my evening meal

[an adaptation of a Rick Stein recipe]

take some organic pork (or wild boar, if you can get it ..). Cube into chunks, and marinate in some decent dark soy sauce for about half an hour.

then remove from soy, drain and pat dry (if you can be arsed), and brown in some vegetable oil in a heavy casserole dish. I use an ancient and well loved Le Creuset one. Remove pork, and dispose of oil.

deglaze the casserole pan with a decent dollop of dry sherry – rice wine is better, but we don’t seem to have any … I blame the staff. Then return the pork to the pan, with the remaining soy from the marinade, a splosh of water, a large, thinly sliced onion. And some slivered fresh ginger, a few cloves of chopped garlic, some dried tangerine peel (you do need to plan ahead a day or so for this), a couple of star anise and about .5″ of cinnamon stick. Oh, and some Sezchuan peppercorns, which you have toasted in your tiny cast iron spice toasting pan, then ground in a mortar and pestle – well, that’s how we do it.

sling all this in the casserole, bring to a simmer, bung in the oven at gas mark 3, and wait impatiently for about one to one and a half hours. Best served with basmati rice and some chopped fresh coriander.

delicious. Or it will be when it’s ready …