This is the perfect meal on a hot and sticky day like we are experiencing today, it's light and tasty. I love the way we Aussies describe a day like today, it's a Stinker, or it's Muggy and we are always hoping for rain or a storm. Luckily here in North Queensland, so far we haven't had any of the awful hailstorms that have started in southern Queensland. Some poor people's homes have been wrecked by huge hailstones. We haven't had any of the rain either unfortunately, no doubt though it will come eventually. My Dove orchids are starting to flower, and they are often pretty accurate that it will rain.
It's the annual and famous Melbourne Cup horse race tomorrow here in Australia, on the 3rd November, always on a Tuesday. It will be a very different type of Melbourne Cup to what we are used to watching, no fashions in the field, in fact no-one on the field, except the horses and their jockeys, perhaps a trainer or two as well. The yellow roses around the track are looking as beautiful as ever, and will be better than ever due to the lack of people around in the lead up to the race. I heard this morning that the roses are going to be donated to health workers in Melbourne, who have done such an amazing job during this corona virus pandemic. Besides doing the job they are trained for, there is a lot of extra stress that pervades hospitals during a pandemic like this. I might not have any yellow roses, symbolic of the Melbourne Cup, but I do have some lovely yellow gerberas flowering. The original plants were my Mothers, and have been broken up many times over the years, so this gerbera is an oldie and a goodie, before all of the new varieties appeared in nurseries.
Anyway onto cooking something spicy and sweet. Let's get some pork on our forks.
Ingredients:
Serves 4, however just halve the ingredients if you are cooking for two or even one. Leftovers are delicious.
2 tablespoons grated ginger
4 garlic cloves, crushed
4 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
4 lean pork fillets (approx. 125g each.)
2 teaspoons canola oil
2 medium onions
1 large carrot, finely sliced like matchsticks
2 zucchinis, sliced
1 red capsicum
4 teaspoons cornflour
300g snow peas
200g bean sprouts
Method:
Combine the first four ingredients, (ginger, garlic, vinegar, and soy sauce), in a bowl, mix to combine, and add the pork fillets to marinade in the refrigerator overnight.
On the day of cooking, prepare and cut up the vegetables ready for the stir fry. Once that is done, let the oven do most of the work with the pork.
Preheat the oven to 180 deg. C /Gas Mark 4.
Drain the pork, and reserve the marinade. Cook it in an oven proof frypan if you have one, otherwise just in a non-stick pan until browned all over. Either transfer the pork to an ovenproof dish and bake in the oven for 10 minutes, or transfer the oven proof frying pan to the oven, and bake for 10 minutes. Less washing up. Just be very careful of the hot handle on your frypan when you take it out of the oven.
 |
| These pork fillets are browning off beautifully in the pan. |
Remove and slice the pork diagonally.
Heat the oil in a wok, and add all of your vegetables, except for the snow peas and the bean sprouts. Stir fry them over a high heat until tender. Blend the cornflour with a little water and add to the reserved marinade and add to the vegetables in the wok. Add the snow peas and the bean sprouts, and stir lightly until the sauce boils and thickens.
Serve the vegetables with the pork and some brown or white rice. Yum!
This is the raw pork fillet I bought, so I just chopped it into four pieces. They come in a variety of weights.
Speaking of a stinker of a day in the heat, have you ever seen one of these? It is a kind of fly catcher, is a fungi, and it stinks, let's not mince words. It is a member of the Stinkhorn fungi, and it appears in many shapes and sizes.
I noticed it first thing this morning, when I walked past the front garden with Locky after our early morning walk, so it was about 6.30 am. It was nice and fresh then, with flies crawling all over it, like bees to the honeypot. I didn't get close enough to smell it, but apparently they do smell and we have had them in our garden before. The shape is well rather rude really isn't it? Ours looked phallic and draped in a lacy skirt. I was amazed by its perfect formation. No need to go into more specifics, I'm sure you can see what I mean. Wood chip and organic matter provide the ideal habitat for Stinkhorn Fungi, so mulched gardens are likely to support the occasional outbreak of these strange but fascinating growths. So as we are all mulching our gardens to preserve the moisture throughout the Summer, the Stinkhorn Fungi are revelling in the perfect environment. However they are also helping to break down the organic matter for the benefit of the surrounding plants. As the sun comes out they start to dry up and lose their freshness. I can't wait until tomorrow morning to see if it has a revival. If you are really interested, the Stinkhorn Fungi is part of the Clathraceae family. I just know you will be checking your gardens tomorrow morning for these impressive works of garden art.
I had intended to put up another meat free Monday recipe today, but this delicious pork was last nights dinner recipe, so the meat free Monday dish will be on the menu tonight, hopefully.
Just a quick comment for my blogger friends. I haven't been able to download photos from the computer photo files to my post today, so I downloaded them from Google photos where I edit them. I'll see how that goes, hope they don't disappear.
Stay safe and thanks for dropping by,
Pauline
