Pork hotpot

90 min, requires preparation the day before

This is a perfect dish for winter dinner, or even a Christmas or New Year celebration dinner. Incredibly warming — almost hugging you with its slightly spicy warmness. And you could make enough for a few days or a big crowd of friends or relatives.

Keywords: жаркое

Ingredients

Yields 6 portions

1⅕ kg of starchy potatoes
600 g of pork
2 onions
2 chiles
6 cloves of garlic
2 carrots
4 bay leaves
black peppercorns
1 teaspoon of cumin seeds
1 l of water
hot
olive oil
salt

You will need

oven
dutch oven or large casserole (ideally, with lid)

Directions

Rinse the meat in cold water, dry using paper towels, season with salt, and refrigerate in a sealed container (or wrapped in a film) overnight.
Preheat oven to 180 ˚C.
Peel (if needed) and cut the potatoes into 2 cm cubes.
Put the potatoes into a Dutch oven, add salt, 4 bay leaves, a few peppercorns, 1 teaspoon of cumin seeds, and sprinkle olive oil over the potatoes. Thoroughly mix everything.
Bake the potatoes uncovered in the oven for 20 minutes.
While the potatoes are baking, cut the meat into 2 cm cubes.
Prepare the vegetables. Onions: peel and cut into large dice. Chiles: halve, remove the seeds, and thinly slice. Garlic: peel and cut into medium pieces. Carrots: peel and cut into 1/2 cm half-moons.
Sauté onions, chiles, and garlic on a large frying pan with olive oil, on medium heat, for 2–3 minutes, until transparent.
Add carrots and cook for 3 more minutes.
Add the meat, and cook until the meat is white on all sides, stirring often.
Remove the Dutch oven with the potatoes from the oven, and reduce the temperature to 150 ˚C. Add the meat with the vegetables to the potatoes, fill the Dutch oven with hot water to about 3/4 of the height of the potatoes and meat, and carefully mix.
Cover the Dutch oven (use tinfoil if you don’t have a lid), put it back into the oven, and cook for 50–60 minutes more until the meat is tender.
Add more salt to taste.

Notes & tips

The easiest way to peel garlic is to smash it: put a clove of garlic on a cutting board, put your chef’s knife on top of it so the blade side lays on the clove, and hit the side of the knife with your hand. Now you could peel the clove.

This recipe is based on Oksana Putan’s and Julia Lisniak’s “Homemade modern Russian cuisine” book.

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