Your fork from pork?
PorK belly filled cinnamon sugar doughnut with miso Peanut butter caramel and aPPle chiPs
From Llio Angharad and Nicky Batch
Here’s what Llio and Nicky say about their recipe: “There is no other way to describe this than as a sweet and sour mouth explosion of fun! We really enjoyed coming up with this unusual recipe and we love the mix of flavours that you wouldn’t normally think to pair together – it’s crazy but it really works and, trust us, it makes a really memorable meal to make for your other half or enjoy with friends.”
Ingredients
1kg belly pork, skin on
500ml bottle of Welsh cider
400ml chicken stock
3 garlic cloves
2 Granny Smith apples, one cut into ‘skinny fries’ 1 white onion
2 tbsp honey
25ml cider vinegar
1 cinnamon stick
2 star anise
5 cloves
1 whole chilli
2 tsp white miso
2 tsp peanut butter
100ml water
200g golden caster sugar
50g unsalted butter, softened 100ml cooking liquor from the pork
A bag of six doughnuts or follow your favourite doughnut recipe!
1 tbsp light brown sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
Method
Salt the skin of the belly pork and put it in the fridge for an hour. Once ready, wipe the moisture off the joint, then leave it for about 30 minutes to come to room temperature.
Preheat the oven to 240°C/220°C fan/Gas 9. Heat a little oil in a casserole dish and brown the pork on all sides, then remove. Slice the onion and one apple into disks and place the disks in the dish to caramelise for a few minutes. Add the garlic and chilli and fry for another minute.
Add the pork back into the dish, skin-side up. Pour in the cider, chicken stock, honey and cider vinegar. Snap in the cinnamon, star anise and cloves, season with salt and pepper, then put the dish in the oven (make sure the liquid isn’t touching the skin or it won’t crisp).
After 25 minutes, drop the temperature to 160°C/140°C fan/Gas 3 and cook for another two hours, or until the pork is tender. Place the pork on to a dish to rest and scoop out 100ml of the cooking liquor – put this through a sieve to remove any lumps.
To make the caramel, heat the sugar and water in a pan over a high heat. Heat for five to 10 minutes until the water evaporates and the sugar starts to turn darker and smell of caramel – be careful not to take it so far that it burns! Take the pan off the heat and stir in the softened butter and the sieved cooking liquor – be careful as it may spit and bubble. If the caramel goes hard in bits, just return it to a gentle heat and stir until it’s smooth again. Add the miso and peanut butter to the caramel and stir to combine.
Roll your doughnuts in the sugar and cinnamon mixture and slice in half. Assemble your doughnut by filling with a generous handful of shredded pork, golden onions from the pan, apple skinny fries, crispy pork crackling and a drizzle of the caramel.
HIDDEN on a Caerphilly industrial estate alongside a taxi company, double-glazing installer and airconditioning business isn’t perhaps the first place you’d expect to find a smoke house that’s selling some of the best BBQ in Wales.
But it’s here that the Bab Haus HQ Smoke Shop is based.
It’s owned by chef Leyli Homayoonfar, who was named one of the 100 most influential women in hospitality in the UK in 2021. Leyli’s already built a big reputation for the colourful Mexican BBQ which she sells from her Bab Haus Mex street food stall at the Goodsheds in Barry.
More recently, Leyli has started selling smoked meats and sides to take away from her Caerphilly site on Friday and Saturday nights and Sunday daytime. At the Smoke Shop, there’s a bigger emphasis on low and slow US-style barbecue, with dishes including baby back ribs, smoked buffalo wings, mac ‘n’ cheese and pit beans.
While it’s strongly advised to pre-order via email or Instagram direct message, we took a punt and arrived as soon as the smoke shop opened its doors at 12pm on a Sunday. Having strolled around the nearby Caerphilly Castle and River Rhymney, we’d worked up a sufficient appetite for an early meat feast.
Bab Haus HQ is an unassuming space with a small ordering counter built on a trio of oil drums, a couple of tables and stools for eating in and shelves laden with huge jars of pickles and chilli sauces. The latter provide a strong hint of the big-flavoured food which is on offer.
Thankfully, we were the first to arrive and so we were able to have our pick from the more limited Sunday menu before anything sold out. After a 20-minute wait, we received a brown paper bag filled with meat and returned to our car to inhale the goods.
It’s fair to say that everything was epic. And part of the explanation is the fact that Leyli sources her meat from the highly-regarded Gower-based butchers Meat Matters. With a legion of fans, from Michelin-starred chefs to professional rugby players, their meat is known to sell out in minutes.
Welsh native breed featherblade brisket (£10) was seriously beefy, fall-apart tender and blushing pink around the edges from its 12-hour smoking over hickory and oak. Stuffed into a light and sweet demi-brioche bun with delicately fiery pickled
WELSH baker Beca Lyne-Pirkis was a fan favourite from series four of The Great British Bake Off, standing out for baking the speciality bara brith. It was an experience that was to change her life forever and saw her career going in a completely different direction.
