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Memories of a Silesian Heaven
May. 25th, 2022 07:20 pmCrossposted to ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
cookbook_challenge.
This is a recipe by Sophie Grigson, cut out from a newspaper by my mother. My guess, from its placement in my mother's cookbook, would be that the recipe is from the late 1980s or early 1990s. My parents took The Independent for which Sophie wrote a column in 1997-98 (according to Wikipedia) though that feels a little late to me (not impossible though). However it would appear that she's Oxford based and went to my school*, so this could conceivably be a recipe from the Oxford Times written at some earlier point in her career.
( Ingredients )
( Method )
Changes, Mistake and Substitutions
It is relatively easy to get hold of dried apricots and apples, pears not so much and I confused dates for prunes in the store cupboard. Anyway, my dried fruit mix was apricots, apples, dates and raisins. Seemed OK. Grigson notes in the recipe that it is important to have tart fruit (particularly the apples and apricots). As usual (now) for this kind of dish we put everything in R2D2, the pressure cooker, for an hour rather than the oven for 2. In this case it may have been a mistake since the fat on the pork had not rendered down and the pork itself was still quite firm (though cooked).
Verdict
I actually liked this combination of pork and fruit, but himself assiduously separated the fruit from the gravy and took only the gravy, and then complained that the pork wasn't tender enough, so I won't be cooking it again.
* As, it appears, did Mel Giedroyc and, according to her Wikipedia page, she must have been just two years ahead of me at school. So I must have seen her around almost every day for most of my teens. Do I recognise her? nope! Rings no bells at all and it wasn't that large a school. I'd watched about five series of Bake Off before I was even aware of the connection and didn't even have that faint feeling one sometimes gets that you recognise someone from somewhere.
cookbook_challenge.This is a recipe by Sophie Grigson, cut out from a newspaper by my mother. My guess, from its placement in my mother's cookbook, would be that the recipe is from the late 1980s or early 1990s. My parents took The Independent for which Sophie wrote a column in 1997-98 (according to Wikipedia) though that feels a little late to me (not impossible though). However it would appear that she's Oxford based and went to my school*, so this could conceivably be a recipe from the Oxford Times written at some earlier point in her career.
( Ingredients )
( Method )
Changes, Mistake and Substitutions
It is relatively easy to get hold of dried apricots and apples, pears not so much and I confused dates for prunes in the store cupboard. Anyway, my dried fruit mix was apricots, apples, dates and raisins. Seemed OK. Grigson notes in the recipe that it is important to have tart fruit (particularly the apples and apricots). As usual (now) for this kind of dish we put everything in R2D2, the pressure cooker, for an hour rather than the oven for 2. In this case it may have been a mistake since the fat on the pork had not rendered down and the pork itself was still quite firm (though cooked).
Verdict
I actually liked this combination of pork and fruit, but himself assiduously separated the fruit from the gravy and took only the gravy, and then complained that the pork wasn't tender enough, so I won't be cooking it again.
* As, it appears, did Mel Giedroyc and, according to her Wikipedia page, she must have been just two years ahead of me at school. So I must have seen her around almost every day for most of my teens. Do I recognise her? nope! Rings no bells at all and it wasn't that large a school. I'd watched about five series of Bake Off before I was even aware of the connection and didn't even have that faint feeling one sometimes gets that you recognise someone from somewhere.