Caribbean Pork

This is a dish I have invented myself, not one from a published recipe. I have called it “Caribbean Pork” because it is spicy in the fragrant sense with cinnamon, ginger and allspice, but also in the hot sense with a good zing of chilli. A typically Caribbean mix!

My dish is cooked long and slow. It had nearly 5 hours in the oven, at a mere 150C, so the meat was falling-apart tender when served. To accompany it I served creamy coconut rice infused with fresh thyme, and a colourful mixed salad from the garden.

Here we go then….

Ingredients:
One small joint of Pork shoulder (fat on) – [Ours was approx 700g]
2 medium Onions, peeled and roughly sliced
3 small Spring Onions, sliced
3 sprigs fresh Thyme
A thumb-sized piece of fresh Ginger, peeled
4 cloves Garlic, peeled
2 Chillis, de-seeded and finely diced
2 tsp All-purpose Seasoning (if not available, add conventional salt and pepper to taste)
1 tsp dried Chilli flakes
Half tsp powdered Allspice (Jamaican pepper, aka Pimiento)
Quarter tsp powdered Cinnamon
1 Tbsp Soy Sauce
500ml stock (I used beef)

Method:
A few hours in advance, make the marinade…
Grate the Ginger into a deep bowl.
Crush the Garlic into it too.
Add the Cinnamon, Allspice, All-Purpose Seasoning, Chilli flakes, the fresh Chillis and the leaves of sprigs of fresh Thyme.
Moisten the mixture by adding the Soy sauce.
Place the meat in the bowl and liberally massage it with the marinade.
Cover and refrigerate.

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About 5 hours before serving-time…
Soften the sliced onions in some vegetable oil in a large casserole (one with a lid) over a low heat.
Add the stock, and bring to the boil.
Place the meat and all its marinade in the pan. (NB: The stock will cover only a small proportion of the meat.)
Cover the pan with the lid.
Cook in the oven at 150C for approx 5 hours, or until meat is very tender, turning the joint occasionally.
About 15 mins before serving-time, add the Spring Onions, reserving a few pieces for garnishing.

At serving-time…
Transfer the joint to a carving-board, retaining the cooking liquor / gravy.

Remove the fat from the meat, and either cut or break the meat into small pieces. If it is very tender it will probably not be possible to slice it in any meaningful way!

Serve the meat on a bed of the coconut rice, spooning the gravy over the top. Garnish with a few slices of Spring Onion.

Accompany with a green or mixed salad, like this maybe:

Coconut rice
Cook the rice as normal, but replace some of the water with a small tin of coconut cream. Before you start the cooking, add to the rice two sliced Spring Onions and the leaves of two sprigs of fresh Thyme.

This meal is from my point of view well-nigh perfect. Apart from the wonderful spicy flavours, the melt-in-the-mouth tenderness of the meat, the soothing unctuousness of the creamy rice, the bright colours and crisp textures of the salad, it does actually represent a very good balance of protein, carbohydrate and vegetables, without a huge amount of fat! [Author's note: "I liked it!"]