After Ear to the Ground last night a number of people have asked for the recipe for this and also for the Raspberry Clafouti. I’m making the clafouti again this weekend, so I’ll take pics of that. I don’t know when I’ll have pork belly again, so I’ll just post the recipe anyway without pics – I’ll add them when I make it next.

Pork belly is kind of cheffy food, in that you see it on restaurant menus quite a lot but not many people cook it at home. I suspect that its popularity with chefs is not just because it’s so tasty but also because of the healthy profit margin to be had, it’s a really cheap cut.

I don’t know why more people don’t cook it, because it’s very easy to do. It does require time but only in the oven, preparing it is the work of a couple of minutes and could hardly be easier. It’s a perfect dish for a day when you’ll be in the house but too busy to cook anything complicated.

Here’s how I did the one on the TV, and this method is the one I’ve found gives the crispest and most delicious crackling. Who doesn’t love good crackling?

Ingredients

This amount will feed 6 people very well.

• 1 kg of Pork Belly
• 3 Onions
• About a pint of Chicken Stock (homemade is best but cubes are fine)
• Olive oil
• Salt

Get your butcher to score the skin on the pork for you, it’s a bit of a pain to do at home.

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Cooking the Pork

Sprinkle the skin surface of the pork with quite a lot of salt and leave it aside for about 10 minutes. This will draw out a surprising amount of water, which you can then mop off with some kitchen paper. Dry the skin very thoroughly – the dryer the skin, the better the crackling.

While the pork is set aside, peel and halve the onions, and arrange them cut side down in a roasting pan in two rows.

Smear the skin surface of the pork with olive oil fairly generously. Sit the pork belly on top of the onions, so they act like a trivet holding the meat above the surface of the tray.

Pour chicken stock into the tray to a depth of about 1 inch or a little more – take care not to let any of the stock get on the skin side of the pork.

Put the meat into the fully preheated oven and immediately turn the heat down to 150°C, or 140°C if you have a fan oven.

You are now basically done for 5 hours.

Just check occasionally to ensure that the stock has not evaporated away, and top up with water or more stock if it looks a bit low. You don’t want the pan to dry out. Do not baste the pork at all, that’s really important, again for the crackling. Water or any watery liquid is the enemy of crisp crackling.

After 5 hours take the pork from the oven, remove to a plate and drain the liquid in the tray into a jug. Carefully slide a knife between the crackling and the meat and remove the crackling to a warm place (I leave it on a plate on top of the cooker).

Put the rest of the pork back into the oven in the now fairly dry roasting tin, skin side up, while you make the gravy.

Making the Gravy

All the time the pork was cooking, it was releasing fat and juice over the onions, which are now beautifully caramelised, and into the stock, which will now be dark brown and unctuous.

By the time you get back to it, the fat in the pan juices will have started to settle on the top of the jug. Spoon some of it away if there is too much.

Put the remaining juice/stock into a blender along with two of the halved onions and blend until smooth. Taste and season with salt and pepper if you think it needs it, though it probably won’t. That’s it. No need to thicken, the blended onion will have made it thick enough and if it hasn’t just add another one and blend again.

To Serve

Cut the pork in thick slices. Pour over some gravy. Break up the crackling along the score lines and serve on top of the pork.

Yum!

Tags: Gravy, Pork
Posted in Recipes | 13 Comments »

Just over 2 weeks ago I spent an odd, but enjoyable, day cooking for the cameras.

The deal was that I’d cook a meal for six, two courses, using locally sourced ingredients for under €15.

I wasn’t overly daunted by the budget, but definitely was daunted when told who I’d be cooking for – members of the ICA. Yikes!

You can watch the results tonight on RTE 1 at 7.00pm on Ear to the Ground.

The tall elegant lady in the picture is the charming and gorgeous presenter of the programme, Helen Carroll. The tubby midget is me. The nice window blind belongs to my good friend Sheila, who kindly stepped in when I looked around my own kitchen trying and failing to imagine six diners and a camera crew fitting in.

