Hairy Dieters Week 10

I honestly can’t believe I’ve now been cooking recipes from the Hairy Dieters book for 10 weeks and there are still recipes I’ve not cooked and want to cook, granted I’ve cooked a couple of things more than once and frozen some bits and cooked them later but I’ve tried to cook a new recipe or two every week.

This week saw the return of the deliciously simple Harissa Chicken plus two new recipes.

First up was the beef in ale casserole, I pretty much followed the recipe for this one although I did add some mushrooms and cooked it in the slow cooker instead of cooking it on the hob as per the instructions. It worked really well and the gravy was thick and full of flavour, I couldn’t decide which ale to use so went for Guinness Original as I had a can lurking in the back of the fridge, in truth it would probably work with just about any decent bitter, stout or even something Belgian.

Secondly I did the roast pork loin which is stuffed with herbs, lemon and garlic, I only used a small 500g piece of pork loin and it didn’t have much fat on it so adjusted the cooking time and it turned out perfectly, the stuffing adds a nice twist on normal pork loin and the apple gravy was really quick and surprisingly tasty if a little sweet, so I added a bit of Bisto pork gravy mix to off set the sweetness. My advice on this one would be buy a bigger joint and make sure you have plenty left over for sandwiches as I’ve just had some in a wrap and it’s just as tasty cold the next day.