Category Archives: Pork
Sage Pumpkin Ravioli
Mmmm pumpkin ravioli! Can you imagine! And it’s pretty easy as I use wanton wrappers as the pasta to fill.
I originally made this a few times back when I was 15 or 16 years old and it was a huge hit. I’ve basically remembered the recipe so here you have it!
You will need…
- 2 tablespoons of olive oil
- 1 onion, very finely diced
- 2 cloves of garlic, minced
- 2 slices of bacon, chopped very finely
- 1 can of pumpkin puree
- 5-6 leaves of fresh sage, minced
- 1 teaspoon of dried thyme
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 1 package of wonton wrappers
- 1 beaten egg (with a pastry brush)
- A light dusting of rice or corn meal
For the white sauce…
- 2 tablespoons of butter
- 1 heaping teaspoon of flour
- 1/4 cup of 10% cream
- 1/2 cup of milk
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg
- 3 leaves of fresh sage, minced
Now follow these instructions…
Saute the onion, garlic and bacon in the olive oil for about 5 minutes until the bacon is crispy and the onions are translucent. Add the pumpkin puree, thyme, salt and pepper and taste it. Does it need more salt or pepper? If so, add some more. Cook everything together in the pan for around 3 minutes and then add your sage. Stir for another minute and then transfer it to a bowl and let’s get ready to make the ravioli!
Seperate your wonton wrappers, you may want to make kind of an assembly line going on. Brush the edges of each little wrapper with the beaten egg and then place around only 1 or 1.5 teaspoons of the puree in the very centre of the wrappers. CAREFULLY fold the wrapper on a diagonal and seal it shut, making sure to leave no air inside or to let the filling leak out.
While you are assembling them together, rest them on a large baking sheet that has been dusted with the rice flour or corn meal so that they won’t stick!
Boil a pot of water and place around 6-8 of these babies in at a time for a medium saucepan or even more for a larger saucepan…just don’t overcrowd it. They should boil for 3-5 minutes.
Don’t make the sauce until these are cooked because the sauce needs to be served over the ravioli immedietly!
Now for the sauce…
Heat the cream and milk together in the microwave for just a few seconds so that it is slightly warm Melt the butter in a frying pan, add the flour and whisk for about a minute. Whisking constantly, add the milk/cream slowly. As you are whisking away, season the sauce with salt, pepper and the nutmeg. Taste it…Does it need more salt? Add some if so. Add the sage in at the last minute and then pour it over the pasta!
Enjoy!!!
Mushroom Garlic Pork Chops
This pork recipe takes less than 20 minutes to prepare, from start to finish (not including eating time!). And because of the ease of making this and the lack of time it takes to prepare, I am reiterating my point that there is no excuse for not making dinner from scratch tonight!
I have made this pork 4 times…4 TIMES!…in the past 3 weeks. The first reason being because it tastes amazing, the 2nd reason being is that because it is so quick to make, and the third reason is because I wanted to blog it but it always became to dark to blog it up until yesterday when I was able to shoot the pictures in broad daylight!
Anyways, without further ado, here is the step-by-step of the recipe!
You will need:
Sliced mushrooms (around 1 1/2 cups total), two pork chops, 2 gloves of garlic chopped large, mustard, coconut oil and butter (and a lot more butter than is pictured above!).
Begin my heating up around 2 tablespoons of coconut oil in a frying pan…
Once the oil is hot and ready (I always check it by throwing a drop of water in the pan and seeing if it sizzles) add the two pork chops and just leave them for 5 minutes…
Flip them after 5 minutes and then again leave them for another five minutes. Check to see if they are cooked through by slicing into the middle just a tiny bit. If there is no pink left then they are cooked through (if the juices coming from them are clear then that is another good indicator)…if there is pink then let them cook a little longer. Remove them from the pan…
Now add in the mushrooms and garlic to the pan…
Along with another 2-3 tablespoons of butter. I had to add more after the measly little amount (pictured below) didn’t suffice!
Saute the mushrooms for 3-4 minutes and then add a good tablespoon of mustard…
Whisk the mustard into the butter and mushrooms…
Now serve this garlic mushroom sauce over the pork chops…Yum!
[amd-zlrecipe-recipe:51]
Sweet and Sour Pork…Yummy Laura Style!
This dish is very quick to make…so no excuses for not making your dinners from scratch!
And Mr. Max says I should just call it “Yummy” and not “Sweet and Sour Pork” 
You will need:
This is 1/2 zucchini diced thick, one red pepper thinly sliced, 1/2 spanish onion sliced, 2 pork chops, curry powder, soy sauce, corn starch, and honey. You will also need either butter or olive oil for the pan (I used olive oil)!
Begin by placing the pork chops in the pan after you heat up 1-2 tablespoons of the oil…
We just want to cook them a little on the outside, so flip them after 2 minutes or so…
They will only need another minute on this side. After that, take them out of the pan and slice them…
In that same hot pan, add alllll the veggies in at once. I usually add the onion first, then the garlic, etc, etc…but not with this dish. It’s way more simple than that!
After sauteing them for about 5 minutes, add in 1 heaping teaspoon of curry powder. You can use any curry powder you like!
Fun fact: Did you know that curry powder is actually a mixture of 5 or 6 different spices, therefore you can make your own oooor find the one that you like best! I’m using a curry powder that Max’s parents brought back from Turkey…yum!
Stir that around and then add in the pork…
Stir that around and add around 4 tablespoons of soy sauce (tamari works too!)…
That takes care of the soury part of the sweet and sour pork! To make it a little sweet, add 1 tablespoon of honey and stir everything around…(I seem to have forgotten to take a picture of the honey, but you get the idea!)
