Pulled pork Burritos with black beans and spiced rice

So my boyfriend is like totally in love with the burritos at Guzman and Gomez in Newtown (I have to admit I get a pretty intense craving for them once in a while myself) and in an effort to please him I decided to make some the other night, hoping they would be at least half as yummy as the ones from Guzman, luckily I must have had a stroke of beginners luck as while they didn't taste the same as the store bought variety they were still pretty great.

I think the secret to their success was the slow roast pork shoulder, it does take some time to cook but you can completely ignore it so is actually really easy! So much so that we just left it in the oven while we were out one night.

Pulled Pork

• 1 - 1.5kg pork shoulder (boneless)
• 1 heaped teaspoon each of ground cumin/smoky paprika/ground coriander and oregano
• 2 whole dried chillis, ripped into pieces
• 4 cloves of garlic crushed
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• juice of 1 orange

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl or deep tray and leave pork to marinate in it for 24 hours (preferably!) turning it once or twice during this time.

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees celcius. Place the pork into a deep tray with all the marinade, season with salt cover with foil and bake for 4 hours or until incredibly tender (you should be able to pull it apart with a fork). Leave pork to cool then remove from pan, discard any excess fat or skin and shred roughly (two forks work well!). Place half the juices from the pork in a pan and reduce until quite syrupy to intensify the flavours then pour over the shredded pork meat and toss to combine (you can freeze the other half for stock, or discard).

Mexican style spicy rice

• 1 cup white rice, rinsed twice
• 1.5 cups water (or stock, I used some chicken stock powder)
• 1/2 tsp each ground cumin and coriander
• 4 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 tbs tomato paste

Mix all ingredients together in a pot and bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and cook until water has absorbed and rice is tender, about 10 - 12 minutes. Add in some freshly chopped coriander if desired.

Black beans

• 1 tbs olive oil
• 1/2 a medium onion
• 1 can black beans (or kidney beans if not available)
• 1 tablespoon coriander stalks finely chopped
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tbs tomato paste
• 1/4 cup water

Fry onion gently in olive oil until translucent. Add beans and remaining ingredients and cook until warmed through and liquid is almost all absorbed.

Tomato Salsa

• 3 Ripe red tomatoes
• 1/2 onion (left over from the beans, red is best)
• 1/2 bunch chopped coriander leaves
• juice of 1/4 lemon

Mix. Done!

To Serve

• Any condiments you may like for example, chopped pickled jalepenos, guacamole, shredded cheese (a must I think!), chilli sauce, extra chopped coriander
• flour tortilla wraps

To serve place a few spoonfuls each of the rice, beans and pork onto a tortilla, add some salsa and any extra condiments you might like and enjoy! Make sure you have a plate and napkins aplenty these are messy work to eat!!

Serves 4 at least! However if you do have leftovers the rice is really good the next day for lunch topped with salsa, leftover pork and some grated cheese!

Infallible hash browns and a spiced cheats chutney

Firstly I would like to welcome any visitors to our blog. We are new to this so please be patient while we get it up and running!

So me and Cheese are big time lovers of the potato as a breakfast food and are regularly disappointed by the lack of them on cafe menus around the Newtown area. Naturally this caused me to try time and time again to make my own but with limited success. Until one day at my mums we tried a Deborah Madison recipe which worked a treat. I have altered it to suit my personal taste, i.e. loads more salt than she suggested and more onion. Me and my boyfriend had these the other morning with a cheats chutney I made from some over-ripe tomatoes, not health food by any means but damn good!

Hash Browns

Ingredients
5 large potatoes
1/4 to 1/2 an onion, or a bunch of chives, or a couple of spring onions finely chopped
salt and pepper to taste
oil (and butter if you like) for frying

Peel the potatoes cut them in half and bring to the boil in lightly salted water, boil until par-cooked, about 10 minutes or less, and then remove and set aside until cool enough to handle. Grate the potatoes coarsely (a food processor makes short work of this) and place in a large bowl, add the onions or chives and salt and pepper to taste. The mix can now be used but I find it best to make it up early as the time in the fridge helps to solidify it and makes it easier to work with. Heat some oil in a frying pan over medium high heat, you can use just a little but the more you use the crispier the end result will be. When oil is hot use your hands to scoop out balls of the mix, place these into the pan (about 4 at a time) and press to flatten, leave them until golden on the bottom and then carefully flip over when the second side is golden also they are ready to eat, serve them on their own, as breakfast with poached eggs and bacon, with salmon and horseradish sour cream, cheats chutney, or any other combos your heart desires. Yum!

Spiced Cheats Chutney
The reason I call this cheats is because it's not a chutney that you preserve basically because I really cannot be bothered fussing about and sterilising jars! I just use it on basically everything I eat for two days so it doesn't go bad and then it's gone!

Ingredients
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1/2 an onion, chopped
5 - 6 large tomatoes, roughly chopped
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup vinegar (I used malt, but white vinegar or wine vinegar would be fine)
1/2 a star anise
1 bay leaf, fresh if possible
1 teaspoon each of cumin and coriander (ground)
a few stalks of fresh coriander, chopped

Heat the olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat, add onion and cook gently until translucent. Add all other ingredients, except fresh coriander, and cook until slightly reduced, about 10 - 15 minutes. Remove from heat, fish out the whole spices (anise and bay) add coriander and enjoy!