For my AoL Column this week I’ve gone all Creole on yo’ asses with a hearty jambalaya. Chicken, chorizo, prawns, chilli, plus something calling itself a ‘holy trinity’; get on over to AoL Lifestyle for the recipe.

I’m very much into cooking with ham hocks (or knuckles) again after the pibil, so I’ve made a porky white bean broth for AoL Lifestyle, super-charged with a salsa verde-like green sauce. Find the recipe over on AoL.

A couple of weeks ago I did a stall selling my new Peckham Jerk Marinade at Ms. Marmite Lover’s Underground Farmer’s Market and found myself pitched up next to the Capsicana Chilli Company. Like a kid in a sweet shop I stocked up on loads of Mexican chillies and as I was packing up I heard a ‘psst’ from behind me; I swung around to find the chilli guy, Ben, offering me a pouch of achiote powder like it was illegal drugs, “hard to find in the UK” he whispered, “have a little play around with that.”

Achiote (annatto) is the seed of the achiote tree and is an essential ingredient in Mexican cuisine; I had a little ‘aha!’ moment when I first mixed it up into a paste – it smelled instantly familiar even though I’d never cooked with it before. It has a curious smell, almost like a cross between chilli and citrus. This was the flavour I was always trying to identify when I ate ‘proper’ Mexican food like Buen Provecho’s tacos.

I turned to Diana Kennedy’s classic tome, ‘The Essential Cuisines of Mexico’ for this pibil recipe, which calls for a pork shoulder to be smothered in the prepared achiote paste, wrapped in banana leaves, cooked for a torturous eternity and then doused in an incredibly fiery sauce. My butcher had no pork shoulder so I bought pork knuckles instead, allowing a bit of extra weight for the additional bones.

To make achiote paste I mixed the achiote powder, oregano, cumin, allspice and water to a thick red sludge which I smeared all over the pork as directed, having sliced it here and there to let the flavour get deep inside and given it an initial bath in salt and orange juice. There’s some garlic and ground piquin chillies in there too. The knuckles were wrapped in banana leaves, which Diana insists imparts a particular flavour; I have to say I didn’t notice it, but then I didn’t know what I was looking for and wrapping things in banana leaves is still fun. You can obviously use foil instead.

They were in the oven for 6 hours by which time I was going clinically insane with anticipation. I unwrapped the parcel and found the meat just slipping off the bone; there’s a lot more meat on a pork knuckle than I realised. The meat shredded easily and the achiote powder gave it an earthy flavour that is impossible to substitute. A word of warning to potential pibil cooks though: make sure that package is tightly sealed. I lost about half the juices when I turned the pork midway through cooking which was very traumatic; protect that precious cargo! Still, I had enough to play with and there’s a fantastic separate accompanying sauce, too.

It is hot, consisting as it does of orange juice, red onion and THREE WHOLE SCOTCH BONNETS. I wimped out and settled on two which was enough. The acidity of the orange juice does cook the chillies a little though, taming their ferocity somewhat.

We made big, messy tacos, piling the meat on with our hands and topping with creamy guac and a spoon of that orange-chilli sauce. I almost cried when I took the last bite of the last taco and wiped the final bit of sauce from my food flecked face. One to firmly embed in the repertoire.

If you liked this you may also like the look of my pork cheek tacos with blood orange and chipotle or chipotles en adobo. 

Pork Knuckle Pibil Tacos

3 pork knuckles
2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons orange juice
1/2 teaspoon ground piquin chillies or other dried chillies, ground (Diana says you should use powdered ‘chilli seco yucateco’ or paprika)
4 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons orange juice mixed with 2 tablespoons lime juice

Banana leaves, for wrapping (you’ll need foil as well and you can leave out the leaves if you can’t get hold of them; they’re cheap in Peckham but can be expensive in shops elsewhere. If you do use leaves you’ll probably need to clean them with a damp cloth and make them more flexible by heating slightly over a flame)

For the achiote paste

2 tablespoons achiote powder
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
Pinch black pepper
6 whole allspice
1.5 tablespoons water

Make deep cuts in the pork knuckles with a long knife then rub it all over with the salt followed by the orange and lime juice.

Make the achiote paste by combining crushing the allspice berries to a powder and mixing with all the other ingredients. Crush the garlic with the piquin (or other dried chillies), 1 teaspoon salt and 3 tablespoons orange juice, then mix with the achiote paste. Smother this all over the knuckles, rubbing well in. Make a parcel by first layering tin foil, then banana leaves and placing the knuckles in the centre; fold the package to seal it and wrap with foil. Refrigerate overnight.

