The Works - Everything But!

Today has been a cooking day.  I have been in the mood for a full production which is a little more than I usually do, but then the meal does have to do us two maybe three days!  I am a big believe in cook once, eat two to three times with just a little warming up inbetween.  With energy prices being as they are, it pays to be as tight as you can be.  I am using the big oven today just to blow the cobwebs off it a bit.

We have a beautiful big piece of rolled Pork Shoulder, and the crackling is coming along nicely.

Not bad for a £10 joint.

We have my Nan's homemade stuffing recipe which is a little different to the one that I normally make.  No sausage in this just Sage, bread and plenty of onion, couple of Bay leaves, mixed herbs, a good liberal sprinkling of pepper and a whole onion.  You pop everything in a pan with a little water.  About just over a quarter of a small pan. You pop all the ingredients into a pan and boil this until the onion is soft and starts to collapse.  Take out any whole bits like the Bay leaves and reserve the whole onion to one side.  Add a small whole chopped raw onion and stir it around the dry stuffing mix.  Then add the liquid gradually to the stuffing mix making sure to let the mix stand for a few minutes between each application until it is soft, but you do not want it where it is collapsing soft if you know what I mean.  Stir through a knob of butter.  If you have a butter paper or papers this is the place to use them to line a small tray.  I did not have any today and so I made a little tray out of some foil.  Stir well.  Then taking the cooked onion chop it into chunks and mix through half into the now wet stuffing mix; you therefore have a mixture of cooked and raw.  I then buttered the foil tray and then added the stuffing mix to the tray.  With the half of the cooked onion I then add this to the top of the stuffing to give it more texture.  Cook until golden on the top, but it is still moist underneath, but cooked.  Take this out of the oven once cooked and then keep to the side in a warm place but not under direct heat.  Use as you would normal stuffing, but remember this is just Sage and Onion stuffing.  It is a bit of a penny pincher when you want some stuffing, but cannot really afford to buy the amount of sausage meat needed for the way I normally do it.  It is also the way my Nan used to make it.  It makes a little go a long way and also gives that bit more added flavour to accompany the meat.  And of course I added a sausage in each as well.

If there is any flavoured water left over just add this to a jug for keeping for making gravy.

As this time I have not incorporated the sausage meat into the stuffing mix as I would normally do.

 I am serving some Lincolnshire sausages alongside to serve with the roast; just my preference and to help to give more flavour to the meal.  These are being cooked with some wedges of onion which are part of the roasted veg which is also being served.

Roasted veggies include the roasted onion wedges, potatoes and sweet potato chunks.  The potato and the sweet potato have been blanched before roasting.  I keep the  vegetable water for making gravy.  Why waste all the goodness out of the potatoes.  The roasties have been cooked in with the roast pork so that they take on the flavour of all those lovely meat juices and go brown.

We then have on the veggie front mashed potatoes, steamed PSV broccoli, steamed carrots and steamed buttered cabbage.

I love raw cabbage like this; a habit I got into as a child as my best friend Ricky (when I was a toddler) who lived next door, (he was one of four children and my age), I used to go in to play and if his mum was getting tea ready if we were hungry she used to give us a bit of raw crunchy cabbage.  A habit I have kept since then.  When I cook cabbage in the steamer, I finely shred it, and then sprinkle a little salt on top add to the steamer, put the lid on and cook. Once cooked swirl a knob of butter in it to glaze it and give it a little more flavour. Sometimes the cabbage is not quite fine enough for my liking so before finishing it off with the butter I set too with a sharp knife and fork and re-cut it. 

For people who do not like cabbage try cooking it this way and it does not pong awfully whilst cooking or go wishy washy looking. Using a three tier steamer on my Gas hob is the cheapest way of cooking lots of veg at the moment.  I do have an electric one, but am watching the electricity use at the moment.

I think that will do nicely to serve along the roasted pork along with lashings of gravy.  Just mixed things up a little bit just to ring the changes.  It does not do any harm.

And if that is not enough;

There is also a rice pudding for afters if wanted.  That might be left until tomorrow though.

The loss of an hour has hit me a bit today, but then again I am looking forward to the lighter evenings.

Hope everyone has a lovely evening.

Catch you soon.

Pattypan

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