Baked Pork with Vegetables

Name: Baked Pork with Vegetables on a Clay Platter
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 1 h
Total time: 1 h 30 min
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: Pork 400 g; Chicken liver 200 g; Zucchini 1; Onion 1; Ripe tomatoes 2; Carrots (or 5-6 small carrots) 1; Vegetable oil 50 ml; Ground black pepper, salt, savory, coriander to taste; Lemon, parsley, bread for serving

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1 h 30 mins

In most cuisines around the world, pork with vegetables is one of the most important meat dishes. The variations, methods and cooking details are countless. Some recipes are simple and need no special skills or exotic ingredients. For example, cooking pork with potatoes comes down to browning the meat with onion and stewing it with potatoes.

Chinese cuisines are full of recipes for pork in sweet sauce, where the pork and vegetables are stewed together in pieces large enough to eat with chopsticks. At home we have recently been cooking a lot of fried pork with various root vegetables (carrot, parsnip, celery and so on), fried over high heat without a lid. The fried roots give the dish a pleasant sweetish flavor.

Pork with vegetables in the oven is also common in world cuisines. The vegetables and pork, usually raw or fried until half done, are spread on a baking sheet or a clay (ceramic) platter, then baked in a wood-fired oven or a very hot oven. Meat baked with vegetables in the oven is not difficult to make.

If you like vacationing in Bulgaria, you have surely noticed that the menus of Bulgarian restaurants, the ones that mainly offer genuinely Bulgarian dishes rather than a “mixed” cuisine, have a separate section called “sach” or “sachove”. The Bulgarian sach, perhaps a relative of the Armenian saj, is made of clay. It is a fairly wide, thick “pan” with a rim and no glaze. The clay is dried and fired. Preparing a new sach for use is rather complicated and takes a long time. The point of these dishes is to cook various foods by frying them on a clay platter. The Georgian ketsi pan is also somewhat similar to the Bulgarian sach.

Surely everyone remembers the “student” joke about two sausages and twelve forks. Cooking on a clay platter is a bit like that. Clay platters and pans are rarely made small, and cooking one or two portions on them is quite hard. But making a splendid festive dinner on a clay platter and serving it straight from the oven is beautiful, delicious and unusual.

Pork with vegetables baked on a large clay platter is guaranteed to be a wonderful main course for a good feast. Imagine your friends have come over, and you have prepared ahead: fried the pork, the chicken liver and a variety of vegetables. All that remains is to lay everything out on a large clay platter and put it in the oven. A triumph is guaranteed.

More with pork

Roasted Pork Knuckle

3 h

Vegetable Ragout with Pork

1 h 30 min

Buzhenina – Pork Roast Baked in Foil

24 h

Breaded Pork Chops on the Bone

30 min

Kyufte: Grilled Pork Patties

2 h 30 min

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Ingredients

2 servings

Pork 400 g
Chicken liver 200 g
Zucchini 1
Onion 1
Ripe tomatoes 2
Carrots (or 5-6 small carrots) 1
Vegetable oil 50 ml
Ground black pepper, salt, savory, coriander to taste
Lemon, parsley, bread for serving

Step-by-step recipe

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Meat and liver

For baking with vegetables, choose pork that is not the fattiest, but still has a little fat. Shoulder or leg is ideal.
Prepare the dish. If you have no Bulgarian sach or similar clay cookware, any ceramic dish of a suitable size will do. A rim on the ceramic is not necessary at all, because pork with vegetables bakes and gives off practically no liquid that could run out.
Remove the bones and connective tissue from the meat and cut the pork into pieces about half the size of a matchbox. Do not cut the meat any larger, as it may not cook through.
Fry the pork in a pan in heated vegetable oil over medium heat, without a lid, until lightly browned. Add a little salt and pepper, and sprinkle with a pinch of ground coriander and savory.
Add the chicken liver to the pork and fry together for 10-12 mins. If the chicken liver is large, cut it in half so the pieces are the same size as the pork.
There is no need to cook the meat and liver all the way through, given the baking to come. It is enough for them to be well browned. Transfer the fried meat to a separate plate.

Vegetables

Fry the onion and carrots in a pan with a little vegetable oil. Peel the onion and cut it into thick strips. Peel the carrots and cut them into large pieces; small young carrots can be left whole. Fry over medium heat until the onion turns a pleasant golden color. The carrots can stay half raw: they will finish cooking while the pork and vegetables bake. Set the fried onion and carrots aside on a separate plate.
Fry the zucchini. Without peeling a young zucchini, cut it into rounds 2-2.5 cm thick and fry on both sides in vegetable oil over medium heat until a browned crust forms. Do not overfry the zucchini, even if they are a little raw inside. By the way, fried zucchini is already a great appetizer.

Assembly and baking

Lay down the first layer. Grease a ceramic baking dish with vegetable oil and put in half of the pork and liver.
Top the meat with half of the fried onion, carrots and zucchini. Add a ripe tomato cut into large wedges.
Lay down the second layer: all the remaining meat, liver, onion and fried vegetables. Add another tomato cut into wedges. Pour over the oil left from frying the meat and zucchini.
Bake the pork with vegetables. Put the uncovered ceramic dish in a well-heated oven at 230-240°C. It takes at least 15-20 mins to heat the whole mass of food through. The total cooking time on a clay platter is up to 1 h, including heating. After 40 mins, watch the doneness closely and take special care that the pork and vegetables do not burn or stick to the ceramic.
When the clay platter comes out of the oven, the finished pork with vegetables sizzles beautifully, delighting both eye and ear. And the aroma of the baked meat and vegetables will leave no one indifferent.

Serving

Arrange sprigs of parsley and lemon cut into large wedges over the pork and vegetables. Meat baked with vegetables and sprinkled with a little lemon juice has a very refined taste, which I recommend.
Serve at the table as is, while the dish is still sizzling, which is important. The pork with vegetables is served onto plates individually, so be sure to give everyone a serving spoon. Be sure to serve fresh bread or ciabatta.
And finally: if you are preparing a grand feast and have a ceramic or clay dish large enough, increase the amount of food in proportion to the number of expected guests. Fry and prepare all the ingredients in advance and lay them out on the platter. All that remains is to bake and serve the pork with vegetables with flair.

Calories and macros

865 kcal

Serving ≈ 480 g

Protein55 g26% of kcal
Fat65 g69% of kcal
Carbs12 g6% of kcal

100 g180 kcalProtein 11.3 gFat 13.4 gCarbs 2.5 g

Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.

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