Pork Belly and Crackling

At the last minute we went down to my parents in Hampshire for the weekend. They were at a wedding on Saturday, and so we stopped at the butcher on the way down to buy steaks for supper. Cooked rare on the griddle pan, they were seriously good.

The Winchester Farmers Market (one of the largest in the country) was about a third of its usual size, presumably as all the producers recovered after Christmas. There was still enough to keep us entertained though. It took me ages to work out that Winchester was a particularly big farmers market, and that was the reason why all the others I went to seemed so small!

For Sunday lunch we had a big piece of pork belly. It was cooked slowly in a low oven, sat on a rack in the roasting pan so that it was not sat in the fat that rendered out. It was then finished off with a three minute blast under the grill to crisp up the crackling.

Served with goose fat roasted potatoes, cabbage and carrots, it was great. The meat was meltingly tender and a perfect contrast to the crispy, crunchy crackling. Followed by apple crumble and proper Jersey cream, this was a pretty much perfect winter Sunday lunch.