Cooking With Spoons

New website I happened to trip over while looking for a recipe for potato corn chowder recipe. (I found a good one, by the way - here it is, if you're curious.)

I'm never sure what to make of recipes that break down the exact cost of ingredients - I understand the intention, but the point is that it's the initial outlay for the entire bottle or bag or package of whatever kind. Still, it does give an indication of how much use you'll be able to get out of the package, so maybe it's helpful. Either way, the intent of the website is "easy and inexpensive", which is about what we need in a time when grocery prices are going nowhere but up.

I love my Instant Pot - I'll start with that. I actually have an Instant Pot now, but even before that, I loved my off-brand multicooker too. To break it in, this weekend is going to be all about the pork, and I started with pork steaks. See, pork shoulder steaks are cheaper than most other pork cuts, because it's not as tender, and it seems to take best to slow cooking. Since I never managed the vegetarian thing (I love vegetarian food, don't get me wrong; it's just that I get woozy and foggy in the head if I go without animal protein for awhile), I need ways to make the most out of the cheaper meats. Thus, I love my Instant Pot.

Here's what you need:

4-6 pork shoulder steaks

1 tbsp soy sauce

2 tbsp maple syrup

3 tbsp ketchup

1 diced onion

garlic cloves, crushed (to taste)

spices (to taste)

The actual recipe on Liana's Kitchen calls for three garlic cloves, but ... I mean ... that's way too few for me. Then again, this is a UK recipe site and I once heard a janitor in the corridors at the hospital I was working at going, "I really spiced up my cottage pie - I put a whole garlic clove in it!" (I wish I was kidding; I guess the stereotypes come from somewhere.) Anyway, my palate likes a little more kick, so I used half a bulb of garlic and added some salt, pepper, and a tiny bit of this chilli salt blend that my sib-from-another-crib sent me awhile back. Not too much, but the blend of sweet and spicy is very much worth it. Might add some steak spice and a couple of drops of tabasco next time.

Anyway, as you can see, really simple, doesn't require much.

Here's what you do:

Mix the soy sauce, maple syrup, and ketchup (and spices if desired) together in a small jug

Place the pork steaks in the multicooker (it's fine if you have to stack them)

Top the steaks with the onion and garlic

Pour the sauce over the pork steaks

Cook on low heat for 6-8 hours

FEAST

And, as always, a few notes from my first attempt at it:

"Jug": Honestly, if you have a gravy boat, use that. Otherwise, a measuring jug is fine, and so is a coffee mug if you don't have either of those.

Ingredients: The original recipe said to use a red onion, but I had diced white onion, so I used that, and it was fine.

Cooking Time: You might want to do the full eight hours. Not because it needs it to be tender - I did it for seven and the first steak I stuck a fork in literally fell apart. Just because it might give the juices more time to thicken into more of a gravy.

Meat Juice Alchemy: You don't really need a gravy for this, but if you want the juices to be gravy, sift in some cornstarch or flour, stirring all the while to avoid lumps, until it's thick enough for you. You could also add a stock cube to add some thickness and richness (pork if you can get it, vegetable if not).

Serving Suggestions: Especially if you're making the juice into gravy, you're going to want things that'll soak that up as your sides. I personally did what I call potato crush (which I'll give the recipe for below), but any combination of mashed or baked potato with some green veg will be good.

Bonus Recipe: Potato Crush

Here's what you need:

2-3 medium-sized potatoes

1 cup frozen broccoli

1/2 cup frozen sweetcorn

butter to taste

spices to taste

1 chopped tomato

Here's what you do:

Chop the potato into cubes - leave the skin on

Add potato cubes to boiling salted water; cook on medium-high heat until semi-firm

Add frozen veg; keep cooking until the potatoes are soft

Drain the potato-veg mix; replace in the pot

Add a knob of butter and roughly mash until the cubes are broken up but not smooth

Stir in chopped tomato

Serve with whatever meat you fancy; FEAST

Back again, hoping to provide more recipes and helpful hints. Just work's been demanding all my spoons lately - total change in management who insists things must be done Their Way when Their Way doesn't really work and they're rarely in the office to enforce it anyway. Which is why I said to myself, "Can I offer myself a nice bowl of soup in these trying times? It is autumn, after all!" So, as per above, butternut squash soup.

Soup's honestly easier than it's made out to be a lot of the time. Mostly it's just softening vegetables in some manner, with stock of some description, and blending until Soup Happens. This one doesn't even need a pressure cooker - not like my potato soup, which happens tomorrow.

Here's what you'll need:

1 butternut squash, peeled, deseeded, and cut into 1.5" cubes

2 tbsp olive oil

2 onions, diced

Garlic cloves to taste, thinly sliced

2 mild red chillis, deseeded and finely chopped

850ml vegetable stock (a little over 3.5 cups)

4 tbsp creme fraiche (plus more to serve)

Notes:

You can throw 1 tbsp of butter here if you want; I forgot and it turned out great.

You can probably replace the creme fraiche with sour cream if that's easier - it'll change the flavour profile from a bit sweet-creamy to a bit tart-creamy, but that's not a bad thing depending on what you like.

I said garlic cloves to taste here because the official recipe from the BBC Good Food website said one clove and me being me, I thought, "And meanwhile, in the real world..." and added, like, five.

I also used some of my dried cayenne peppers instead of the fresh red chillis, so I didn't exactly get "mild", but that's what the extra creme fraiche (or sour cream, which I am going to try next time because it sounds amazing) is for.

On that subject, I also added some garlic pepper and celery salt. Not sure how much of it I tasted over dried cayenne pepper, but I choose to pretend it affected the flavour.

Also I didn't exactly measure the amount of olive oil that went into any of this, and I was pretty lax on the creme fraiche measurements, but this is the kind of cooking where you measure that stuff with your heart. (Unless you're my ex and have significant anxiety about a lack of specific measurements and cooking times.)

Here's what you do:

Preheat oven to 200C / 180C fan / gas mark 6 (~395F)

Toss your cubes of squash in half of your olive oil, lay it flat on a baking sheet, and roast for 25-30 minutes or until soft, turning once.

While that's roasting, put the rest of your oil (and butter if you're using it) in a large saucepan with your chillies, garlic and onion and cook on very low heat for about 15-20 minutes or until the onions are completely soft (it shouldn't need stirring, but maybe check on it once)

Once the squash is done, tip that into the saucepan, add the vegetable stock and the creme fraiche, and whizz with a stick blender until smooth. Alternatively, put it in the food processor in batches and blend that way.

FEAST (and save the leftovers)

Further preparation notes:

If you don't have a baking sheet big enough for something like 1kg of butternut squash, you can put it into a smaller baking dish, but be prepared to leave it in for twice as long. That's what I did and it turned out fine.

The reason I rate this as 1-2 spoons is that if you can get pre-peeled and pre-sliced butternut squash, it'll take 1 spoon to make; peeling, deseeding, and chopping a whole-ass butternut squash adds at least an extra spoon to this process.

Photo of finished product: