Pork Braise with Bunya Nut & Australian Rice Grass

Directions

Preheat your oven or BBQ to about 180°C.

Stab the meat of the hocks with a narrow blade knife making an incision which fits your finger; sprinkle Alpine Pepper into the cuts so that the flavours can penetrate all the way through the meat as it cooks.

In a hot, oiled, deep roasting pan, brown the hocks on all surfaces to flavour the outside; once half done, add the onion to brown it as well.

Once browned, remove from the heat and pour in the stock and add the chilli.

Cover the meat with aluminium foil ensuring that the plasticized metal sheet does not touch the meat but sits proud; if this is not possible, cover the meat with a piece of baking paper or paperbark and then cover with the foil; (the main thing is to never let anything you will actually eat, be cooked in contact with foil).

Place in the oven for 2 to 3 hours or until the meat easily pulls away from the bone; the pan can be uncovered for the last 30 minutes of this time (when you can also start to cook the rice as below).

Once the hocks are cooked, remove them from the liquid and set aside in a warm place.

Pull all of the meat away from the bones.

Reduce the liquid in the pan to ¼ the original volume; strain off and season this sauce with Wildfire Spice to taste.

Boil the bunya nut halves in a minimum of water and then allow them to cool in this water, this will make it easy to get them out of the shells; use almonds if bunya nuts are hard to get and you can boil them or dry roast them as is your preference, either way, chop the nuts coarsely.

Start to cook the rices: Add the brown rice and the rice grass to a saucepan which can be fitted with a lid; cover the rice with water so that the water covers the rice by 1 + ½ times as much again as the depth of rice; said in another way; you can measure the 200g of rice and add 300ml of water; note that if you were cooking white rice using this absorption method only 200ml of water would be needed.

For the rice grass (or Inuit wild rice), follow the above directions as for white rice and use a small saucepan.

To cook the rices, bring the water to the boil and continue boiling until the water boils down to within the surface of the rice; turn the heat down to a gentle simmer and fit the lid to the saucepan; continue simmering for 10 minutes or until the rice is cooked as indicated by ‘blow hole’ in the surface of the swollen rice; remove from heat once done; place the snow peas on top of the rice and cover until required to serve.

Styling : Serve the rices in a deep or flat bowl, topped with the braised pork, bunya and snow peas. Dust with Lemon Myrtle.