at a time. Cook over a high heat for 3-4 mins until the pork is browned.

2. Add the onion, garlic, apple, carrots and swede, and cook for another 5 minutes, stirring.

3. Add the beans in chilli sauce and hot stock, mix thoroughly. Bring to the boil, then put the lid on and put in the oven. Bake for 1 hour. Check the seasoning before serving.

Enjoy!

Review and Competition: Jamie at Home DVD series

Jamie Oliver seems to have become a bit of a Marmite figure. You either love him or you hate him. Some don't like his accent and his presenting style, others think he's become a bit sanctimonious and preachy with his more recent projects. What you cannot deny is that he has a passion for food and some of his crusades have made a difference to attitudes, as well as the way some of us eat (although there is probably a contract on his head issued by the turkey twizzler industry).

Although I never really watched things like The Naked Chef in the early days, I have watched a lot of his programmes and I do like his cooking style. It's largely unfussy, it's unpretentious, and it makes people think "yeah, I can do that". His fish pie recipe was recommended to me by a friend and it's now a regular in this house as it's less work than traditional fish pie, and not only that, has lots of veg in it which makes it great family food. In fact, I'm about to head into the kitchen to make it again once I've finished writing this post!

I watched Jamie at Home when it first came out and I got the book as a present. I will admit that I have only made occasional use of it. I'm going to rectify that now because I've recently been sent the whole series on DVD by The Sun's Buzz magazine and it's inspired me to get the book out again. The series is a combination of cookery and gardening as it features Jamie in his garden. The focus is on using ingredients that you've grown yourself, largely. I say yourself, but Jamie's gardener features a lot in the programmes! It's worth remembering that growing your own can be quite a lot of effort. Still, the recipes he demonstrates are again simple, though I do find it amusing he does some of his cooking outside with the hugest outdoor oven you'll ever see. Jamie  cooks, as usual, with infectious enthusiasm, such that you almost want to head straight into the kitchen to make them. I have designs on making his sausages with bubble and squeak and onion gravy now - and possibly the only reason I've not made it is I have too many cookbooks!

If you want to get the entire Jamie at Home series on DVD for yourself, you can collect tokens starting today in The Sun Buzz magazine, and continuing in The Sun newspaper for the rest of the week. Take your tokens to Tesco on the day of print and you can get each day's DVD for free. Each one features two half-hour episodes from the series.

Alternatively, you can win a full set of the DVDS by entering my competition! I have a full set of the DVDs to give away to one lucky person.

To enter the competition, you first need to become a blog follower via either Google Friend Connect, Networked Blogs or an email subscriber. You can follow via more than one route if you like, but it won't make any difference! Then, leave me a comment telling me what your favourite Jamie Oliver recipe is. If you can provide a link to it, great. If you have a picture of your efforts that you can link to, even better. But don't worry if you can't - just tell me the recipe and where it's from  - as in which book or series and why it's your favourite. Please mention in the comment how you are following The Five Fs so that I can check you've signed up.

The winner will be selected at random from all commenters on this post who are also followers or email subscribers. The competition closes at 23:59 next Friday, 11th February.

Good luck!

Terms & Conditions

The competition is open to residents of the UK only. (Sorry!)
There is no cash alternative offered.
To enter, please leave a comment below as required above and become a follower of the blog via Google Friends Connect or Networked Blogs, or become an email subscriber. Please ensure you leave contact details via twitter or email.
The winners will be drawn at random from all qualifying entries. The winner will receive a full set of Jamie at Home DVDs - please note the DVDs are in cardboard sleeves with some Sun branding on them; they are not a boxset.
The competition will close at 23:59 on Friday 11th February 2011.
Prizewinners will be asked to provide a full UK postal address with postcode. I will endeavour to post the prize within 1 week.
If a prizewinner does not provide a full UK postal address within a week of being contacted, the prize will be re-drawn and a new winner will be contacted. 
One entry per person only. If you enter more than once, only the first entry will count.


(I was provided with the DVDs to review and have received no other compensation. The opinions stated here are my own, and have not been influenced by the aforementioned compensation.)