Pork Off 2010 - how I rose to the challenge!

Pork wrapped in pork with a pork sauce...
Originally uploaded by Manne.

Today I was supposed to chill out and catch up on my reading backlogs, do some casual blogging about The Gun, Jamie's Italian, cooking colcannon... While eating cheese. None of that happened. Except the cheese eating, you can never get enough cheese.

Little did I know when I sat down in front of my computer that by the end of the evening I would have cooked my porkiest dish ever. Pork with pork and pork, and a healthy broccoli salad for brownie points. All as a result of a gauntlet thrown by @GarlicConfit on Twitter.

It all started, like so many other challenges, with an innocent question about pork. Can you ever really eat too much pork? This was, subjected to the frantically tapping fingers of the London pork bloggers, quickly twisted into all manners of rude jokes and within a record breaking short amount of time a domain was created, a site built and the challenge announced: Pork Off 2010!

Instigator Garlic Confit also blogged about the event.

Personally I can't wait to see what the other combatants will come up with, I am certain @FoodUrchin and @FoodStories, pork fiends as they seem to be, will submit amazing creations. Pork version of turducken was mentioned, so was head cheese. The turducken approach really appeals to me, like a pig version of a russian doll: a piglet in a Tamworth in a Large Black...

While I would love to spend 14 hours cooking a turducken (not) or travel on the tube with a severed head (no, not that either) I decided to go for something that could be done within a reasonable time frame. 

Since there was more than one video posted with porky goodness wrapped in a lattice of bacon, I started with that basic idea. Soon I found a great recipe combining pork sausages, mustard, apricots and bacon braiding. Jackpot.

For the LCHF people out there, this might be the highest fat content meal ever posted in my LCHF recipe collection...

Add to this the lovely warm broccoli salad posted by Hollow Legs a few days ago that I wanted to try anyway and only the third instance of pork was missing. W quickly came to the rescue with a suggestion on using pork bolognese as sauce to go with the pork and salad.

Perfection.

I really liked the mustard and apricot inside all that porky loveliness, this is actually a dish I might make again. W, being an even bigger pork fan than me, swooned.

There probably are porkier dishes than this being made, but I dare say that mine came out really tasty. A worthy contribution to the Pork Off 2010 challenge!

Ingredients

Sausage pork bomb

2 sausages per person (makes 1 bomb)
7 rashers of streaky bacon per bomb
2 dried apricots per bomb, cut in six strips
Coleman's mustard
cocktail sticks for securing bacon

Pork bolognese

250 gr pork mince
5 rashers of streaky bacon, chopped
1 can plum tomatoes
1 red onion, chopped
2 tbsp tomato puree
salt and pepper
BBQ spice of choice
sherry

Method

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius, the bombs will be baked to porky perfection while cooking the pork bolognese and the broccoli salad.

Start with the sausage pork bombs. For each bomb, weave a lattice with three vertical rashers and four horizontal (you need to match amount of rashers to length and girth of sausages). If you don't know how to weave, check School of YouTube out.

Bacon lattice weaving
Originally uploaded by Manne.

Place two sausages in line with the middle two horizontal rashers. Cut a gash in each and smear with as much Coleman's as you like. Put three strips of apricot in each, push them in good.

Bacon lattice weaving
Originally uploaded by Manne.

Now for the wrapping. First take the two bacon ends of the rashers the sausages are placed on and fold them to the top of each sausage, so the ends are covered. Then fold over the part of the bacon that is closest to you, and then roll the package away from you so that the sausages are completely wrapped. Now you should have a few ends of rashers sticking out to the sides, push them under a suitable part of the vertical rashers, so no loose ends remain. Use cocktail pins to secure. I used one on each end and three along the side where the wrapping ended (one for each rasher).

Wrap sausages, starting with the loose ends the sausages are resting on
Originally uploaded by Manne.

Done. Repeat for as many pork bombs that are needed.

Munitions clip loaded with pork bombs, heart attack in a pan!
Originally uploaded by Manne.

Heat a frying pan with some oil to medium heat. Brown the pork bombs on each side so you get a nice colour, then finish them off in the oven for about 30 minutes (what I did was bake them for 30 minutes and then left them in the oven until bolognese and salad were done).

Browning pork bombs, sizzling so nicely in their own fat
Originally uploaded by Manne.

Use the same frying pan to fry the chopped bacon. When the bacon starts getting colour, add in the chopped onion and fry until bacon is slightly crispy and onion translucent. Transfer to a pot or a large sauce pan.

Fry the pork mince until nicely browned, season, then transfer to the pot. Now you have lots of browned porky goodness still in the frying pan, so add 100 ml of boiling water and a few glugs of the sherry to loosen it all up. Let boil for a while, scraping the bottom with a wooden spatula to get all the good bits to come loose. Reduce the liquid to half, then pour into the pot with the meat.

Remove the frying pan and put the pot on the heat. Add in the plum tomatoes (chop them up coarsely with your spatula) and the tomato puree, let simmer while you make the salad. Stir now and then.

Warm broccoli and carrot salad with chicory, absolutely lovely
Originally uploaded by Manne.

Following Hollow Legs recipe for broccoli salad, make the dressing and steam the vegetables. To save time I skipped the squid and chorizo, replaced the potatoes with carrot and took a shortcut by skipping the charring, the salad still came out amazing (mental note: do this salad properly next time as it must be great the way it is described in the recipe...). Mix the salad components together in a bowl.

Salad, pork bombs, pork sauce
Originally uploaded by Manne.

Plate up. Enjoy.

Comments

[Garlicconfit]

Fast Work Manne....

http://porkoff2010.weebly.com/current-entries.html

Looks da Bomb!!

[Manne]

It was the bomb indeed. :) Have one with me for lunch today... And just remembered that I am going to Skylon for a lunch meeting! Oh, the choices...

Thanks for adding it to the entry page. Link from title to right of image broken though?

[Gail]

This is ludicrous.

I MUST try it.

[w]

I've eaten this for the last 3 meals now. The apricots definitely make the dish. Next time, more apricots please! Yummo :)

[Cristina]

Amazing...I'm trying to come up with my own submission now...where's my pork muse!

[Helen]

Wow! That was some fast work right there! I can't believe you latticed pork! I am in awe.

[Manne]

Gail: Lasts a long time, three days out I am still eating pork bombs for lunch at work. ;)

Cristina: she who seeks shall find!

Helen: Thank you! Latticing was so much fun! I want to try something bigger next. Like a real pig in a real blanket of bacon, put in a pit of red hot glowing stones for the baking... Hmm. Why not.

[IT Jobs Training]

I really like pork and this new year I have just one resolution and that is I will control what I eat.

[Bex]

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm right that's it new flat needs an oven!

[Fnark]

My cat loves pork ribs.

Me, I liked pork back before it was all ready-basted with saline crap. Now I can't stand the stuff.