Greek Pork Casserole (Aphelia)

[purplecat]

Cross-posted to cookbook_challenge.

This is from my mother's cookbook written in her own hand-writing. Judging from where it turns up, I suspect it is a recipe from the 1970s. Aphelia is probably the source of the recipe but I have no idea if that is a person, a magazine, or something else - probably a person though the name is unusual and I don't recall my mother ever mentioning an Aphelia.

Ingredients
1 lb lean pork.
Small tin tomatoes
1 onion
Chopped green pepper.
Small glass red wine
3 tbsps olive oil.
Doz coriander seeds.
Peppercorns.
Salt.
Juice 1/2 lemon.
Some lemon rind.

Method
Marinade chopped meat with wine and lemon juice, coriander seeds, peppercorns, salt.

Gently fry onion and pepper. Remove. Brown meat. Replace onion and pepper. Add marinating liquid, tomatoes and lemon rind.

Cook in moderate oven 1 - 1 1/2 hrs


Changes, Mistakes and Substitutions
We had some discussion above whether "Doz coriander seeds" was some number of ounces, or a dozen. In the end we decided it was a dozen. I then decided to crush the coriander seeds and a similar number of peppercorns together with a pestle and mortar rather than having them floating whole in the casserole (I think this was a good choice). The recipe didn't say to chop the onions, though it did say to chop the green pepper, but I couldn't imagine that the onions weren't supposed to be chopped as well. I skipped the lemon rind since I was using shop bought lemon juice rather than an actual lemon.

Verdict
This was a perfectly nice but not very exciting pork casserole. The pork was a little dry but I think that was because "lean stir fry pork" was substituted for the stewing pork I'd ordered from Sainsbury's and I suspect the whole would have benefitted from more fat.

Comments

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

It may be the case that a 1970s idea of "lean pork" is rather different from a 2022 idea.

[purplecat]

Or possibly that stir-fry pork is rather smaller than you might chop something for a casserole.

Or possibly it was always dry, of course.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I agree that it could be any of these.

[chainmailmaiden]

Pork being too dry does seem to be an issue with the leaner cuts, and it is annoying when you've not ordered a lean cut and you get one. When I make pork curries and I've managed to get a cut of pork with a good amount of fat on, I like to trim most of the fat off and render it down, then fry the meat in some of the rendered fat - I usually find it produces more than I need, so you get some for future cooking and also some homemade pork scratchings. Not the healthiest thing, but I think of them as my cook's treat while I finish the recipe :)

I'll be interested to see what other delights your Mother's recipe book holds, I love looking at older recipes and finding hidden gems.

[purplecat]

I'm hoping it'll be fun. My grandmother's cook book, "Miss Tuxford's Cookery for the Middle Classes", was sadly disappointing but that was a commercial cookbook whereas this is a set of hand-written recipes and things cut out of magazines and glued in. My grandmother had something similar, on index cards, but I've no idea what happened to it.

[chainmailmaiden]

My mother has a notebook from her mother with recipes in which I long to get my hands on and thinking about it, I bet if I asked her I could have it. Not sure there will be anything exciting there though, but it would be nice to look. My mother's collection is mostly scraps of paper shoved into the front of the recipe book she used the most when first married. The whole lot being held together by a rubber band, which mostly succeeds in holding everything in...

[purplecat]

Mine are currently in a recipe manager program which does export to XML which is something, though I don't know if that will actually confer any longevity to them or not.