I am a bit of a traditionalist, so more often than not Sunday is roast day. After a bit of deliberation I settled for Maggie Beers Slow Cooked Berkshire Pork Shoulder in Milk followed by Chocolate and Dried Pear Brownie.  This is one type of roast I haven’t tried before and was intrigued by the milk factor.  When I read the recipe I was a little disturbed by the “curdled milk sauce” but Maggie admits it looks terrible but assures her readers it tastes delicious so who was I to question her?

I have to confess I didn’t quite follow the recipe for the pork to the letter.  I am sorry cook book club, I hope this doesn’t disqualify me.  My first problem was the pork is a two day recipe, and because of my husbands annual work dinner dance last night I didn’t have chance to start it yesterday. Actually, after the late night I’m amazed I managed to do anything at all today, but the prospect of roast pork shoulder and brownies was too exciting to turn down. So I didn’t get to marinate the pork as I should have done, but I still rubbed the fennel, lemon, thyme and salt into the pork before cooking.

Now this is where Maggie and I will have to agree to disagree. Maggie writes “because the pork is braised in milk there won’t be any crackling, but the skin will be soft, gelatinous, and to my mind particularly delicious.” I’m sorry Maggie but roast pork without crackling is like fish without chips.  I also didn’t share Maggie’s enthusiasm about a gelatinous pork skin, so I cooked the pork in the milk, but with the method I usually follow: start the oven off very high (about 230C ) for 20 minutes, then turn the oven down to 130C-140C for the majority of the cooking time then increase to 200 for 15-20 minutes at the end to finish off the crackling. I achieved the meltingly tender pork that Maggie describes, but in addition I had the perfect pork crackling. Delicious!

The milk did curdle as described, and a couple of times I had to add a little more milk to the pan as I cooked it with the lid off the pan to dry out the skin; but the sauce was delicious and this is definitely one I’d do again.

I’m sat here after dinner, laptop on knee, struggling to reach the keys over my full, contented belly.  I didn’t need the brownie but it was the perfect way to end a comforting roast.  Again I didn’t have time to complete the full recipe as I should have made a creme fraiche parfait yesterday.  But instead I served the brownie with straight creme fraiche which appeals to my slightly more savoury tongue.

I tend to shy away from brownies as they often contain nuts that I’m allergic to, but this one appealed to me because of the dried pear.  And my instinct was right. The pear was a delicious, moist, sweet addition to the slightly bitter dark chocolate. If I wasn’t so full I’d have another slice, but I’ll have to save that until tomorrow.

Monkylicious offered to email the recipe that you chose to cook, but me being me, I couldn’t resist buying the book. And once I bought it I had immense difficulty choosing which dish to cook, so I decided to invite friends over for lunch and cook a few recipes to make up a Sunday lunch.

I got super excited about the book as my favourite cut of meat in the world ever is pork belly, and this book has the most pork belly recipes I have ever seen in one cook book in my life.  My only criticism of the book is when I was trying to put together a balanced menu, I struggled to find side dishes to go with the meat dishes I had chosen.  So today’s lunch was a little heavy on the meat, but nobody complained.

Larb Duck

I love to eat Asian food, but it is not something I have cooked often at home so I was stepping into untapped territory today.  My usual dinner parties consist of 3 plus courses so my gut instinct was to find a couple of dishes that could be served as an entree, then follow this by the mains.  The Larb Duck (p70) was my entree choice, but I couldn’t find anything to go with it, so I ended up serving it as part of the main, so we had 4 main courses that made up the main and entree combined.

Beef Rendang

My first choice of main course was  Beef Rendang (p46). I chose this dish because I had never heard of it, and I wanted to challenge my Asian cooking.  If you asked me my opinion on Asian cooking I would say I don’t like curry but I have recently discovered that I can eat curry, and actually really enjoy it, if I make my own curry paste. I am a big wuss when it comes to chilli, so I have to regulate the amount of chilli so that I can cope with the heat, but I love the rest of the flavours in these dishes, so it is worth the effort. Before today I would also tell you that I don’t like coconut, but I chose the Beef Rendang before I realised it was a coconut based dish. I faithfully followed the recipe, even down to the fresh grated coconut, and boy was I surprised. I cant wait to cook this one again and I’m sure it will become a regular dish on our menu.

Lemon Chicken

Alongside the Rendang there was Lemon Chicken (p90). I chose this recipe because this was always my default choice when we ordered take-out Chinese. I wasn’t sure whether you could actually re-create the take-out at home, but I followed the recipe to the letter and it was spot on, apart from the MSG. We had crispy yet juicy fried chicken, with a thickened lemon sauce. But hey, it was an awesome dish without a teaspoon of MSG in sight.

Pork Belly

To ensure there was enough to feed four people I added in some pork belly (p56) which is also a weakness of mine.  Initially I had wanted to do the Char Sui Pork Neck but I couldn’t get hold of the pork neck from my butcher this week (I have seen it there many times before) so pork belly it was.  I always love pork belly, but this recipe didn’t stand out as an Asian dish. It delivered a meltingly tender piece of pork, with crispy crackling on top but I would probably prefer to serve this with roast potatoes and gravy rather than rice ans soy dipping sauce.

The verdict: overall this was an awesome lunch and I was pleasantly surprised at how an English girl in Sydney could pull off Asian cooking with relative ease.  All of the dishes from today came from the ‘old kitchen’ and I will definitely be cooking some of the dishes from the ‘new kitchen’ sometime soon. Thank you Monkylicious for allowing me to take part in an awesome lunch, and I look forward to the next cook book club.

Two Asian Kitchens