BBC Good Food Paprika Pork

I bought some pork belly a few weeks back with the intention of cooking something from Bulgaria (or somewhere) for the Olympic Food Challenge.  It's been clogging up my freezer ever since as pork is something that is definitely not on the menu in our house*.  In fact, since I've known my husband, I've only cooked pork once - which was a rather yummy satay pork and apple dish for this challenge a couple of months ago.

With just a few days left of this self-imposed year of cooking something new, I knew I had to do something with that pork before it got left to languish in the freezer for a couple of years and then ended up in the bin as it was long past its freezer-life date.  Having thumbed relentlessly through my recipe books, there was nothing that was quick and easy for a work night so I took to good food where I found the paprika pork recipe.

This particularly appealed because my Grandma used to make a turkey-based dish just like this when I lived at home, served with tricolore pasta twists**.  It was during a particularly difficult period in my life when my mother had just 'abandoned' me in favour of her first husband.  My mother had never liked the dish and I swear that my gran used to make it whenever my mum was coming to visit just to spite her on my behalf.  My Grandma was an amazing woman and always saw both sides of every story, but in this case, she didn't approve of the husband and approved even less that my mum effectively picked her own happiness over her daughter and so I'm sure this was her secret way of making a point.

As the dish was cooking last night, all I could hear in my head was my mother going 'Oh no.  Not smoky turkey again, you know how I hated that'.  To make the dish authentic, I added red and green peppers which give it a little colour through the thick sauce and they're also great for bulking out the dish a bit if you're stretching it to feed a few extra mouths (or if you're just greedy like me).

Not one for my family - I didn't even bother to try convincing them to try it after the 'stinky winky sauce' of last night - but something I'll make again in the future, probably with chicken when it's just me and Miss A for tea and her palate's developed a little.

You can find the original recipe here.  I added the equivalent of two bell peppers to the dish if you were making it for four and fried them with the onions.


*Unless you count bacon and sausages
**So Nineties