Spanish pork and tomato stew

If you want to eat well in Spain, allow me to make a suggestion: forget about fancy restaurants and look for a decent bar. You know how you can judge a good Chinese restaurant by the quality of its ribs. Well I have a similar theory about carne con tomate. If a bar can't get a simple stew of pork and tomatoes right, then really, how good can that bar be?

But when this simple dish is good, it can be sublime. I had to make a few times before I got it right. That said, if somebody else is going to make it for me, then my favourite place on earth to eat this dish would be the Bar Bocanegra in the city of Merida - Extremadura. I have eaten their carne con tomate in the company of the manager of a 5-star hotel; a man well used to the finer things in life. He declared it to be excellent -  further proof of the lack of pretension that dominates in (most of) Spain's eating establishments.

Most of my cooking is done by eye, by touch, by feel and by taste. Only rarely do I measure out the ingredients with mathematical precision. Nevertheless the ingredients for a decent sized portion for four people are:
1 large onion, 5 cloves of garlic, about a kilo of cubed stewing pork, a glass of white wine, two tins of tomatoes (usually around the 400 gram mark), a little salt, a little sugar, some olive oil and a pinch of dried oregano.

Firstly you need to empty the tinned tomatoes into a suitable container and liquidise them with whatever tool you normally use. From experience I know that it is this first step that makes all the difference to the finished dish. Next, peel and chop the onion and garlic quite finely. Heat the olive oil in decent sized saucepan and brown the meat until it has taken on plenty of colour. It is usually best to do this in 3 or 4 batches, so as not to overcrowd the pan. When you have browned the last of the meat, remove it from the pan and add the onions and garlic. By frying these gently you should notice that the bottom of the pan that was sticky with the residue of the browned meat becomes cleaner. I can only suppose that it is the acid in the alliums that is the beneficial element in this process. Once the onions and garlic are nicely softened you can return the meat to the pan along with the liquidised tomatoes, a pinch of dried oregano, a good pinch of salt, a little sugar to taste and a glass of white wine. For some reason, the cheaper the wine, the better the result with this dish. It breaks the old adage about a wine not being good enough to drink on its own not being good enough to cook with. Why this is, I don't know. I only know that it works. Now all that needs to be done is to let the whole thing simmer gently with the lid on for two hours. If after two hours, the sauce does not look quite dark enough, give it a further half hour with the lid off and that should thicken the sauce to the right consistency.