The next day, remove the pork from the fridge about an hour before you want to cook it and preheat the oven to 165C. Get a big roasting tin and put a rack inside it (I just put a cooling rack in a tin) then put 125ml water in the bottom. Place the pork package on top of the rack and cover it tightly with foil. Cook for 4 hours then turn the knuckles over and baste them. Cook for a further 3 hours or until the meat falls easily from the bone.

Carefully remove the knuckles from the parcel, taking care to save those precious juices. Tip the juices into a bowl and set aside. Shred the meat from the knuckles and set aside in a bowl then pour the juices over and give it a good mix. This is now ready to serve with the sauce and guacamole.

For the sauce

1/2 a red onion, finely chopped
3 scotch bonnets, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt
165ml orange juice

Mix all the ingredients together and set aside for 2 hours.

For the tacos

I always cheat and buy ready made corn tortillas then cut circles from them and warm them through in a dry pan.

When I saw some lamb shanks going cheap, I snapped them up then scuttled away fast before anyone remembered to make me pay through the nose for them. I’m a bit in love with the flavour of lamb cooked with sweet dried fruits (see my saddle stuffed with dates, aubergine and pistachios), especially for a long roast or braise; this time I decided on a very ‘Peckham’ mixture of squidgy semi-dried figs and pomegranate molasses. I added a quantity of sliced onions described in my scrappy notes as ‘a shitload’, which cooked down to a caramelised base; the figs plumped and leached their sticky treasure while the pom molasses licked everything it touched with that magical, Arabian Nights perfume.

A scotch bonnet was pin pricked to gently seep heat, riding the bubbling sauce for a good 3 hours until the meat was flopping off the bone in great silky lobes; it was all I could do to get them onto the plate in one piece.

We ate it with a pomegranate and cucumber salsa because we’d eaten rather a lot already that day (the perils of recipe writing: I’d done a dhal for AoL and a decadent quiche for the new Lurpak Christmas site) but it would be lovely with something stodgy to soak up that sauce; rice, mash or even a hunk of Middle Eastern style bread.

Lamb Shanks Braised with Figs and Pomegranate Molasses (serves 2, although you could divide up the meat and serve 4, with sides, if you have big shanks)

2 lamb shanks
Flour, for dusting the shanks
2 large onions, sliced into half moons
4 cloves garlic, peeled
400ml stock
1 scotch bonnet
6 semi-dried figs (the squidgy, ‘ready to eat’ ones)
4 tablespoons pomegranate molasses
1 tablespoon honey

Fresh pomegranate seeds to garnish (optional); some chopped coriander would also be nice, now I think about it.

Preheat the oven to 150C.

Cover a plate with flour and season it with salt and pepper. Roll the lamb shanks around in the flour until they are completely covered. In a large, oven proof casserole dish, heat a little oil and brown the lamb shanks well, all over.

Set the shanks aside and add the onions into the hot fat in the pan. Keep cooking and stirring until they start to colour. Add the stock, scraping around the bottom of the pan to get all the good caramelised bits to loosen then turn off the heat and add all the other ingredients plus some salt and pepper. You can cut open a few of the figs to encourage them to give forth their contents.

Put a lid on the pan and cook for about 2-3 hours, or until the meat is falling off the bone. You can then take the lid off an reduce the sauce if you want but I was too hungry so I just drizzled a bit over and chowed on down.

“MEAT SPAGHETTI!”

That’s what my boyfriend shouted across the room when he saw me lift up a piece of 7 hour braised brisket from the slow cooker. This is proper Sunday cooking: a big piece of cow, slung in a pot and allowed to cook down until the meat falls apart with so much as a sideways glance from hungry eyes.

I’ve been experimenting with brisket on the BBQ over the summer and I almost got it right – almost. It’s hard to achieve still-moist brisket complete with proper smoke ring on a small home BBQ but I’ll get there, next year. Now it’s all about the patient braising in my shiny new slow-cooking Crock Pot.

The 1.2 kg hunk of brisket sure did look cosy coddled in that pot with some home-made beef stock and a good slug of bourbon. I added dried apricots for sweetness, which plumped up and gradually broke down leaving little amber nuggets clinging to the meat. Man, was I proud when I served this up (and I don’t mind saying so myself); so rich and tender it made me want to give myself a  big ol’ pat on my smug-ass back.

