Twice-cooked pork tacos

By: Rohan Anderson
From: A Year of Practiculture
Serves: 4
Photographer: Rohan Anderson & Kate Berry

If you’re a busy person, time poor and stressed, you can find it difficult to allocate your precious time to cook a decent meal. I know, I’ve been there. That used to be my life. I ended up using my time-poor situation as an excuse to eat shit food. It eventually made me fat and burdened me with a bunch of physical ailments. I then learned to be slightly more cunning with how I spend time in the kitchen. This meal is one of those answers to being successfully frugal: it’s a celebration of leftovers, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, I actually go out of my way to cook too much of some dishes because it’s the leftovers I’m more interested in – arancini is a good example, which I make from left-over risotto or paella. Tacos are also a good way to mop up leftovers. Often when I roast a large cut of meat, there’s too much for the family to eat for dinner so the leftovers end up in tacos the following night.

Ingredients

Quantity	Ingredient
60ml	olive oil
8	onions, chopped
1kg	left-over slow-cooked pork meat, roughly chopped
50g	butter
15	corn tacos
	cheddar cheese, grated, to serve
	Smoked jalapeño (chipotle) sauce, to serve
	spring onions, sliced, to serve
	sour cream, to serve

Method

Heat a little more than half the olive oil (a generous glug) in a heavy-based saucepan over low–medium heat and gently cook the onions for 20 minutes. Try not to burn them, but instead sweat them gently to release their sweetness. Add a splash of water occasionally if the pan begins to dry out. When cooked, set aside in a bowl.
If you’re using left-over slow pork, it will be well coated in spices and will simply need reheating. Otherwise, season the pork if you feel it needs it.
Melt the butter with the remaining olive oil (a small glug) in a heavy-based frying pan over medium heat. Throw in the pork and stir well.
At the same time, heat another frying pan over high heat, and toast the tacos – 30 seconds for each side should do.
When the tacos are cooked, place them on a serving platter on the kitchen table.
Transfer the twice-cooked pork to a serving platter and arrange on the table with a bowl of grated cheddar, the slow-cooked onions, the chipotle sauce, the spring onions and the sour cream, then watch it all disappear before your very eyes.