STINCO WITH HARISSA

The Moro Cookbook has a recipe for roast chicken which has been marinated in harissa and the other day, it occurred to me that this should work with stinco of pork.  Stinco is the shin cut and it is much beloved of Italians for Sunday lunch. Some of my friends just marinate it in red wine - preferably a Nero d'Avola, they all say - and herbs, then cook it slowly in the oven.  I decided to liven it up a bit and this is what I did:

Rub about 1 tablesp harissa all over a stinco. Put it in a bowl, season, and sprinkle a little dried oregano over it.  Leave in the fridge for a few hours or overnight.

Line a small roasting tin with foil and put the stinco in the centre. Slice 3 largeish, unpeeled potatoes and 2 carrots. Cut a red pepper into strips. Put the vegetables around the stinco and add about 6 unpeeled garlic cloves.  Season the vegetables and add some sprigs of fresh rosemary and thyme.  Pour 3 tablesp olive oil over the vegetables and drizzle a little over the stinco.  Pour the juice of 2 - 3 lemons over the vegetables, too.

Cover the tin with foil and put it in the oven at 170 C for 1.5 hours, turning the vegetables over half way through the cooking. Then take the foil off, add a little more oil and cook for another 20 - 30 mins.  Watch it carefully during this time.

Slice the stinco and serve with the vegetables.

This will serve 3 people. If you want to serve more hungry folk, you can always add another stinco!

Buon appetito.

STINCO WITH PISTACCHI

Stinco di maiale, or pork shank, is a cut of meat much beloved of Italian housewives.  To be honest, there isn't much meat on it, which is why most people cook several together, but what there is can taste delicious.  There is something very rustic and homely about the aroma of stinco being cooked slowly in the oven and it is on my list of comfort foods.

For those of you who are in Italy, the recipe for this stinco in a chicken, cream, bread and pistacchio crust is in the January edition of Alice Cucina.  The first time I tried it, the crust burnt but the stinco meat still tasted good, so I decided that it was worth persevering. For my second attempt, I wrapped the crusted shank not only in baking paper, as in the recipe, but also in foil and, as you see, this worked!

I COOK STINCO!

Stinco is shin of veal or pork and is much beloved of Italians for Sunday lunch. This weekend I decided I could wait no longer to practise cooking one, for , reader, when my [Italian] knight on a white charger arrives [ and I am hourly expecting him] surely he will expect to have a plate of perfectly cooked stinco set before him on a Sunday? [I am momentarily putting aside my feminist principles here as your average courtly knight does not seem to appreciate them.]

Anyway, what you see above is a pork stinco, which I studded with sprigs of rosemary and slivers of garlic as you might a leg of lamb and roasted in [homemade] stock and olive oil according to Antonio Carluccio's instructions. This is not the only way of preparing it: I have watched friends braising such a cut, and some cooks braise it first then finish it off by roasting. Detaching the meat from the bone afterwards was not particularly easy [nor did I expect it to be] but it was very tender and I was quite pleased with myself and the aroma which pervaded the kitchen!