Asian Dinner

Saturday saw our Asian inspired dinner.  As a coeliac, I know that casual trips to the local take away or restaurant is something you have to accept is over.  If you have a local place where you can talk to them about gluten, educate them about cross contamination, and where they are happy to try and accommodate you, then if you are one of the fortune ones you can find a safe place to go.

In my experience though there is still that element of risk.

Here at Annie's because we run a 100% gluten free kitchen I knew I could serve up some tasty treats without that fear.  After all, if I can't taste it, I can't serve it!

As usual I was far too busy in the kitchen to take photos so the images here were provided by guests (thank you!).

We were fully booked for the dinner - a lovely split of five returning guests and five newbies.  Guests were prompt (one couple got caught behind a slow driver and were a little late but they soon caught up!) and seemed to relax immediately with one another.

The table was set with prawn crackers for guests to nibble on and as well as our usual still and sparkling water we also offered jasmine & green tea in Chinese teacups to help get diners in the mood.

We started in India.  I served Vegetable (cauliflower) Pakoras and Batata Vada Chaat (potato fritters) on top of some Coriander Chutney.  To accompany it we provided Tamarind Chutney and a Cucumber Raita. We had two dairy free guests at the table and their Raita was made with soya yoghurt.  The appetizer went down well - so well that no one took a photo of their plate before eating!  However, one guest did manage a snap of his empty plate...

The next course featured Indonesian cuisine.  A lighter course after the fried carbohydrate of the first appetizer, we served Udang Goreng Kecap Manis - stir Fried Prawns in Indonesian Sweet Soy Sauce.

I had not been able to find any gluten free kecap manis so had made my own.  I heated equal quantities of gluten free soy sauce with molasses sugar along with a star anise.

Once the sugar had dissolved and the sauce had thickened slightly, it was ready to use.

I fried off plenty of garlic which I then removed before adding the fresh prawns which had been quickly marinated in turmeric.

Once they started to change colour I reintroduced the garlic along with hot chillis (from our windowsill box!), tamarind paste and the kecap manis.

Innocent looking, they packed quite a punch!

We topped up the prawn crackers and provided everyone with bowls and chopsticks as we were heading to China for the main course.

We placed the serving bowls on the table and let our guests help themselves, in true Chinese restaurant style!

I made Sweet & sour Pork Cantonese Style, Lamb with Ginger & Spring Onions, Chinese Greens (bok choy and choi sum) and plenty of Egg Fried Rice.  I say plenty because despite the fact that the protein to carb ratio was 2:1 the rice dish was the only thing that had anything left in it at the end!


I had a bit of a nightmare with the dessert which was Pisang Goreng (banana fritters).  Now, I only eat bananas when a) there is nothing else to eat b) they are very ripe - but the fritters are usually thick slices of banana fried in a light crisp batter.  Pandering to my own tastes (chef's perogative!) I prefer to mash the bananas (ripe!) into the batter mix and deep fry a tablespoon at a time.

What happens is that you get a gorgeous puff of yumminess - and don't forget I don't even like bananas but I love these!  The issue was that for some reason the batter was sticking to the bottom of the pan (which has never happened any time I've ever made these before).  The result was not only a delay but also affected the look of the fritters.

Fortunately, the taste was not affected!  This is evidenced by the lack of photos of the completed dish ;-)    We served the fritters with a plain Kulfi (Indian ice cream) which I had made.  I had also made a dairy free version using home made condensed rice milk and soya cream.


Interestingly, a number of guests had expressed reservations about the kulfi in advance of trying it.  It appears that they had tasted kulfi in Indian restaurants before and found the taste overpowering.

I was EXTREMELY relieved that they all however loved my kulfi!  I had flavoured it with saffron, cardamon and rose water, enough to provide a subtle taste to the ice cream that didn't overpower the palate.

Guests had been told that the coffee course would include chocolate lychees. I had made some during the week and whilst I could appreciate the taste of the ginger with the lychee and chocolate, I dislike lychees even more than I dislike bananas and I decided that texturally the combination was unappealing.

Instead I made white chocolates with chilli powder, a pistachio nut fudge and dark chocolate coated crystallised ginger.

Our dairy free guests had a plate of dark chocolates, some flavoured with chilli and others with crushed pistachios in them.

We thoroughly enjoyed our evening and were very pleased with the comments on twitter afterwards:

PKPWordsmith Phillip Khan-Panni
@anniesupperclub Such a splendid dinner last evening. Thank you Annie.

cinderelliekins Mrs Hughes
Just home from a wonderful and delicious evening at @anniesupperclub) - so happy and full! Thanks Annie, sorry we ate everything!!

kijakazi Jenn
Another fantastic evening eating at @anniesupperclub trying not to fall asleep on the tube home!

lovelybills Barbara Taylor
Just had a delicious 5 course Asian banquet @anniesupperclub in Bromley. Fine food & good company!

Pulled Pork

My name is Annie, and I'm a TV food programme addict.

There. I've admitted it.