After I’d finished with the patting, my thoughts turned to the leftovers. The Sandwich. A really generous portion of warmed brisket packed against coleslaw, sliced pickles, Frank’s Hot Sauce and French’s mustard. I think it’s fair to say I was in a state of mind approaching ecstasy when I sat down to consume this beautiful behemoth. She was big, she was messy and she was filthy in a good way. So worth the wait.

Seven-Hour Brisket Braised with Bourbon and Apricots (fed 2 people for 3 meals, generously)

1.195kg brisket (look, that’s what it weighed – I’m not taking the piss)
10 dried apricots
1/2 onion
2 cloves garlic, peeled
A slosh of Frank’s Hot Sauce (or other hot sauce, or chilli flakes)
2 bay leaves
150ml bourbon
About 400ml good quality beef stock (I made mine)

Put the brisket in the slow cooker and add the onion, garlic, Frank’s, bay leaves, apricots, bourbon and a generous amount of salt and pepper. Add about half of the stock or whatever your slow cooker can take. I added half then topped it up halfway through cooking time.

Set the cooker to low and cook for seven hours, or until the meat is falling apart. As I say, you’ll need to top up with stock half way through (makes sure you warm it up first). When the meat is ready, remove it and shred it. Set aside.

In a saucepan over a high heat, reduce the sauce by about half then add the meat back into it. Serve with slaw and sourdough. Beans would also be nice. Make sure you save some for the sandwich. I mean that.

I’ve got a new oven. This is brilliant for 3 reasons. Firstly, it’s all clean and shiny; I mean, how often does your oven look clean and shiny on the inside? Not very often I think you’ll find. Not if you’re a slovenly layabout like me anyway. Second, my old oven was, quite frankly, a piece of shit. It had no numbers on the temperature dial and no symbols for the oven settings and it cooked unevenly so that everything had to be turned around halfway through or it would burn on one side – not exactly ideal. Thirdly, importantly: this new oven was free. The best of all reasons, let’s face it. New ovens are expensive and I can’t afford one, so when someone from Appliances Online e-mailed me randomly to ask if I wanted one, I said YES PLEASE I LOVE YOU THANK YOU MARRY ME. In exchange for this, they want me to link to their oven page, so here’s that and they want me to say that they also sell dishwashers, just in case you’re in the market for one of those.

So, I cooked pide in my swanky new oven; I made nice, evenly cooked pide and I knew exactly what temperature I was cooking them at by means of the lovely little digital display (imagine my panic when I saw the temp dial had no numbers around the outside). That’s 15 minutes at 220C, in case you’re wondering.

Pide are rather similar to lamacun* and are apparently sold on every street corner in their homeland. I topped mine with aubergine (which I blackened on the gas hob before scooping out the smoky flesh); lamb, minced; spices like coriander, cumin and cinnamon; onion, garlic and a little tomato. At one point I was feeling particularly rock and roll and recklessly squeezed in some incredible  Le Phare du Cap Bon harissa (from The Good Fork - they have some great stuff, like sardine spread, which is impossible to stop eating). Very spicy indeed. You could also use the fiery red pepper paste found in Middle Eastern shops or failing that just a decent amount of chopped red chilli.

I garnished the finished pide with diced Persian pickles (dill pickles would make a nice substitute), a sprinkle of lemon juice and some parsley. These things are essential for distracting from the richness of the lamb. The dough is a piece of piddle too. Well, it is if you have an electric mixer, anyway. It was thin, yet soft – extremely easy to demolish.

The end result is a bit like a banana shaped pizza. A delicious, meat-smeared boat of soft, spicy flatbread. Very evenly cooked.

*If you like the look of this, you’ll probably also like the look of my similar, Peckham Pizza.

Smoky Aubergine and Lamb Pide (makes 4)

For the topping:

1 large-ish aubergine
250g minced lamb
1/2 onion, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
Pinch ground cinnamon
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 tomatoes
A squeeze of tomato puree
2 red chillies (or a squeeze of very good quality, hot harissa)

To garnish:

Chopped pickled cucumbers, chopped parsley and lemon juice

Place the aubergine on the ring of a gas hob on a low heat (or under the grill), turning often, until completely blackened and collapsed. I think the hob gets a more smoky flavour but it sure as hell makes a mess. Once cool enough, scrape out the flesh, taking care to avoid any pieces of black skin. Finely chop the flesh. Set aside and discard the skins.