“I can’t believe I was on the show in 2013 and that it was nine years ago,” she admits. “It has been such a whirlwind since then, but I have been lucky to have got so many amazing opportunities out of it.”
Before applying for the popular baking show on a whim, Beca had been working long hours in London in the corporate arts sector.
Her eldest daughter Mari was six months old and she was looking for a new challenge – and baking had always been a passion handed down from her mother and grandmother.
“I had seen the show and saw an advert, so applied without actually telling anyone else,” she remembers. “I went through various stages and they said they wanted to see me, so that was the point at which I realised it was really happening.”
Beca was a big hit on the show and her bara brith, made from her grandmother’s recipe book, earned her praise from judges Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood when she appeared on the show.
After losing out in the semi-finals of Bake Off, which was still on BBC at the time, Beca decided working with food and baking was the way forward for her.
The year after being on the show, she launched her own Welsh-language cooking show called Becws (Welsh for Bakehouse) on S4C, based on her family’s favourite recipes.
In November 2017, Beca published her first recipe book, Bwyd Beca/My Food, sharing a selection of family favourites. She is also a regular chef at the Borough Market demo kitchen in London. She writes for the market’s website and contributes recipes.
Before the pandemic hit, she was also a teacher at Seasoned Cookery School in Derbyshire, gave masterclasses to the apprentices at Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen restaurant in London and was a advisor on the foods standards board for the Welsh Government.
And now the mother of two, who is about to become a trained dietician, is set to be the new food expert on S4C fitness programme FFIT Cymru. Beca will join psychologist Dr Ioan Rees and personal trainer Rae Carpenter for series five, which begins in April. She takes over from Sioned Quirke, who has been the FFIT Cymru dietician for the past four years. Having spent the past three years studying nutrition and working on placement with the NHS, Beca will qualify to become a dietician in July.
The keen marathon runner, says: “I love being busy. I am not someone who can sit on the sofa and watch a whole box set. I always have to be busy and if that means getting up at 5am to get everything fitted in, then that’s what I will do.
“My girls are nine and seven, so we work the day around them and I moved back to Cardiff in 2016, so it is great to have my family around us. And I can’t wait to get started on the new show. I have watched the series since the start and I know some of the former leaders and seen the positive impact this series has had on them.
“Food is the main area that I will be able to advise the leaders on, but I’m also a mum, a wife, I work and I’m someone who loves exercising and training for different races and challenges. We, as experts, will share our personal experiences to try to guide the leaders. I’m a busy mum and sometimes it’s hard to strike the right balance, but I can prove that by planning and by being organised, there is no reason why you can’t be successful.”
For the new series, Beca will create some new recipes for the leaders and viewers will be able to follow them on the FFIT Cymru website, as well as the new Cegin S4C Kitchen website and app.
She added: “As someone who is studying to become a dietician and who has a huge interest in nutrition and cooking, the chance to be a part of the team, create recipes and try to inspire the leaders with food, is fantastic.
“Our job is to try to bring back the balance to the leaders’ lives. People know me for my time on Bake Off and I still bake and eat cakes because it’s something I enjoy. But cakes are not something you should be afraid of! No-one should feel guilty about eating something and not enjoy it, but it’s not something we should be eating all the time either.
“I just want the leaders to understand food a little better and see how your health can improve when you eat better. I also want to inspire people with recipes and new ideas, to bring the excitement back to the kitchen and to eating.
“I have a lot of hard work ahead and I’ve also got a couple of ideas up my sleeve!”
■ FFIT Cymru is looking for people from all over Wales, from all backgrounds, to be part of the new series in April. Apply online at www.s4c.cymru/ffitcymru or, for more information, you can contact the production team on ffitcymru@cwmnida.tv
edouard delaunaY ‘SePteMBre’ ChardonnaY, Burgundy, France (£14.99 per bottle or £12.99 Mix Six, Majestic)
A Burgundy blonde that’s modestly oaked and beautifully balanced, with creamy tropical fruit, bright lemony notes, a hint of hazelnut and butterscotch, while the fresh, fruity finish and whisper of white chocolate add interest. Think pan-fried turbot with a rich butter sauce. Divine.
CloudY BaY SauViGnon BlanC
2021, Marlborough, new Zealand (£25, laithwaites)
With its cult following, some might go as far as saying Cloudy Bay is the catalyst for our total adoration of New Zealand savvy blanc. Pure as the driven snow, what really makes this latest vintage stand out are the intense aromas of passion fruit, white peach, lemongrass and fresh lime juice, along with appealing flavours of nectarine and ripe passion fruit and uplifting citrusy acidity making it effortless and dangerously easy to drink. Cheers!