Monday, 21 December 2015

Pulled Pork - UK version

Pull the other one --- Pulled Pork



All of a sudden everything is pulled. Pork, beef, lamb, plonkers, chains, even chicken. What is all this about other than a marketing ploy? Well it seems it's real food, imported from the US. Thought it looked tasty, but have you seen those US Recipes? all Butts, cups, broiling  & alternative meanings of Barbecue. And Liquid smoke. So this page is my English version. 
I first bought a 2 kilo/4lb pork shoulder joint, neck end, bone in, (from our splendid local butcher, S J langton in Glenfield, who tells me this cut is called the  "Spring".  -  I have a "stove top smoker" which works well in an oven. - Started off on stove top to get my mix of hickory and apple wood chips smoking    



Left it on on the stove top until it stops smoking, about ten minutes. Now, how long for cook for, and at what temperature. The suggestion, averaging out from various websites was  four hours at 250f (That's 130c/Gas 1/2), so that's what I did - the result of that was very nice roast pork, but wasn't going to be pulled anywhere. So two more hours,  and then two more. No luck. I'd prepared a marinade from beer/honey/tomato puree/Worcester sauce/paprika etc.  So I put that, and the pork into an electric slow cooker, on low, and left in overnight,  a further nine hours. At last the pork fell off the bone into the shreds that one sees illustrated. I left it (refrigerated) in the marinade until warming it up the next day.  Again, no idea how this was supposed to taste, but it was moist, slightly smoky and very pleasant.




Sunday, 20 December 2015

Variation on a theme of Chicago Deep Pan Pizza - UK Version

Variation on a theme of Chicago






A colleague mentioned that she missed traditional Chicago style pizza. I'd never heard of such a thing, but now understand that it is quite different to anything else - -deep, in a flan style, crunchy+flaky, and filled in reverse. - So the "flan" is first filled with cheese, and tomato topping goes on top. - With any other additions on top of that. So this is my variation.

The pastry/dough is quite different to anything else I've experienced, sort of half dough, half flaky pastry, and including cornmeal for crunch.






The yeast dough is left to rise, then spread with butter, rolled up like a Swiss roll, formed to a ball, the rolled out again, and - then put in whatever deep tin is to hand,

Probably poison to Pizza purists, in the absence of a really hot Pizza oven I often bake blind for 10 mins r so to get a crispy head start. Then bung in the cheese, in this case loads of cheddar and mozzarella, spread the tomato goo on top and bake away until I think it's done.
I've no idea how like the real thing this is, but in its own right it was very tasty and popular with my guests.