Mexican pull-apart pork

This last week has been a traumatic one, in the run up to Easter. Our lovely au pair, Roberta, left us to return home to Italy on Friday. We only had one slow-cooked meal during the week, on Monday. Unfortunately, that was also the day that Mr Teenager broke Roberta's glasses with the basketball, completely by accident. But poor Roberta was devastated and refused to eat anything. Ms Fussy Eater invited herself to her friend's house for dinner. So, in the end, it was just three of us for dinner. But it was a good one!

I had a pork fillet in the freezer, so we decided to try this mexican pull-apart pork from the Australian Women's Weekly Easy Slow Cooking book. It involved just a little bit of preparation on Sunday evening, and then was left to cook all day on Monday. As per the recipe, we served it with some flour tortillas and sour cream, adding some salad and grated cheese. It could also be served with rice, or even mashed potato.

Preparation

On Sunday evening, we put into the crock pot: 2 red peppers, sliced; 2 onions, sliced; a jar of tomato-based pasta sauce (the recipe called for a jar of salsa, but this was the closest thing we had); one cup of barbecue sauce; 4 cloves of garlic, crushed; 3 tsp ground cumin; 2 tsp cayenne pepper and 1tsp dried oregano. Then I added the whole pork fillet, making sure it was coated in the sauce. The crock pot was left, covered, in the fridge overnight.

Next morning, I just set the slow cooked on low and left it for about 9 or 10 hours until I came home from work. I switched it to the keep warm setting while I prepared the salad, cheese and sour cream.

I carefully lifted the pork fillet out of the pot onto a carving dish and used two forks to pull it apart into shreds. The meat went back into the sauce and the whole thing was stirred.

The Result

We put the crock pot in the centre of the table. Each of us took a flour tortilla and loaded it with meat, sauce, sour cream, salad and grated cheese. Then we rolled it up and attempted to eat the hot, spicey, delicious wrap with our hands. Some of the sauce dripped out, but was easily scraped up using spoons. We each had two of these, which was plenty.

There was lots of meat and sauce leftover, and the dish could easily have served all five of us. There were no complaints from the two men, one of whom brought a helping to work next day for lunch. Mr Teenager was on his Easter break from school, so he finished off another helping of it the next day.

The Verdict

I asked Mr Teenager what he thought of the dinner. His response - Can we have it again tomorrow? This was definitely a success. I think that Ms Fussy Eater would even go for it, if she didn't get too much sauce, and didn't have to put anything other than the pork into a tortilla.

It was so easy to prepare, I think this recipe will become one of our regulars.