I love a bit of spice and one of my favourite dishes to make is this Carribean inspired slow cooked jerk pork. I usually serve this with traditional rice and peas, with an added twist of spicy crackle as a garnish. It's delicious when cooked for your evening meal - but tastes even better if you make it the night before serving. Enjoy!
For the jerk marinade...
Serves Four
3 teaspoons crushed all-spice
1 desertspoon crushed black peppercorns
4 teaspoons maldon salt
3 cloves garlic
1 scotch bonnet chilli (or 2 teaspoons chilli flakes)
few sprigs of thyme
3 inch piece of ginger (I don’t bother to remove the rind as this is where the heat is)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 dessertspoons hot chilli sauce (you could use a scotch bonnet sauce or a chipotle sauce for smokiness or a sriracha sauce)
1 tablespoon muscavado sugar
50ml white wine or cider vinegar
1 dessertspoon sunflower or veg oil
200ml pineapple juice
4 or 5 fresh bay leaves
1 kilo shoulder of pork – skin removed but kept for the crackle
Lime juice (to taste)
Put the all-spice, peppercorns, salt, garlic, chilli flakes, thyme leaves, ginger and cinnamon into a pestle and mortar and pound (or put into a small processor and blitz to a paste).
Mix the paste with the chilli sauce, sugar, vinegar, oil, pineapple juice and bay and stir together. Cover over the pork and make sure it goes into every bit of the pork. Cover with cling film and leave to marinade for an hour or overnight if you are more organised than I am!
Place into a casserole or clay pot with a lid and cook in an oven (140 degrees) for about 3- 4 hours until the pork is meltingly tender. Cut the pork into slices or chunks and return back to the sauce and mix well.
Once cooked remove the pork and put the juices into a saucepan and reduce. Add a little lime juice if the sauce is too sweet.
Serve with rice & peas (see below), pan fried sliced red & yellow peppers and a spiced pork crackle which you make by combining salt & chipotle flakes and rubbing into the skin of the pork. Roast in a hot oven until crispy. You can make this in advance but once it’s cooked keep it out of sight as it’s tempting to just munch on this before the pork is ready!
To make the Rice & Peas...
This is totally traditional as I like to use brown long-grain rice – it is still soft but there’s a little nuttiness to the rice which I love. I also add ginger rather than chilli (the tradition is to put a whole scotch bonnet into the rice – kept whole so you get the sweetness but not the chilli heat from it) and I cook the rice in the pork dripping from roasting the pork crackle but you can use oil instead.
Serves 4
Pork dripping or veg oil
1 banana shallot finely chopped
1 clove garlic squashed to a paste
4 slices of fresh ginger with skin on
300g brown long grain rice – rinsed in cold water
1 can coconut milk
Cold water
Salt & Pepper
Sprig of thyme
1 tin of black beans, drained
To garnish...
Spring Onions finely sliced
Red or yellow pepper, sliced and gently fried
Chopped coriander
Heat the dripping or oil in a saucepan and gently fry the shallot over a low heat until translucent then add the garlic and fry off until lightly golden. Add the ginger slices and stir through then add the rice and coat well (like when you make a risotto).
Then add the coconut milk and stir. Then add cold water – enough to cover the rice with about 2 -3cms over the rice, add a little salt and pepper and push the thyme into the rice. Bring to the boil then turn to a very low heat and add the black beans - just put them on top of rice and don’t stir, just cover with a lid. These rice will absorb the water and coconut.
You will know when it is cooked because there will be little pocket holes in the rice. Don’t be tempted to add more liquid and don’t stir the rice as this can turn it to mush. It will cook in about 10 – 15 minutes.
Once cooked remove the ginger slices and thyme and stir through the spring onions, peppers and coriander.
Enjoy!
Angela x
