Post 189: Fragrant Pork Stew

This was not so much a recipe, more a just a hit and hope in the wonders of long slow cooking making anything taste nice.

After the joys of Come Dine With Me, round 1, I was choc-a-block with vegetables. And it was a night where between 4 of us we'd be eating at three different times. So, something suitable for keeping warm and using lots of vegetables was needed.

Here's how it went:

• 4 medium/small red onions chopped small and slow fried with 4 cloves of garlic as a base to my tastes and 2 smallish chillies (they've no place in here really, but I just couldn't resist)
• Vegetables:  1 parnsip, 1 turnip, 1 (big) carrot, 2 leeks, 1 celeriac and a butternut squash all cut into small-ish lumps

• 1 packet of pork loin steaks, cut into 3/4" chunks. Which I didn't pre-fry, based on the success of not doing this with the Jamie Oliver inspired Beef stew 
• Some herbs for a nice smell - a handful or chopped fresh coriander and a decent shake each of sage and thyme
• All these were plonked in my bigest pot and stirred around with 2 pints of stock and 1/2 a bottle of Shiraz (a good weighty 14% number)
• On to the top of these, I then cut 8 potatoes into slices and arranged on the top with generous twists of salt and pepper
• Cook on low to medium oven 6 hours, taking the lid off after ~4, to crisp the top layer of potatoes

At the end of this my sauce was still pretty thin. So I decanted some of the liquid and cooked in a little cornflour and then put it back in to the main bowl. I should have known to do this at the start; but I was a little wary of doing so seeing as I hadn't par-boiled any of the vegetables; a too thick sauce can lead to still hard vegetables. And that leads to grumbling!

I served this, without complaint and even better without anyone picking out the celeriac, turnip or parsnips - which aren't universally popular round these parts.