Home-made Chinese pork with vegetable rice

Making delicious Chinese pork at home is incredibly easy with this simple marinade.

Preparation and cooking time is around 30-35 minutes.

Following on from last week's post about how to mix up the Chinese marinade that we'd binned the instructions for,  we had need to do it again yesterday.  A trip into our local Tesco had produced 4 pork chops, reduced in price, so we added them to our trolley. Once home we cut the pork from the chop bones, and sliced the meat into thin strips, then laid them into a roasting tray. Mixing up our Flava-It Chinese marinade with the sweetened soya milk we poured it over the pork strips, covered the tray with foil and popped it into the fridge until this evening.

The first thing to do, before cooking the pork, was preparing the vegetable mix. A raid of the fridge produced some mushrooms, a handful of mangetout, red and yellow peppers, and a courgette, all of which were sliced into small pieces (around 2cm max). Adding 3 crushed garlic cloves and a small red bird's eye chili (deseeded and finely chopped), a small red onion chopped, a few green olives halved, and some small plum tomatoes cut into quarters, we were ready to start cooking.

Hubbie set to with the rice (we used Tesco own brand Arborio risotto rice - half a cup per person) and water (a pint and a half) with a couple of stock cubes and a sprinkle of mixed herbs added to make the stock for cooking the rice in the paella pan, whilst I plugged in the teppenyaki grill and cooked the marinaded pork on it. The pork cooked really quickly, and turning it over midway meant it was browned on all sides.  (A big plus was that, unlike when we cooked the marinaded ribs in the oven, the grill cleaned up very quickly afterwards. The oven tray from the ribs had to soak for almost 2 days before all the baked-on marinade finally came off!)

The vegetables were added into the rice once it was almost cooked (test the rice by tasting a small bit, if it's still chewy it needs a few minutes longer) along with the cooked pork. Mix well into the rice and add a bit more boiling water if needed (there should be a bit of liquid in the pan, rather than be very dry). Heat through until all the veg are hot through, and remove from the heat.

Serve in bowls whilst still very hot. Yummy!

Oh look, it's all gone! :)

Bacon and vegetable rice - all in one recipe!

We recently bought a Paella pan from ALDI, and it is the most useful piece of kit!  It's quite big at 39cm diameter, and makes a meal large enough for 4 people. It's now in regular use, several times a week, and we are loving the results. Despite its size it cooks nicely over one gas ring, but would work just as well on an electric hob.  

Tonight's meal is shown above and was made as follows:

Bacon and vegetable rice

250g of Arborio rice

1 litre of vegetable stock (1 litre water and 2 veg stock cubes and 1 green OXO)

1 200g pack ALDI Smoked Bacon Lardons 

1 onion chopped finely

3 cloves garlic, crushed

3 or 4 sticks of celery, cut small - we used the middle part with the leaves still on

1 courgette, sliced into 4 lengthwise and then each length cut into 1cm pieces

1 small orange pepper, deseeded

1/2 red pointed pepper, deseeded

handful of frozen sweetcorn

small handful of mangetout and fine French beans, chopped into 1cm lengths

1 finely sliced lemon grass stick

a few green olives, halved

1 small green bird's eye chilli, finely sliced

sprinkle of herbs (we used Herbes de Provence) 

6 cherry tomatoes, halved

Put rice into paella pan, add stock, sweetcorn and bacon lardons, and stir using a non-scratching spatula (wood or silicon), heat through until rice is almost cooked, adding more boiling water as the stock is absorbed so the rice does not start to stick to the pan.  Cooking the bacon lardons with the rice and stock gives the rice a lovely bacon flavour too. 

Add the rest of vegetables except tomatoes, mixing well and cook for further 5 minutes until all is hot through. Add the tomatoes and heat for another minute. 

Serve in bowls, enjoy! 

It takes about half an hour to make (including preparation) and makes hardly any washing up too, win! win! :)