Romanian & Bulgarian · Main
Kavarma
- Intermediate
- 35 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with savory depth stacked from the pantry’s bass notes, richness that coats and comforts, with a clean, bright snap.
Ingredients
- 700 g pork shoulder, in 3 cm cubes
- 60 g lard
- 300 g onions, sliced
- 2 red peppers, in strips
- 200 g mushrooms, quartered
- 300 g tomatoes, grated
- 15 g sweet paprika
- 1 tbsp dried summer savory (chubritsa)
- 100 ml dry white wine
- 4 eggs
- 1 tsp black pepper
- salt
Equipment
Grater / zester
The skills inside
The words inside
Peppers & Eggplant: The Nightshade Late Summer
Allergen screen
Found: egg · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Brown the pork hard in the lard in two batches, leaving each piece alone until it releases from the pan with a crust, then set it aside.
- Cook the onions in the same fat until deep gold and jammy, add the peppers and mushrooms and keep going until their water has gone and the pan sizzles again.
- Pull the pan off the heat, stir the paprika through for no more than 20 seconds, and pour in the wine at once to stop it cooking any further.
- Return the pork with the tomatoes, savory, pepper and salt, divide between four clay pots or one lidded casserole, cover and bake at 170C (340F) for about 75 minutes, until the pork gives to the side of a spoon. 75 min
- Break an egg over each pot and return them uncovered until the whites are just set and the yolks still run, about 8 minutes. 8 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Searing: the hard crust 141 recipes
- The pan keeps a hard, steady sizzle from the moment the food lands and does not fall quiet; silence within the first half minute means the pan lost its heat and the surface is now steaming rather than browning.
- It releases itself when tested: slide a thin edge under and it lifts without tearing. Anything that grips the pan has not formed a crust yet and is not ready to be moved.
- Deep even brown across the whole face, edge to edge, when it is turned under the light: no pale ring left around a browned centre, and no black patches that taste bitter on their own.
- The pan floor carries a dry browned layer that dissolves and lifts the moment liquid hits it: not a wet grey film, and not black flecks that stay put and stay bitter.
- Cut into it: the browned band is thin, a few millimetres at most, sitting straight on top of correctly cooked interior; a thick grey collar under the crust means the heat was too low for too long.
Where it goes wrong The pan was not hot enough, or too much went in at once, so the food released its water and sat in it: the surface goes grey and steams, it sticks when moved, and the crust that eventually forms arrives over an interior already cooked through.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Riesling or Grenache
- Also Right
- Cru Beaujolais
- From the Taps
- Farmhouse saison
- Zero-Proof
- Cloudy apple juice, chilled
Pork loves fruit and gentle sweetness: orchard-note whites and low-tannin reds flatter it where heavy oak flattens.
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