I've heard people say things like "who watches that stuff anyway?" or "does anyone ever actually try the recipes?"

Er, "me" and "yes"!

Second confession: I'm not a trained chef - well, not professionally trained.  Just trained in the crucible of life: realising what I didn't like about my Mum's cooking; experimenting with weird concoctions when first allowed near the cooker myself as a teenager; enjoying having my own kitchen when I got married and cooking 3 course meals from scratch starting when I got home from work in London at 7pm each night; learning to cook tasty vegetarian meals when hubby went veggie for a year due to ill health; learning to cook tasty gluten free food when 2 sons went gluten free; learning to BAKE gluten free; learning to make EVERYTHING from scratch by the time 5 out of 6 of us ended up on a gluten free diet....

All the time, I've watched cooking shows.  I find them even better than cookbooks because the real things I've learned have been from those throw away comments that the chef makes on camera, those little asides that make you yell "aha! So THAT'S the secret!" at the TV (or is that only me?).

Actually, thinking about it, I find food blogs do that for me too.  The more chatty/off topic the writer is, the more I find I learn from those musings - far more than from the actual recipe that they kindly write out at the foot of the post.  Bloggers like Gluten Free Girl (who educates me at the same time as making me feel part of her life) and Pig in the Kitchen (who makes me laugh out loud every time whilst having been my life saver during 2 years of gluten, dairy, soya AND egg free cooking) and more recently foodie/supperclub bloggers like Food Urchin (who makes me laugh, nod in recognition, and invariably triggers me off on some wild food escapade myself).

All of which is a looong introduction to this post about pulled pork.  You see I love watching Diners, Drive ins and Dives.  Partly because I'm a frustrated Diner Owner, partly because I love food that is probably bad for me (yeah I know, I'm married to a wellness coach, go figure).  One of the most commonly featured American diner foods featured is pulled pork.  Rubbed, smoked, barbecued, pulled, sauced, in a buns, with fries...  Never understood the fascination.

I'd made pulled pork before you see.  Well, I thought I had.  I'd slow roasted pork till it "pulled".  Nice but *shrug* not worth a trip for.  I'd cooked it in my slow cooker (I LOVE my slow cooker) for hours and hours till it fell apart.  Nice but *shrug* a taste that I wasn't that keen on (I'd cooked it in liquid, braising it, and I'm not really a fan of braising!).

I wondered if it was down to the cut.  The Americans all used "pork butt" and I couldn't find it in the supermarket or the butchers over here (yeah ok, stop laughing at the back, I know that NOW!).

Finally I thought, after one particularly tasting looking episode, to google pork butt.  Guess what?  It's pork shoulder!

When a friend yesterday gave us a pork shoulder joint, it seemed like a sign.  Every person I'd seen on Triple D had made a dry rub and every time I saw the list of ingredients I used to laugh because it seemed to me that the first time they'd made it they'd thrown a little bit of everything in and, having found it worked, couldn't work out what exactly MADE it work so always recreated faithfully that first "bung it all in and hope for the best" concoction.

So that's what I did.

To the best of my recollection (don't shoot me, I'm new at this food blogging/recipe lark), this is what I did:

1 tbsp sea salt
1 tbsp dark brown sugar
1/2 tbsp freshly cracked black pepper
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tbsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp hot smoked paprika
1/4 tsp English Mustard powder
1/2 tsp cocoa powder
1/2 tsp good quality instant coffee (yes, really)

I'm pretty certain that was it.  Put it this way, I'll do it that way next time and check and I promise I'll update you!

I cut all the rind and large bits of fat off of the pork and rubbed it over with the dry rub.  Then I doubled wrapped it in clingfilm, very tightly, and left it in the fridge overnight for 12 hours.

I put the slow cooker on to low (mine has 3 settings) and just put a tiny bit of water in the bottom - enough to wet the whole surface - and placed the (now unwrapped) pork on top of it.  Put the lid on and left it for 9 hours.  It wasn't a huge joint (I know, sorry, I didn't make a note of the weight!) and a bigger joint could take up to 10 or 12 hours to get to the right "pulled pork" texture.

Do what I did and test it - you'll know when it's ready!

We wanted a BBQ sauce to go over it so after a quick google I settled on this one on the Food Network site.  No reason other than by then I was hungry and DH was just ripping into the pork so I couldn't be bothered to look further!

I halved the quantities (it was only for 2 of us after all) and to be honest we found it far too sharp for our poor English tastes.  I added a tablespoon of maple syrup and another good 2 or 3 tablespoons of dark brown sugar before we thought it was ok.  Then I had the genius idea of adding some of the liquor from the bottom of the slow cooker.  We mixed 1 part of sauce to 2 parts of the liquor and BOY that was the real deal!  The pork juices and the added flavour from the rub balanced out the sharpness of the sauce to perfection.

I'm a convert! Obviously the dry rub and then the dry cooking (instead of braise) of the pork made the right sort of cooking method to match all those American Diner pulled pork creations.

Next time we're going to try and turn our barbecue in to a smoker and see if we can go the whole hog (*ahem*)!