I cooked pork belly, because I like it and it’s cheap. That was before the whole pork thing happened, so it was not a political choice or anything, but I’m really glad I chose it now.

It certainly shows up the benefits of shopping locally. All the main ingredients for the meal came from less than 5 miles from my house.

The pork belly came from a local pig, reared by Pat Murphy of Johnswell, a small local producer, and was processed in a local abbatoir owned by Gerry O’Brien, my local butcher. I practically knew her (and it was a her) and she had never eaten any dodgy food.

The veg and the berries for dessert (Raspberry and Almond Clafouti) were grown by Joe Pucell in Dunmore.

And to my great relief, the lovely women from the ICA ate up with relish.

Tags: Ear to the Ground, TV food
Posted in TV | 5 Comments »

I’m just back from a week in Florence, a wonderful blur of bright sunny days, old streets, busy markets, stunning art and fabulous food. This was my first holiday in years without family, there was just Sabrina and I, on a proper grown-up holiday, and I can highly recommend her as an excellent travelling companion. We’re still friends, narry a cross word spoken, and with plans to repeat the exact same holiday in a year’s time.

The pic is of the wonderful Monna Lisa Hotel were we stayed, it’s actually taken from just outside the door of our room. And yes, it’s every bit as nice as it looks.

As you might expect, food played a major role in this excursion. I’m just left with an impression of wonderful food, from the vast buffet breakfast every morning to perfect coffees for €1 each everywhere we went.

Delicious pizza in Il Pizzaiuolo, a small restaurant run by a Neopolitan which is so (deservedly) popular that you need a reservation even on a Monday night.

Gilda’s Bistro, with its mismatched antique glasses and crockery, where the handsome and charming Umberto fed us unctuous cous cous, dotted with tiny meatballs, which he’d prepared specially for an anniversary party.

The feather light porcini soufflé produced as a foretaste of a perfect meal (in my case stuffed squid on spinach puree followed by hare rissolles and an indulgent dessert of chestnut roulade) at Cantina Barbagianni.

One morning I woke at what I thought was 7.30am and decided to go for a walk. Outside I realised it was actually 5.30am – so ended up wandering the narrow streets of a still sleeping city, having coffee with the stall holders who were just setting up in the Mercado Centrale, the Florentine version of Cork’s English Market, before sitting completely alone watching dawn begin to break over the Duomo, munching on a pre-breakfast of beautifully fresh walnuts and pistachios bought from the market.

I’m telling you, you could go alone to Florence and have the most romantic holiday of your life!

The hotel manager threw up his arms in horror when I asked for directions to the local Lidl: “You are in Firenze and you want visit Lidl?!”. Nonetheless I hopped on the number 6 bus and went. It’s much the same as Lidl here, with fewer vegetables (surprisingly), more pasta and better cheese (unsurprisingly) and all the familiar products about 15-20% cheaper accross the board.

This wine was an incredible €1.29, and others were similarly cheaper, but I suppose we can largely blame the high levels of duty here for that, rather than Lidl.

Pics from Florence later, when I get them organised.

Posted in Eating Out | 6 Comments »

Yes, I know. I was supposed to post about the great freezer cook up – and I will, really I will, but the notes I took were atrocious (though I thought at the time they were great) and I’ve been very distracted by work (of which more below).

But I had to get this in – the J.D. Gross range of speciality chocolates are back at Lidl. Oh happy, happy day for chocoholics everywhere! The range has been expanded too, with several new ones alongside old favorites, including some very interesting looking fruit flavoured ones, which I haven’t tried yet.

As a lover of really, really dark chocolate I went first for the three bars pictured here, each of which cost €1.59 for 100g and all of which were sampled by a small group of chocolate lovers after dinner this evening.

Let’s take them from left to right.

San Martin 77% with Cocoa Nibs

This bar is studded with tiny nibs of roast cocoa bean, which give it a slightly coffeeish flavour. The chocolate is rich and smooth with a flavour that is deep but not bitter. When you bite on one of the cocoa nibs it’s like a small intensely chocolaty explosion in your mouth – sounds odd, but it’s very good!

This one was got the thumbs up from everyone.

