Pork Belly Again

I haven’t felt much like eating, let alone cooking, for nearly a week, due to a nasty bug, so it has been a bit quiet on the food front.

By yesterday I was feeling much better though, and since the veg box had got away from us a bit and a new one arrives on Tuesday, we had a few people over for an early supper.

Cooking the pork belly started in the morning, when I boiled the kettle and poured the water over the belly, which opens up the score marks made in the skin by the butcher. I then followed a Jamie Oliver tip and put a little red wine vinegar over the belly, before putting it uncovered in the fridge for a couple of hours. Then I heated the oven to 200C (fan oven) and cooked the pork on a rack over a roasting tin for 30 minutes. I poured the fat from the tin into a jug, and then put two roughly chopped carrots and two onions in the roasting tin and placed the pork on top. A big glug of water was added, and then the whole thing was put back in the oven at 140C for about three hours. It then rested for nearly an hour under foil (it didn’t necessarily need that long, but everything else needed a higher temperature for a bit and we only have one oven). The final step is to carefully remove the crackling and put it under a pre-heated grill. Keep an eye on it so it doesn’t burn, but this should make the perfect crackling.

We served this with roast vegetables, dauphinoise potatoes, apple and onion sauce and yummy gravy.

To follow we had a rhubarb and almond tart. I am going to have another attempt at this at the weekend, as I think we can improve it, and so I will post about it after that.

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.