Fantastic Cuban Sandwiches (SRC)

It's Secret Recipe Club time again and that means all my fellow Group Ds are revealing their chosen recipes today! This month I was really excited to be assigned Making Miracles by Rebekah. If you haven't checked out Rebekah's blog yet you really should because this woman is AMAZING! Rebekah has been a surrogate 3 times since 2006 (and currently on pregnancy #4) and started her blog to keep a record of her surrogacy experiences. Since then it has definitely evolved to include her own family and lots and lots of food!

I love the names of her recipes too, it makes them really hard to resist - how about some Amazingly Easy and Delicious Ham and Potato Soup, Emergency Chicken or the Best Steak Marinade in Existence?

I nearly went with the Bacon-Wrapped Potato Wedges but in the end though the Fantastic Cuban Sandwiches won me over not only because they sounded absolutely delicious, but because I remembered seeing the movie Chef  last year (did anyone else see it? we loved it!) which was all about Cuban street food including the famous el sandwich Cubano!

This is a super easy meal which takes only minutes to prepare and then the slow-cooker does all the work for you. I use my slow-cooker a few times every week so this was perfect for us. Every time I cook meat like this I wonder why I don't do it more often because it's just SO good! Tender, juicy and packed with flavour.

The house smelt amazing all day while the pork was cooking and when it came the taste did not disappoint! I don't eat dairy and I did feel like I was missing out a bit without all that luscious melty cheese but it still tasted fantastic. We all loved these and even better, because I did such a big roast we had lots of leftover pork for lunch the next day and froze the rest for another dinner a week later.

Fantastic Cuban Sandwiches
Recipe from Making Miracles

For the roast:
1 x 2kg pork shoulder (this makes lots of leftovers)
6 cloves garlic, finely minced
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
2 ts oregano or marjoram
2 tbs olive oil
2 tbs white vinegar
3 ts salt

For the sandwiches:
Long bread rolls
Sliced Swiss cheese
Sliced ham
Sliced pickles
Honey mustard
Mayonnaise 

To prepare the roast, combine all marinade ingredients together and rub over the pork before covering well and leaving it in the fridge overnight. The next morning place in your crock pot on low for 8-12 hours (mine had about 10 1/2 hours and was perfect).

To assemble the sandwiches, slice the rolls in half and spread a thin layer of the mustard and mayonnaise on the insides. Layer the cheese, ham, pickles and roast pork on one half. Top with another slice of cheese and then the other half of the roll.

Press sandwiches in a panini press until bread is crispy and cheese is melted, about 3-4 minutes on medium-high heat.

Thanks for a great recipe Rebekah. I loved spending some time on your blog! :)

An InLinkz Link-up

TWD Baking with Julia - White Loaves

This is the first week of the new Tuesdays with Dorie - Baking with Julia, how exciting! We will be baking fortnightly and should have one simple and one more complicated recipe to post each month. With over 300 bloggers baking along this is going to be fun!

So, first up we have White Loaves, chosen by Laurie and Jules.

I have been making bread a lot recently but cheating a bit because I use my breadmaker. I heart my breadmaker! While it makes great bread, of course, it also makes pizza dough and I can turn a basic dough mix into almost anything. Just last week I made cinnamon rolls (no pics sorry) and in the lead up to Easter there will definitely be some fresh hot cross buns too!

It has been a while though since I made a loaf of bread completely from scratch. I had forgotten how easy it is and Oscar loved seeing the dough rising and being punched down and turned into real bread.

This is a very simple recipe and it made 2 absolutely delicious loaves of bread. I stuck strictly to recipe and made 2 plain loaves perfect for sandwiches. We go through a LOT of sandwiches in this house. It froze well too and also made great toast.

All in all a great place to start the new TWD. I hope everyone else had success too! The list of bakers should be up soon on the TWD page.

You will find the recipe on pp81-82 of Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan, or Laurie and Jules will have it in their posts due today.