I had one little niggle about chocolate from San Martin, which is, according to the package, in the north of Peru, close to the source of the Amazon. I just wondered were they growing their cocoa on areas of cleared rain forest, but it seems not. Apparantly this was an area where for generations a very different crop was widely grown – coca – but that has been pretty much entirely stamped out. So that’s good then.

Ambanja 72% with Red Pepper

Certainly different, this chocolate from Madagascar was not to everyone’s taste. I’ve had plain chocolate from Madagascar before and liked it – it has a naturally slightly fruity taste that’s very distinctive and very pleasant.

For some reason this bar has more of a minty flavour that the spicy one you’d expect from red pepper. Not entirely unpleasant, but sort of strange. The pieces of red pepper are quite large and a nibble that includes one is very different from one that doesn’t. I preferred the bits without.

I wasn’t really sold on it, but for one person it was the big hit of the three, so it really is a very personal thing. It’s certainly worth trying, if only for the novelty value.

Arriba Superier 81%

This is one for those who like their chocolate really dark – and I loved it! Arriba Superier from Ecuador is a king among cocoa beans and the quality tells in this bar. It is very intense and rich in flavour, but still smooth, with a sort of earthy taste.

If you are not a real dark chocolate lover though, it may be too much, as some found it this evening. But it would definitely be a fantastic bar for cooking and that that price no more expensive than the disgusting stuff often sold for that purpose.

This was the winner for me. It’s also very low in carbs for those for whom such things matter – even if you scoffed a whole bar at one sitting (which is unlikely, with chocolate this intense a couple of squares would satisfy most people) it would only be 22g of carb.

So, work. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks working with the slave driver outrageously talented Sabrina Dent on the Curious Wines website which launched yesterday, in good time for you to go along and pick up a case or two of festive wines for Christmas.

I was, to be honest, too concerned with making the site work up to now to pay all that much attention to what was actually available there, but I took some time to have a good look at the wines themselves to-day. There really is some excellent value there and some very interesting looking wines – some made from grapes I’ve never even heard of but would love to try. Do have a look.

And I promise I’ll beat the freezer stuff into submission in the next few days!

Tags: Chocolate, Christmas, Wine
Posted in Chocolate, Wine | 13 Comments »

10 days, no updates – I’ve been sorely neglecting this blog. And it’s not because I’ve been away, or lazy or had nothing to write. In fact it isn’t really my fault at all. You can pick any one of four people to blame. If I was pushed to pick I’d lay the blame at the feet of Sarah Palin, but to be absolutely fair I could equally choose her boss or either of the opposing team.

I’ve become obsessed with the US presidential election.

I am definitely spending way too much time reading about it, watching various clips on YouTube and talking about it with the increasing number of people who seem to be similarly and completely caught up in the strangely fascinating politics of another country.

Staying up into the wee small hours to watch debates has thrown my internal clock into complete disarray – my body now believes that 4 or 5 am is a good time to start thinking about going to bed, even though I still have to be up for a school run. It’s not good. Needing afternoon naps makes me feel old.

I’m also very busy at work (which I manage to fit in somewhere between intensive blog reading sessions) so by the time dinner rolls around in the evening I’m in no mood to start getting creative in the kitchen. The freezer has become my best friend.

But on Saturday, horror, the freezer was empty. With my obsession showing no sign of waning I decided to have a major cooking session and fill it with enough dinners to last until at least Nov 5th.

I kept scribbled notes about the whole process, with timing, which I’ll have made sense of (between the many food splashes) by tomorrow and will post here. But in around three hours I managed to ‘bank’ over 2 dozen very varied dinner-sized dishes, several side dishes and a load of soup into the now very packed freezer. All for less than €60.

!’ve never really cooked in this guerrilla fashion before, but it’s great! Last night ‘cooking’ dinner required just a little light defrosting and reheating along with rustling up some veg. This is what we ate – stuffed courgette with mozzarella.

I of course ate mine in front of the computer, while reading about the election.

Tags: Cooking for the Freezer, US Elections
Posted in This Blog | 8 Comments »