Tender pork and pasta are a match made in heaven. This recipe starts off with a rich and succulent pork in red wine sauce, and is then combined with passatta and Italian herbs to make a hearty and sumptuous pasta sauce. This is a great guilty pleasure type of meal to cook when you have a few hours to play with over the weekend. Cook as a batch and you’ll get 8 good portions out of this recipe.

Ingredients:

1kg braising pork. A reasonably fatty cut like short loin or shoulder is best.
2 tbsb olive oil
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 onion
1 carrot
3 cloves of garlic
300ml red wine
2 beef stock cubes
2 sticks of celery
2 red peppers
2 tablespoons of flour
800g (2 tins) of pasatta.
4 tbsp parsley
4 tablespoons of fresh parsley

Method

First off, cut your pork into around 6 smaller chunks, ensuring all have at least some fat on.
Heat up a tablespoon of olive oil in a thick bottomed pan, then brown the pork for about 5 minutes. Depending on the space you have, you might want to do this in batches.
Once the pork has a nice brown crust, remove it from the pan. Add another tablespoon of olive oil and fry off the onion, carrot, garlic and celery, chopped roughly.
After 5-10 minutes, add your tomato puree and fry for another couple of minutes. Now’s the time to set the oven to to 150 degrees celsius (fan)
Now add the flour, and cook for another minute or so. Before it starts to stick too much, add all of the red wine, along with the beef stock cubes and the pork. Reduce by half.
Now add enough water to cover the lumps of meat, then add half the parsley, chopped, then chuck in the oven for at least 3 hours. You’ll know it’s done when the meat comes apart easily with a fork.
Transfer the oven pot back onto the hobs, at a low heat; mix in the pasatta & cook for 5 minutes.
Next, remove the meat from the pot and chop roughly. It should be very tender and pull apart easily.
Re-add the meat to the sauce, then add the rest of the parsley
Cook some thick pasta like pappardelle in salted water. If the sauce is a bit thick, add some of the pasta water towards the end of the cooking time.