Pork in cider

This is a simple dish for a rainy Sunday afternoon and goes well with a plate of simple greens and some crispy, golden baked potatoes. It’s the kind of thing my father used to love, bold and meaty and with minimum effort!

Ingredients

• 4 pork chops
• 1 garlic bulb
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
• 8¾ fluid ounces / 250ml cider (preferably sweet)

Method

Preheat the oven to 220°C (200°C fan) 428°F (392°F fan).

Place a large Pyrex dish or similar in the oven to heat up (it needs to be large enough to take the pork in a single layer).

Break apart the garlic bulb and remove the papery outer layer but keep the skin on the individual cloves.  Bash them lightly so that they’re just starting to split apart (as opposed to being crushed).

Heat the oil in a large frying pan and fry the garlic for a couple of minutes until they’re just starting to golden.

Add the chops and brown on each side for a minute or two, adding some seasoning as you go.

Remove the pork to your Pyrex dish and add the cider to the frying pan.  Keep on a medium high heat and reduce the liquid to about one third, stirring constantly to make sure the garlic doesn’t stick.

Pour the contents of the frying pan over your pork and cook in the oven for 20 minutes, turning in the liquid every five minutes or so in order to ensure both sides soak up that cider sweet goodness.

Serve with the cooked garlic and a good dash of the cider sauce from the dish.

Trivia

At one time, there were around 365 varieties of cider apple. Commercially sold cider is generally a blend of several different varieties, however, in recent years there has developed a trend for single variety ciders using only one type of apple. In the UK, these include the Kingston Black, Tremlett’s Bitter, Dabinett, Cox and Katy. The UK produces 130 million gallons of cider a year and around 45 per cent of all apples grown in the UK are for cider production.