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 | 11 Comments »

I’m a bit of a food festival junkie. There is something wonderful about discovering new tastes and foods with the enthusiastic people who produce them there to guide you and other food lovers around you to share the excitement. I’ve never been to one without coming away with something new to try and a mad desire to get into the kitchen and cook.

I’m heading off the Waterford today to catch the “Slice of Waterford” event at Terre Madre, the Slow Food conference and festival that has been on there all week. It’a pity though that the Farmer’s Market, which with practically every small food producer in Ireland in town for the week should be a particularly good one,  is scheduled for Sunday - when most of Waterford will either be in Dublin or stuck to the TV watching their team lose to play Kilkenny at Croke Park.

I missed the Festival of World Cultures in Dun Laoghaire this year, to my great regret, because last year it was a  terrific day out, easily one of the most enjoyable festivals I’ve ever attended. The food market was wonderful, colourful, lively and with such a perfusion of smells hanging in the air that it would have almost been possible to come away without eating and still feel well fed.

The big new taste for me there was Muhammara, a Syrian dish made with red pepper and walnuts, which is a bit like a sweet and spicy hummus. This sauce is a slight variation on that, mainly leaving out breadcrumbs and adding in some onion but also changing the proportions of things a bit. It takes no time to make and is a really good partner for pork.

The pork I used is cured pork loin, which is reduced in Lidl at the moment to €4.59 for about a pound weight.

I’d looked at this several times before I first bought it, not really sure what to do with it. The first time I followed the package instructions and roast it, but it was a bit dry and uninteresting.

Since then I’ve taken to slicing it while raw and grilling the slices in a George Foreman grill and it comes out very nicely.

I get about 9 fairly thin slices from the cut, which is enough for generous portions for three people.

The sauce is made using Lidl’s jars of roast red peppers, which come in a sweet and sour vinegar. These are really good and cost 1.79 for a large jar.

Red Pepper & Walnut Sauce

• 2 peppers from the jar (they are quite large)
• 1 tablespoon of the liquid from the pepper jar
• 1 small onion
• 4 cloves garlic
• I red chili
• 60-70g Walnuts (about 1/3 bag of Lidl Walnuts)
• Juice of quarter a lemon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• Olive Oil

Heat some olive oil in a pan. Add the roughly chopped onion and fry on a high heat until they are browned and soft - I like to get them a little charred. Reduce the heat and add the chopped garlic and chili, seeds included. Continue to fry for about 2-3 mins, making sure not to burn the garlic.

Remove the onion mix from the pan, turn the heat up again and add the walnuts to the pan, without any extra oil. Toss them in the pan until they are beginning to brown.

Put everything into a blender and whizz until well mixed. It’s a fairly thick sauce and you don’t need it to be perfectly smooth. Put in a saucepan and heat, or in a bowl to heat in the microwave.

Serve hot with the grilled pork, garnished with a few slices of pepper.

That amount of ingredients will give you more sauce than you need, which is a very good thing.

Put the left overs into a container with a good tight lid and it will keep in the fridge for several days, getting more delicious by the day and tasting just as good cold as it does hot. It makes a very tasty dip, a lovely addition to a salad and is yummy simply spread on bread.

It is also a great dressing for cold meat - chicken, pork or even beef. A good portion of that would be perfect for a hearty ‘picnic’ in the car on the way to a big match.

Tags: Pepper, Pork, Recipes, Walnuts
Posted in Low carb, Recipes | 4 Comments »