Irish coddled pork with cider

On Sunday I made the Irish coddled pork with cider recipe from the March 2008 issue of the Goodfood magazine.  This recipe is for 2, so I doubled it and served the leftovers on Monday night.  It went down a treat, especially with my daughter who has recently decided she does not like cabbage - obviously she likes the taste of cabbage that has been cooked in stock and cider.  It is a brilliant way of increasing your vegetable intake for the day and is a lovely filling dinner for cold winter nights.

To make it I used one of the packs of smoked bacon medallions that I recently got on offer in Lidl for €1.49.  I used half a white cabbage (65 cent), a whole swede (89 cent), 4 carrots (50 cent) and 6 potatoes (estimated at about 90 cent).  The four pork loins that I used came as part of a deal I got in the butchers last weekend, so I have allowed € 5 for them.  I used Bulmers cider that I had left over from Christmas which I bought for 87p for a pint bottle (it was in a case of 8 for sale for £7 before Christmas), so I have allowed 50 cent for the Bulmers I used.  In total the cost was € 9.93, making it less than € 5 per meal.

To be honest I am pleasantly surprised at how much this cost as I thought that it was a lot more than this. 

TIP to lower fat - to lower the fat in this dish the first thing I would do is to grill the pork loins instead of frying them in butter in the pot.  I wouldn't use the butter in the recipe at all and would use spray some fry lite in the pot before adding the bacon and vegetables.  To further lower the fat you could leave the cider out, or use a 'light' cider such as bulmers light.  You could also use less potatoes and more vegetables.