Roast Pork with an Onion and Roasted Vegetable Paella

This is not, strictly speaking, a paella, but artistic licence, etc...

I came across a recipe for a Spanish rice dish, using paella rice, into which all the juices and fat of a roast chicken are poured  towards the end of cooking. Its base is a lots of onion, almost an onion sauce. It really is a very tasty dish.

I thought it would work with pork and it certainly did. The flavours of the pork juices, the cider and the roast vegetables were fabulous - particularly the apple. A great dish to bear in mind with the massive apple crop that's on its way.

The use of booze in cooking is something of an extravagance in this country of ludicrous alcohol duty but, due to the idiocy of the bureaucracy, cider is cheaper than beer and wine on a slug for slug basis. Depriving poor people from using wine and beer in their cooking, through the mechanism of taxation, is inhuman. 

Ingredients

For the rice:

200gm paella rice 

3 onions

4 garlic cloves

1 sweet red pepper

pinch of cayenne pepper

If you have saffron, a few strands, otherwise use about 1 teaspoon of paprika 

500ml of stock - I used a pork stock cube, but vegetable or chicken will do

Fresh parsley or thyme to finish

2 tablespoons olive oil

Cider

For the roast veg:

3 sweet potatoes

3 turnips

4 apples (I used ageing dessert apples)

Cider

For the joint of pork:

Olive oil

Smoked paprika

Sea salt

Black pepper

The pork is straight forward. Cut slashes into the skin, which we want to turn into crackling. Rub the pork with the olive oil and the salt. Then rub in the smoked paprika. 

De-core the apples, you don't need to skin them.  Chop the sweet potatoes, turnips and apples into smallish bite size chunks. Put them into the bottom of an oven pan over which you can place a grill tray with the pork on it to enable the juices to drop into the pan. Cover the veg with a good glug of the cider and top up with water. Put the meat on top of a grill over the pan and put into the oven. Follow the cooking times for the meat you have, of course. Keep an eye on the dish and top up with water if it looks like drying up.

The juices will drip into the pan, the veg will roast rather deliciously and the pork will do its thing. Whilst all that's happening you should be making your paella.

I don't have a paella pan, shame on me, so I use a wok.  Fry the onions slowly in the oil. You want them to be really soft, not browned, so stir often and keep an eye on them. After five minutes or so add the garlic, keeping the heat low. Another five minutes pass before you turn up the heat and add the chopped sweet red pepper. Add the cayenne pepper and the saffron, if you have it. In Spain, if they don't have saffron, which is bloody expensive, they use colorante, but a teaspoon of paprika will do the job.

Once the heat has done its work, add the rice and stir vigorously. You don't want it to burn, but you do want it to absorb the juices in the pan. Add a decent splash of cider and let it be absorbed, then add the stock. I've said 500ml - but read the instructions on the rice. You can always add more liquid later.

A proper paella develops a crust on the bottom, which is delicious. This crust develops by not stirring. If you're not careful, though, you can end up with hard rice on the top, so stir the top of the rice if you want the crust. 

As the pork finishes, put the meat to one side and add the juices and the roasted fruit and veg to the paella. The rice need to be just cooked as you do this. Stir it in and  cook for a couple more minutes. Chop some fresh parsley to sprinkle over the paella when you transfer it to a serving bowl.

I recently made this again but with different veg - beetroot, aubergine and carrot. Equally delicious.