Smoked Pork Hock Soup

Soueee!

by burnishings on Flickr.

We discovered a wonderful source for local smoked pork products at the Duncan Farmers' Market in the Square a couple of weeks ago: Ravenstone Farm. We'd been making a delicious pork & beans recipe in the slow cooker, but I wanted something different. I cobbled together a couple of recipes from Art of the Slow Cooker by Andrew Schloss, my "go to" manual for slow cooking and pretty much 80% of our dinners lately! I used a roasted vegetable soup with what I'd been doing for the pork & beans recipe, and got something like this:

Smoked Pork Hock Soup

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 carrots, peeled & chopped into 1" rounds

1 sweet potato (the orange fleshed one!), peeled & chopped into 1" pieces

1 small squash (I've used butternut and Marina di Chioggia), peeled & chopped into 1" pieces

3-4 celery ribs, chopped into 1" pieces

1 large onion, chopped into 1" pieces

4 whole garlic cloves

4 cups total liquid - I used about 2 cups red tomato salsa and 2 cups chicken broth, both home-made

1 medium (about 2 to 3 pounds, depending on the size of your slow cooker - ours is a Crock Pot VersaWare, I think 6 quart) smoked ham hock

1 to 2 cups cooked (or canned) chick peas, drained

1/2 tsp cracked white or green peppercorns

1 cinnamon stick

1 bay leaf

Preheat oven to 425F. Toss the vegetables and garlic in the olive oil and spread over a rimmed baking pan. Roast in the oven for 30 minutes or until softened and slightly browned at edges. Place ham hock in the slow cooker. Scrape vegetables into slow cooker. You can use some of the broth to wash off the pan into the slow cooker if there are bits stuck, but I've not found that necessary. Pour the chick peas into the slow cooker. Add the salsa and broth and stir the ingredients together a little to distribute. Add the peppercorns, cinnamon stick and bay leaf and cover the slow cooker and cook on low for about 10 hours, or high for at least 5 hours, or until the ham is falling off the bone and the vegetables are tender.

This is a very versatile recipe: use whatever root vegetables you've got on hand that you feel like including. It's wonderful with parnsip, turnip (rutabaga), etc. Just enjoy! And like most soups & stews, it's even better the next night. And if you happen to do the baked beans recipe (which I'll have to post at some point) as well, it's fabulous mixed in with this.

Making Discoveries

I was trying to figure out whether I really wanted to follow a Chickpea Eggplant Rollup recipe verbatim or modify it to the Eggplant Casserole that I'd done earlier this winter. It was more work than I felt like. I ended up deciding against it and going into creativity mode. This was the result, and our favourite part was the chickpea crust: I've since used it on a squirrel cacciatore to make into a pot-pie*, and while we enjoy normal pie crust, this chickpea crust really lends fabulous flavour & texture.

*If you're going to use it for pot pie, make a double batch of the chickpea crust.

Eggplant Salsa Pie

Chickpea Crust
1 cup dry chickpeas, cooked & drained
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp tamari or soy sauce
3 to 6 tbsp olive oil **

**unfortunately, I didn't measure, so I'm not sure!! it's mostly about texture; you want the chickpea mixture to be dough-like and not crumbly, but also not so liquid as the oil will squish out between your fingers if you took a ball & squeezed

Use food processor to blender the chickpeas and liquids until dough-like consistency. This takes a good 3 to 5 minutes of processing.
Press the ball of dough evenly into a greased round casserole dish, flatten with fingers, making sure to distribute the dough as evenly as possible so that there aren't very thick or very thin areas of the crust.
Bake the crust for about 5 minutes in a 350F oven, then remove.

Filling
1 large eggplant or 2 medium eggplants
1 cup of salsa***

Poke eggplant(s) with fork and place in microwave safe dish. Cook in microwave on high for 3 minutes. Flip and rotate the eggplants and cook another 3 minutes. Repeat this until soft and cooked.
Scrape the flesh of the eggplant(s) into food processor and blender until smooth (discard the skin). Add salsa and blend.

Pour filling into chickpea crust. If you wish, shred some cheese (e.g. cheddar) over the top. Bake at 350F for 30-45 minutes, or until filling is steaming hot and crust is baked golden brown.

***I made up a batch of Apple Pepper Salsa, and it's a bit heavy on the turmeric for my tastes. However, the eggplant flavour compliments the flavour of this salsa beautifully. Here's the salsa recipe, should you wish to use it.

Apple Pepper Salsa

10 cups green apples, cored & coarsely chopped
6 cups green and red bell peppers, cored & coarsely chopped
4 cups tomatillos, coarsely chopped
1 1/2 cup lemon juice
1 tbsp pickling salt
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp ground tumeric
2 tsp dry mustard
1 tbsp green coriander seeds
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground black pepper

Bring ingredients to boil in heavy sauce pan (Lee Valley's maslin pan is fabulous for this job). Reduce heat, stirring occasionally, and boil gently until thickened.

Ladle hot into clean, hot pint jars, leaving ½-inch headspace. Remove air bubbles and adjust headspace if needed. Wipe rims of jars with a dampened, clean paper towel; apply two-piece metal canning lids. Process in a boiling water canner according to the recommendations in Table 1.

Table 1. Recommended process time for Salsa in a boiling-water canner.
		Process Time at Altitudes of
Style of Pack	Jar Size	0 - 1,000 ft	1,001 - 6,000 ft	Above 6,000 ft
Hot	Pints	15 min	20	25