Moroccan chicken one-pot

Ingredients
4 chicken legs
4 chicken thighs
3 tbsp olive oil
2 onions, 1 roughly chopped, 1 sliced
100g tomatoes
Ginger paste
3 garlic cloves
1 tsp turmeric
1 tbsp each ground cumin, coriander and cinnamon
1 large sweet potato cut into big chunks
600ml chicken stock
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp red wine vinegar


Method
Season the chicken. Heat 2 tbsp of the oil in a flameproof dish, then brown the chicken on all sides. Remove the chicken to a plate. Whizz the chopped onion, tomatoes, ginger and garlic into a rough paste. Fry the sliced onion in the remaining oil in the dish until softened, then add the spices and fry for 1 min more until fragrant. Add the paste and fry for another few mins to soften.

Return the chicken to the dish with the sweet potato, stock, sugar and vinegar. Bring to a simmer, then transfer to the slow cooker and cook for 5 hours.

Slow Cooked Rice Pudding

Ingredients

100g pudding rice
50g sugar
700ml semi-skimmed milk
Knob of butter
Tsp cinnamon
Tsp vanilla extract

Method
Cook all ingredients in the slow cooker on hot setting for 4 hours until gloopy. Stir every 30 minutes.



Gloopy is a technical term.

Pork and Cider Hotpot

First go with a slow cooker, and it tasted pretty good.


Ingredients

3 tbsp olive oil
2 large onions, peeled and very finely sliced
1kg belly pork, skin removed and fat trimmed, cut into 2cm cubes
1 tbsp thyme leaves
1 bay leaf, torn in half
500ml dry cider
1½ tsp English mustard


Method
Switch on the slow cooker, low setting.

Heat 2 tbsp olive oil in a large, ovenproof casserole over a medium-low heat. Add the onions, season well and cook, stirring often until really soft – at least 15 minutes. Don't let them brown.

Meanwhile, heat a frying pan over a medium-high heat with the remaining oil and brown the pork, in batches, seasoning it as you go. It should be nicely caramelised all over. Add the pork, and any juices it has released, to the soft onions, and stir well. Add the thyme and bay leaf and pour in the cider. It should just cover the meat. Bring to the boil then cover the casserole and transfer to the oven. Cook for 7 hours.

Taste the juices, season to taste, stir in the mustard, and serve with plenty of fluffy mashed potato to soak up the juices.


Note: initially I only cooked it for 4 hours, while the meat was cooked through and tasted fine it wasn't as tender as I'd hoped. Another 3 hours sorted that out.

Slow Cooking

I had a first go at slow cooking this weekend, using my shiny new Crock Pot. Using a recommendation from a web page I had a go at Pork and Cider Hotpot. While the flavour was great, the recipe wasn't a complete success: I underestimated just how slowly the food cooks.

I was looking forward to meat basically falling apart in my mouth, but it didn't happen. I didn't want to have lunch too late, so I "only" cooked the food for four hours, and while it was definitely done it was still a little tougher than I'd hoped. After lunch there was still a fair amount left over, so I stuck the cooker on again for another three hours, and bingo! Lesson learned: for lumps of pork you need to cook (on low) for at least 7 hours.