Tuesday Cooking: Chicken fried rice and braised pork

I'm cooking for my housemates and I every night this week. Comically it is something that Clint seems to feel quite guilty about. Why? I enjoy cooking and I am not working crazy hours (or at all). With the rain outside it gives me a nice focus to the day!

I'm going to try a new recipe every day this week (with the exception of the chicken pie which is going to make a re-appearance) and make some ANZAC biscuits for this weekend. I thought I would share some of the recipes with you.

Thai Chicken Fried Rice
For lunch today I cooked myself the Thai staple, chicken fried rice. I was pretty pleased with how it turned out, not too far off an authentic taste.


I used this recipe. The peas aren't authentic, it is more usual to get some finely chopped carrot or perhaps Chinese lettuce. Easy and quick to make, a good lunchtime dish.


Braised Pork with Risoni
I got this recipe from one of Emily's food magazines while I was staying in Adelaide.

I couldn't find the recipe on the web, so here goes. Makes enough for six people.
Ingredients:
1kg pork shoulder (diced)
2 onions sliced
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 cinnamon stick
2 x 400g tins of chopped tomatoes
400ml chicken stock
500g risoni pasta (pasta the same size as a grain of rice)
200g feta, crumbled
Chopped parsley to garnish
Olive oil for frying

Method:
- Heat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius.
- Brown the pork in two batches and set aside. Drain excess fat from the pan.
- Put the pan back on the heat and cook the onion and garlic for 5 mins.
- Add pork, cinnamon, tomatoes and stock. Cover and cook in the oven for 3 hours until the pork is tender.
- Stir in pasta and cook for an additional 20 mins.
- Remove from the oven and stir in most of the feta.
- Season and served garnished with chopped parsley and the remaining feta.

I was quite pleased with the result and the one pot cooking made it pretty easy and limited the washing up.

Things I am going to try for next time:
- It was a little bit dry. I might double the amount of stock. This is going to look pretty wet at the beginning, but when you add the pasta it absorbs a lot of liquid.
- I think it could have had a bit more flavour. I am going to start by adding more cinnamon and then take it from there.
- You'll notice that it doesn't have many vegetables. I am going to add some more. Think of the 5 a day! (A mark of how much healthier the Australians are than the Brits, they promote 7 a day.)