Pork Shoulder with Prunes and Vegetables
Once in Bulgaria I tried amazingly cooked meat with prunes: pork with vegetables and fresh tomatoes, made in a clay pot. It was hearty and delicious, and I liked it a lot. But it takes quite a long time to cook, so I decided to make it my own way, taking as a base the Caucasian dish — stewed ribs with prunes.
I have loved prunes since childhood. Strictly speaking, a prune is any dried plum, although here the plums are more often smoked as well, which gives a truly wonderful flavor and aroma. At home we often make beet and prune salad, without waiting for a holiday. It is usually more of a side dish for meat, or a salad. You can even fill up on it with just plain fresh bread.
Prunes contain many substances that give meat dishes a piquant tartness. I read that in Europe there is an appetizer made of a slice of bacon, an olive and a pitted prune. Meat with prunes is very tasty, and almost any meat works: pork, rabbit, duck. In North Africa they cook rack of lamb with prunes, or Moroccan tagine, also with prunes.
It is not hard to make delicious meat using lean pork. The meat and vegetables are fried first, then stewed with tomato. At the very end soaked prunes are added, which give the dish a flavor somewhat like barbecue sauce.
Ingredients
2 servings
- Lean pork (shoulder) 0.5 kg
- Pitted prunes 150 g
- Butter 2 tbsp
- Onion 2
- Bell pepper 1
- Tomato paste 2 tbsp
(33 g) - Salt, black pepper, coriander, sugar to taste
- Potatoes for the side dish 3-4
- Fresh dill and parsley to taste
Step-by-step recipe
For this dish it is better to take pork shoulder, not the fattiest cut. Wash the meat and trim off any large pieces of fat. Cut the pork into pieces no bigger than a walnut.
Melt the butter in a saucepan (you can use lard instead, if you like) and fry the pork pieces until nicely browned. There is no need to fry the pork until fully cooked, since the meat with prunes will still stew for quite a while.
Transfer the fried pork to a plate and set aside for now. In the remaining fat (you can add a little more) fry the onion, cut into strips, until golden.
Add the finely chopped bell pepper to the fried onion. Reduce the heat and fry the vegetables, stirring often, until the pepper is very soft.
Add 1-1.5 heaped tbsp of tomato paste (25–37 g). Fry the vegetables with the tomato for 2-3 mins, then add salt, black pepper, ground coriander to taste and 0.5 tsp of sugar (2 g).
Pour 1.5 cups of hot water (300 ml) over the vegetables with the tomato, stir and simmer the sauce under a lid for 10 mins. The sauce should bubble gently.
Add the fried pork and the pre-soaked pitted prunes to the sauce. If the plums are large, cut them into several pieces.
Stew the meat with prunes under a lid for 8-10 mins. If there turns out to be too much liquid, take off the lid to let the moisture evaporate.
While the meat is cooking, make the potato side dish. Peel a few potatoes and boil them. Salt the potatoes and mash them into a puree. Mix the mashed potatoes with very finely chopped herbs. Spoon the potato side dish onto the plates along the edge.
Place the meat with prunes and vegetables in the center of the plates. Garnish with a sprig of herbs and, if you like, whole dried plums.
Serve the meat with prunes hot, while it has not cooled. Pork with prunes is delicious with bread and makes a great lunch.
Calories and macros
820 kcal
Serving ≈ 560 g
- Protein63 g32% of kcal
- Fat19 g22% of kcal
- Carbs90 g46% of kcal
100 g146 kcalProtein 11.2 gFat 3.5 gCarbs 16.1 g
Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.
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