On the side, add 1 heaping tablespoon of cornstarch to a measuring cup…
Mix this with around 100mL of water and pour it into the stir fry. This will give the veggies and pork a delicious sauce…
Make sure the liquid comes to a boil in the pan so that the cornstarch cooks and becomes thick! Stir the whole thing for another minute or so and voila!
Yummy! And easy[amd-zlrecipe-recipe:44]
Leftover Madness: Pasta Sauce into Pork Dish!
Hello! Welcome to my new series on my blog, Leftover Madness! Here I will take one of the meals that I made during the week and posted on my blog, and then transform the leftovers into a completely new dinner for another day.
Today I am transforming the creamy tomato bacon sauce into a pork dish I am sure you will love!
I began by chopping a large shallot…
Then I heated some olive oil in a shallow pan…
Next I added the onions and sautéed them for only a minute or so…
After that minute is up and the onions are slightly translucent, add two pieces of pork right into the middle of the frying pan…
I just want to brown the outsides for now so I flipped them after 2 minutes and cooked them for another 2 minutes on the other side…
I removed the pork chops from the pan and let them sit while I took this out…
It’s a blonde beer by the way. I measured out 150ml of it and poured it into the hot pan…
I immediately took a wooden spoon and scraped up all the cooked pork bit at the bottom of the pan. This is called deglazing. Then to remove some of the alcohol, I boiled the beer in the pan for just a minute or so…
The kitchen smelled fabulous at this point!
Now I stirred in the left over pasta sauce. I had about 1 cup left over from a few nights before…
I made sure it was combined veeeeeery well…
Then I added the pork chops right back into the pan amidst the sauce…
I let this whole deal simmer for about 7 minutes, COVERED. When those seven minutes were up, I removed the pork chops once more…
Then I cranked up the heat and let the sauce boil down for 3-4 more minutes, UNCOVERED…
I poured it over the pork chops and served them with rice and a fresh cucumber tomato salad!
Enjoy!
[amd-zlrecipe-recipe:21]
Creamy Tomato Bacon Sauce
I went to dinner at a friend’s place the other night and tasetd the most delicious pasta I have tasted in a while! I asked them how they made it. They poured a store-bought bottle of ricotta and tomato sauce over pasta and added some bacon. I was shocked that something so store-bought and simple could taste that good! I figured that if something store-bought tasted this good, imagine how awesome a home-made version would taste! (P.s. I always go for the home-made stuff over the store bought.) I was right! It tasted 10 times better than the already fantastic version I had at their place!
You will need…
Ricotta cheese, canned crushed tomatoes, shallots, garlic, smoked bacon and parsley. Oh, and don’t forget the olive oil for cooking!
Begin by dicing the shallots…
And mincing the garlic…
And mincing the parley too…
Then take this…
I sliced 12 some circle rounds of the smoked bacon. It’s 150g if you can’t find the round version and only the strips…
Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a large saucepan…
Add the onions and garlic…
Saute them for 2 minutes or so (they will begin to become translucent)…
Add the bacon…
Now saute this about for around 5 minutes. When the onions begin turning a nice golden brown colour you know you are ready for the next step…
Add in a 14oz can of crushed tomatoes…
And a cup of ricotta cheese…
Stir it up to combine everything together and then sprinkle in the parsley (it comes to 2 tablespoons when it is minced)…
Simmer the sauce for 10 minutes. This gives the ricotta cheese time to real get in there and melt, pumping up that creaminess!
Serve it over pasta and if you have leftovers, keep it in the fridge for a week or so!
Enjoy!
Thanks for reading!
P.s. if you come back in a few days, I am featuring this in “Leftover Madness!” (my new series!) where I transform the leftovers into a totally new dinner option!!!
[amd-zlrecipe-recipe:20]
Posted in Pasta, Pork
Tagged creamy tomato bacon sauce, pasta sauce recipe, ricotta tomate sauce, ricotta tomato sauce recipe
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Whiskey Sausage
So easy to make. So yum. That is about all I have to say about it.
Oh ya! There is alcohol in it! Can it get any better?
You will need:
Butter, olive oil, shallots, smokes sausages and whiskey. Hardly anything!
Begin by peeling and slicing 5 shallots lengthwise. They should look like this when you are done…
Next, heat up some olive oil in a pan…
Add around 1 tablespoon of butter.
I will teach you how to know exactly when your butter is ready.
When you add the butter, swoosh it around until it is fully melted. It will get very bubbly like this…
The foam will go down. When it goes down and doesn’t look like it will go down (sorry for my lack of vocabulary. My English also “goes down” while I am amidst millions of French speakers, apparently) any further, it is hot enough. It will look like this…
Add the onions…
Saute them in the pan for around 7 minutes or until they are really soft and starting to brown around the edges. I want them sticking to the bottom of the pan! Afterall, we have to let that alcohol do its duty (of deglazing) well!
In the meantime, you can slice the 4 French smokes sausages…
When the onions are ready. Add a (generous) splash of the whisky to the pan. A generous splash is when you take the lid off the bottle, and hold it over the pan for less than 1 second. Because this splash was generous mine was more like 1.5 seconds long. If you are still are unsure as to how to splash the alcohol in then add approx. 2 ounces. Scrape the bottom of the pan…
Now add the sausage to the pan and add one more generous splash of the whiskey…
Stir the mixture around, turn the heat to low and simmer for 7-10 minutes…
The sausage and onion mixture is so salty and pungent and flavorful that I served it with plain, unsalted pasta that I drizzled some olive oil over.
Et voila! Enjoy!
[amd-zlrecipe-recipe:12]
Posted in Pork
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