Philippines: Pork and Caremelised Pineapple Adobo

Preparation: 25 mins

Cook time: 3ish hours  ?

Serves: 4-6 adults

Serve with: rice

Olivier's: ★★★

Me: ★★★

Much like the entire population of Australia, we have an ongoing disagreement about the validity of pineapples on pizza. I am a fan, Olivier is not. So, when I told him that we were to have caramelised pineapple in a stew, he was sceptical.

I had a look at three recipes for this, BBC, Good Food and this other one. I'll get back to the first two, but only after I complain about the other one. 

I first became disturbed when the writer wishes everyone in the "western hemisphere" a happy thanksgiving.  The western hemisphere. I continued to read through it, felt unsettled by the excessive use of exclamation points and finally gave up when the writer called pork rump "pork butt."  The recipe looked ok, but was potentially a bit bland. 

I tend to usually trust the BBC Good Food site, but on this occasion had also strayed onto the Australian Good Food site, which had a recipe written by Adam Liaw, whose recipes are usually awesome, and fairly authentic. The only change that I made to Liaw's recipe is that I used pork belly, as suggested by the BBC recipe, though the outcome was that it was a bit dry, so I'm wondering if I would have had more success if I'd used the pork shoulder. Oh, I also slow cooked it, maybe for too long. 

                  If you stare into the oily abyss on the left for too long, part of your life force diminishes.

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp peanut oil

• 1 cup pineapple chunks

• 1kg pork belly

• 8 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

• 1 brown onion, peeled and sliced

• 2 tbsp dark soy sauce

• ½ cup soy sauce

• ½ cup white vinegar

• 2 cups unsweetened pineapple juice

• 1 tsp sugar

• 3 bay leaves

• 1 tsp whole black peppercorns

Method

1. Fry the pineappple chunks in a little bit of oil in a fry-pan until the outsides become slightly brown. Set aside.

2. Fry the pork in the same pan, until browned. Move into the slow cooker.
3. Fry the onion and garlic in the same pan and move to the slow cooking. Add more before this step if necessary.
4. Put  half the pineapple juice and the vinegar into the fry pan and bring to a slow simmer, and scrape up all the bits stuck to the bottom of the pain, tip into the slow cooker. 
5. Add soy sauces, sugar, bay leaves, left over pineapple juice and peppercorns to the slow cooker.
6. I cooked on high for 3 hours, but I feel like this was probably too long as my pork was dry. THE PORK WAS DRY. 

Next stop: South Africa