If you don’t care for the story, you can skip to the recipe here.

Hello reader,

I hope you’re well. I didn’t post last week because Katie and I enjoyed a weekend together, and while I did cook and shoot photographs, I didn’t have the desire to post.

How has your week been? My work week has been more ordered. After about four weeks, I was able to return to my honorary role at Canberra Health Services on Friday. CHS is my Friday happy place.

In my paid job, I’ve been working with a graduate, who, like me is very keen on Microsoft SharePoint as a platform for work collaboration. It’s a terrific tool to bring order and convenience to the work we need to accomplish.

I don’t know if you work in an environment where people collaborate on a task, and you end up with multiple copies with everyone’s versions. Trying to get them all together coherently is time-consuming. Being able to have one document and have from a few to dozens of people working on it at the same time makes more sense.

When coupled with a piece of referencing software like EndNote™, work becomes so much easier.

The collaboration extends into non-work environments too. This week, I participated in a church committee meeting, and we’re all using Google Drive to work on a document for our fellowship.

For my loved ones, as an Apple enthusiast, I use the MacOS and iOS operating systems and tools for collaboration like shared calendars, notes, and photos. Living in the 21^st century is cool.

Recipe

Ingredients

• Pork loin chop
• Salt
• Pepper
• Brussels sprouts
• Savoy cabbage
• Red cabbage
• Red onion
• Bird’s-eye chillies*
• Shallots
• Ginger
• Cloves
• White vinegar
• Sugar
• Capers

Instructions

Pork

1. Season the pork with salt and pepper and vacuum seal.
2. Cook in a water bath at 54 °C for 2 hours and 10 minutes.
3. Remove the pork from the bag and dry the surfaces with kitchen paper.
4. Sear the pork in a hot frying pan.
5. Allow the pork to rest for about 10 minutes.
6. Slice the pork with a sharp knife for presentation purposes.

Pickles

1. Slice the two types of cabbage.
2. Cut the onion and shallots into slices.
3. Slice the Brussels sprouts.
4. Mince the ginger.
5. In a jar dissolve sugar and salt in some vinegar.
6. Add the cabbage, onion, shallots, Brussels sprouts, ginger, and cloves to a vacuum bag.
7. Pour the vinegar solution into the bag.
8. Vacuum seal the bag.
9. Halfway through the pork cook, add the pickles to the water bath.
10. Remove the vegetables and pick out the cloves.
11. Drain the vegetables.

Capers

1. Add rice bran oil into a small saucepan and heat until it reaches 180 °C.
2. Add the capers (once rinsed and dried on some paper towel) and cook until crisp (around 30 seconds).
3. Remove the capers from the oil and transfer them to a plate covered in a few sheets of paper towel.

Plating up and serving

1. Place the drained pickles on a dinner plate and lay the pork on top.
2. Top the pork with the crispy capers.
3. Give thanks to the Lord.
4. Eat with a fork.

Thoughts on the meal

Because of the effects of Japanese encephalitis in Australian piggeries, prices for pork will likely rise. I’m trying to get as much pork in my mouth as possible.

I’ve been enjoying pickles a lot more lately.

The highlight was the fried capers. The capers were salty and crispy and could easily substitute for a packet of potato chips.

Final thoughts

1. Do you like using collaboration tools at work?
2. How has your week been?
3. Do you like pickled vegetables with pork?
4. Have you tried fried capers before?

Footnotes

Bird’s eye chillies are also known as Thai chillies. In Thai, the name means mouse faeces chilli because of the shape of the fruit. The Bird’s eye chilli scores between 50,000 and 100,000 Scoville heat units (SHU) on the Scoville scale. Chillies are good for my hypertension. [1]

1.         Shi, Z., et al., Chilli intake is inversely associated with hypertension among adults. Clin Nutr ESPEN, 2018. 23: p. 67-72.