Skin the tomatoes by scoring a cross in the bottom and covering with boiling water for a couple of minutes. Drain, peel away the skin and chop finely. Toast the cumin and coriander seeds in a dry pan over a low heat, moving them around; when they start to smell fragrant, tip them into a pestle and mortar or spice grinder and grind to a powder.

Sauté the onions in a little oil and when soft, add the chilli and garlic and continue cooking for 30 seconds or so, stirring. Add the spices and stir again for another 30 seconds. Add the lamb and cook, breaking up the meat with a spoon, until it is all brown and cooked through. Add the tomatoes and aubergine flesh and cook for about 10-15 minutes, until any excess liquid has cooked out. Taste and season with salt and pepper. The topping is now ready so allow it to cool.

For the dough:

For the dough I used a recipe I found online which I now can’t locate for the life of me. If it’s your recipe, I’m sorry! I’ll reproduce it here anyway.

1 x 7g sachet fast action dried yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
150ml warm water
300g plain flour
1 teaspoon salt
2.5 tablespoons olive oil + more for brushing

Mix the yeast and sugar with the warm water. You want warm water, not hot, as it will kill the yeast. Leave it to one side to activate. When it’s ready (in about 5 minutes), it should be very frothy on top. If not, your water wasn’t warm enough or it was too hot – start again.

Sift the flour and salt into the bowl of an electric mixer or large mixing bowl. Add the yeast mixture and oil. If using a mixer, set it on low speed for 10 minutes until you have a smooth, elastic dough. If mixing my hand, you’re going to have to knead it until you have the same result.

Put the dough in a lightly oiled bowl and cover with a damp tea towel. Let it rise for about half an hour, or until doubled in size. Knock back the dough then cut into 4 pieces. Roll each piece out into a rectangle with tapered ends (much easier than it sounds – they don’t need to be neat at all).

Preheat the oven to 220C

Put each rectangle onto a baking tray lined with baking paper and then smear the topping over each, spreading it evenly. Fold up the sides of each pide and crimp at the ends. Brush the edges with olive oil and bake for 15 minutes. Brush the crust with olive oil once more when cooked. Sprinkle with the garnish and serve.

Nduja is a spicy, spreadable, Calabrian sausage up there with the trendiest of ingredients. For months I’ve resisted its porky charms, the only reason being that my only other experience with a (different) spreadable sausage (at a very popular East London restaurant) ended in 3 days of food poisoning hell. The very idea of spreadable meat made me queasy, until I came across a nduja stall in Borough Market last week. The giant red lobes glistened seductively in the sunlight, I approached cautiously for a taste, then promptly kicked myself for being such a wuss and missing out on what is one of the most delicious pork products I’ve tasted in a very long time.

It is made mostly from bits of the head, super-charged with outrageous quantities of fiery red Calabrian chilli pepper (at least 60% according to some websites) which gives it the most intensely savoury umami addictive quality. You can just taste the sun in the bitter-sweet intensity of those red peppers. I can’t get enough.

It’s wonderful melted and scrambled into eggs, or used as a dip for bread (as the Calabrians apparently eat it). Tim Hayward likes it with crab. My favourite way to eat it is melted into pasta sauce, with or without tomato. Its power to enrich a basic tomato pasta sauce is second to none but now I prefer it stirred into just a little onion and butter; the sausage melts away to a hundred flecks of scarlet pepper swirling in heavenly porcine oil. Mixed through spaghetti, with just a squeeze of lemon, this may be one of the most perfect pasta sauces of all time.

Spaghetti with Nduja (some people say this amount of pasta should serve 2 people; I can eat the lot no problem)

200g spaghetti
1 generous heaped tablespoon nduja sausage (it will keep for months in the fridge, too)
Half a small white onion, finely chopped
A knob of butter
A squeeze of lemon juice
A few leaves of parsley, chopped
Salt and pepper

Cook the spaghetti in plenty of boiling salted water. Meanwhile, melt the butter and soften the onions it. When they are translucent, melt in the nduja. Add a squeeze of lemon and some salt and pepper.

When the spaghetti is cooked, spoon 2 tablespoons of the cooking water into the sauce, then drain the pasta. Mix the sauce with the spaghetti and serve, scattered with the parsley.