Pork And Potato Bake With Homemade Pickles And The Lesson

Today I'm going to share a simple and easy recipe of a dish you can make at home. I've been sharing my recipes in order to encourage people to cook at home. During the lockdown a little cooking experience could save you from a lot of trouble.

This is a dish that you can easily make in 20 minutes, plus 1 hour in the oven.

Ingredients for 4:

4 slices of pork,
1.5 kg potato,
1 tbsp olive oil,
1 huge onion or 2 medium,
5 - 6 clove garlic,
salt,
pepper,
souvlaki seasoning (optional, you can use whatever seasoning you like),

Method

Season the pork with salt and pepper. You can add whatever seasoning you like. Keep in the fridge for a few hours.

Add olive oil to a baking pan and add a layer of sliced onion. If you don't like onion, you can skip this step, otherwise it's recommended as it gives a special flavor to everything, especially the potato that comes on it.

Chop the potato to 5 mm slices.

Add one layer to the baking pan and add salt. My pan is made of stainless steal but you can use any fireproof pan.

Repeat till you place all the potato in the pan.

Add the previously seasoned pork slices and also add chopped garlic on top. This will give the meat a good flavor.

I got a piece of onion left from the first layering and I thought why throw it away when I can use it still. So there it is, sliced on top of the pork.

I'm not a huge fan of seasoning mixes as I like to make my seasoning myself, at least this way I know what's in it, but sometimes I'm making an exception. So I have this Greek souvlaki mix, which is good for meat.

Souvlaki added on top, just a little quantity as I don't like to exaggerate. Add a little water too as that is necessary. There's water in both meat and potato but not enough to resist at medium heat one hour, and you don't want your pork dry.

Cover with a lid, and bake in oven at medium heat for an hour (approximately). After an hour test the pork, see if it's ready. If not, add some water if necessary and put it back in the oven.

Remove the lid at the end and bake another 10 minutes, till the pork is golden brown. Serve warm with pickles.

The biggest advantage of this dish is that is cooked and not fried in oil, therefore more healthy.

Pickles And The Lesson

Buying pickles for me is almost out of the question as we always make plenty. What you see there is pickle made by me using our homegrown vegetables. Green tomato, cucumber, onion and red bell pepper this time.

Last year we had plenty of vegetables, more than we needed and at some point it became obvious that something needed to be done with the surplus. My dad had enough, he said let's give it away or throw it away. The first option fell through as everyone had plenty, the second was out of question. We don't throw food away, so we had no other option than to make more pickles.

If you're a homesteader and have your own garden (a big one) you learn over the years that you can't take anything for granted as each year is different and you never know what's going to happen next year. I've learnt this lesson years ago and always doing my best to stop waste. That's how my storage room is always full of homemade goodies.

This year with the lockdown plus my dad's health problems, we don't have any cucumber in the garden. When it became obvious that we're going to let gardening go, I could only think of the extra pickles we made although we had already plenty. You never know what's going to happen, what life is going to throw at you, so you'd better be smart and enjoy the fruit of your work later, rather than regret you didn't do anything.

This is my answer to ecoTrain Question Of The Week #12: Share a lesson you've learned in life.

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