Spicy Pork & Chorizo

This dish is really big on flavour. You have to go large with it – chunks of pork (fat left on please for cooking), chorizo with a slightly blackened crunch, woody herbs, good olive oil, chunky veg and heaps of mash. No coodles, no pureed cauliflower, no piddly pieces of onion and strictly no salad. Go big or go home.

I expect you to work up a sweat cooking this. It takes heavy duty chopping, stirring and dodging the hissing splatters of molten fat. You need a heavy bottomed pan, a strong wooden spoon and a big bicep. It takes care and attention to get the meat a deep, rich brown while gently softening the onions and peppers in the glistening oil. This dish is forgiving though, with deep earthy flavours of paprika, garlic, rosemary and sage you could be forgiven a charred mushroom or two. Best finished off in the oven for that extra baked stickiness, this dish takes around 45 minutes to 1 hour to make, and is even better the night after, served in a large subway roll with crunchy iceberg lettuce and sour cream.

To make you’ll need:

(Serves 2)

2 pork chops, cut into large chunks with fat left on

1 Chorizo sausage string

2 peppers/red and yellow

Half pack of mushrooms

1 onion

1 tin chopped tomatoes

Paprika, salt, pepper, rosemary, sage leaves

Olive oil

White wine

Garlic – 3 cloves

Pre heat your oven on a medium heat (150 degrees will do)

Heat your pan with light olive oil while you chop you pork and your chorizo into generous even pieces. Drop a sprig of fresh rosemary into the pan and when it spits, add the meat and stir, coating in the oil. Leave it to brown deeply, stirring occasionally. There will be a lot of fat – but that’s what we want. The chorizo will make it a fiery orange colour and it will all be beautiful. 

Let the magic happen while you roughly chop your vegetables and garlic and when – and only when – each piece of meat is suitably crunchy and golden, tip them in. Let it all fry up for a few minutes so it’s all coated in oil and flavour from the chorizo and then add your seasoning. 

Leave to steep in all the oily porky juices, turning until soft and the veg has broken down, then add your wine and deglaze the pan a bit working all the sticky brown bits off the bottom – this is where loads of the flavour will be! Careful, it might spit a bit, but just stand back and wait until some of the liquid has evaporated. 

Next tip in a tin of chopped tomatoes, give it another stir, pour yourself another glass of wine and then pop the pan in the oven (with the lid on) on a medium heat for about half an hour. 

When you're ready to serve, whip it out and top with a pile of fluffy mash. Yum.