All-In-One Spicy Pork and Rice

Ingredients

• 100 g green beans, trimmed and chopped into short lengths
• 750 ml chicken stock, prepared with 1 stock cube
• 500 g pork tenderloin, trimmed and sliced into 1cm pieces
• 150 g easy-cook long-grain rice
• black pepper
• 1 onion, cut into thin wedges
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 2 cloves, thinly sliced
• 1 /2 tsp hot chilli powder
• sea salt
• 2 tsp olive oil
• 50 g chorizo, skinned and sliced into 5mm rounds
• 1 orange, deseeded and sliced
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• Crusty sourdough bread, to serve
• 1 red pepper, deseeded and sliced

Method

1. Warm the olive oil in a large stainless or cast-iron sauté pan over medium-high heat until it shimmers — you want a surface that grips and browns, not one that releases everything cleanly.
2. Pat the pork dry and season generously with salt and black pepper. Water on the meat means steam, and steam means no browning.
3. Brown the pork in two batches — all at once and the pan crowds, water comes out, and you've boiled the meat instead of searing it. Two minutes a batch until lightly coloured, then lift out onto a plate.
4. Drop the heat to medium and add the onion wedges. Cook for 3 minutes, stirring, until softened and catching gold at the edges.
5. Add the chorizo, peppers and green beans. Stir-fry for 2 minutes — the chorizo will bleed its paprika-red oil into the pan, which is exactly the fat you want carrying the spices.
6. Add the sliced garlic and cook just until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Don't burn it — burnt garlic turns the whole dish bitter.
7. Sprinkle in the cumin, ground coriander and chilli powder and bloom them in the hot oil for 30–60 seconds, stirring, until they smell toasty and round. Raw spices taste dusty; bloomed spices taste of themselves.
8. Tip in the rice and stir to coat every grain in the spiced oil. Return the pork and any juices to the pan, pour over the chicken stock, and bring to a boil.
9. Reduce to a gentle simmer, cover loosely and cook for 20 minutes, stirring once or twice, until the liquid is absorbed and the rice is tender with a little bite.
10. Pull off the heat, rest for 2 minutes with the lid on, then taste. Season, taste again, adjust now — at the end, not at the table.
11. To serve: spoon the rice straight from the pan, scatter the chopped parsley over the top, tuck the lemon wedges around the edge, and squeeze a wedge of lemon juice over each plate. Crusty sourdough alongside if you want to mop the chorizo oil.