Just sheer gluttony. Roasted belly pork

I love roast dinners. My general approach is to buy the biggest bit of meat we can afford, as leftovers are never going to go to waste. (They just present a challenge for another night… and there’s always sandwiches)

Belly pork is a brilliant cut of meat. I can understand why it might not be to everyone’s taste, as it is quite fatty, but it is incredibly tasty because of it. It’s also very good value, a piece of meat too big for our roasting dish set me back about six quid. The way I cook it is a bit of a rehash of a Jamie Oliver recipe, but I’m not great at following recipes.

First thing to do is whack the oven up as high as it can go to try and get the best crackling. The butcher had scored the skin for me, so then it’s a case of rubbing in a frightening amount of salt to all the scores. I do think it helps to get the salt quite deep into the cuts. Put it in the oven when it’s good and hot for half an hour. The skin should start to puff up and look crackling-y like this:

Whilst that’s in there, chop up a couple of onions and a stick or two of celery into big chunks. Take half a dozen cloves of garlic and smash them a little bit. You can leave the skin on the garlic, just put the flat of a big knife on them and give them a whack.

After half an hour, take the meat out and turn the oven down to 180. Lift the meat out (no easy task) and put your onions, garlic and celery into the pan and add some rosemary if you’ve got it. Thyme would be good too, but I didn’t have any. Toss this stuff around in the meat juices in the pan, and put the meat back on top. Put it in the oven, and it will now do its thing for about two hours. Occasionally baste it with some of the fat from the bottom of the tray.

I know with a roast it would traditionally be roast potatoes, but tonight’s meal is all about sheer gluttony (and I had some cream to use up) so I made dauphinoise potatoes.  I am of the firm belief that everything is better with dauphinoise potatoes.

I used up about half a carton of double cream, and added milk until it looked wet enough. Normally it would be all cream, but I didn’t have quite enough. Finely chop a clove of garlic, peel some potatoes and slice them as finely as you can.  Put this into a bowl, and mix it together with the cream and a little bit of milk. Add salt and pepper. Then tip into a gratin dish or casserole dish, flatten it out a bit, and put little knobs of butter on top, along with a touch more salt and pepper. This will take 45 minutes or so to cook, so doesn’t need to go in until the last half hour of the pork’s cooking time. 

We had this with kale, which I just steamed, and some glazed carrots. Chop up the carrots in big chunks, put a little drop of water in, a knob of butter and a teaspoonful of sugar. Boil until the water all but disappears and you’re left with a lovely glaze. I had this at a friend’s once, and I’ve been trying to recreate them ever since! (Never quite as good as Hannah’s I have to admit)

When the pork’s had it’s time, take the meat off and let it rest on a plate for a while. It won’t go cold, but if you’re concerned put a bit of tinfoil over it to keep the heat in.

Now we see the reason for the veggies in the bottom; with all that cooking they will have gone beautifully caramelised. Any bits underneath the meat will be very pork-y and lovely. Any bits that look a bit too charred, just chuck!

Pour away most of the fat from the roasting dish, then put it over a low heat, and stir in a teaspoonful of plain flour. Once it’s cooked for a minute pour in a glass of white wine, then slowly add some chicken/vegetable stock (or even just water), stirring continuously to avoid lumps. Make sure you scrape up any sticky bits off the bottom of the pan: they’re the business. 

Let it bubble and reduce, taste it and season if it needs it, after ten minutes you’re ready to go. Pour it through a sieve for an amazing, dark, rich gravy.

Then dish up! Sorted. Not something to have every week, but a hell of a treat. And you’ll be fighting over the crackling. (The meat is lasting us a couple of nights. The crackling has now disappeared.)

Whilst making this I was mostly listening to: The new Elbow album. I’m sort of in love with elbow a bit.  And then Sigur Ros – Takk. Because it’s brilliant.

No soup this week, I’m away during the week.

What do you think of the new design? I’m not sure I like it, but got very bored of looking for others options.

National Pie Week; a very rustic steak pie.

It’s national pie week. Apparently. I didn’t know that such a thing existed until Friday night when we saw an ad in the pub, but I’m not one to ignore a cookery based bandwagon I could jump on!

Now this is quite laborious, particularly in comparison to last night’s mussels and chips. This was a full on apron wearing, hours in the kitchen, job. It’s not very traditional, but check it out nonetheless:

I used shin of beef for this, because Delia reckons it’s the best for stews and things.  I didn’t follow her recipe, but did follow her advice on that, and it was dirt cheap (I got over a pound for about three quid!)

First, I took about a pound of beef and tossed it in some seasoned flour. I then browned it all off bit by bit in some hot oil. You want it to caramelise on the edges and go nice and brown, and try not to worry about the state of the bottom of your pan! So eventually you have a plateful of lovely browned meat, and a messy looking pan.

Add little more oil to the pan, then fry off two onions. I used one red and one white onion, but that wasn’t for any fancy reasons, just because I have red onions to use up.  Add a load of mushrooms and let it fry for a bit. Then put the meat back in, add some red wine (I had about a third of a bottle left over) and a dash of Worcestershire sauce (I had to google that to check how to spell it.) Top up with a bit of water, and stick in a bay leaf and let it bubble for about two hours. Take this opportunity to have a cup of tea/glass of wine/start writing your blog… I know that normally it would be ale or stout in this, but I didn’t have any.

It reduces down lots and lots:

I can’t claim to be a pastry expert, and I know that steak pie is the best ever when made with suet pastry, but I don’t have suet, and if I bought some it would sit in the cupboard forever more. So I’m just going for a bog standard short crust as per the BeRo cookbook: http://www.be-ro.com/index.asp I left it to rest for half an hour in the fridge.

I buttered and floured a pie dish.  I think ideally the filling should be allowed to completely cool so the pastry doesn’t go soggy, but I was running out of time! So I had to just go with it. I lined the pie dish with half the pastry, and filled it with the stew mixture. I used a slotted spoon so the gravy stayed in the pan, to stop it going soggy, and saved it for serving. Roll out the other half of the pastry, put it on the top, and mash down the edges a little bit with a fork. Put a hole in the middle so the steam can get out. And put in the oven at 180 degrees for about forty five minutes. It all looks a bit haphazard, but let's call it rustic:

I don’t have a rolling pin, but do have lots of empty wine bottles:

We had it with curly kale and lovely buttery mash, served the gravy at the table to pour over the top of this: 

 

Whilst making this I mostly listened to: Elbow, the Seldom Seen Kid. However, that ended when I was only about a third of the way through the process, so then I switched to 6music.

This weeks soup: “spring minestrone” At least that’s what I’m calling it. It used up all our leftover veg, had some bacon, a tin of borlotti beans and some home made chicken stock.

Mussels and chips

Or Moules Mariniere. It’s one of my all time favourites. I love mussels. My folks introduced me to them as a kid, probably on one of many trailer tent holidays in France.

To this day, one of my most memorable birthdays took place while we were on holiday in France, in a slightly dodgy café, where men came in trying to sell us leather jackets as we ate.  We had French onion soup, with proper big croutons with Gruyere cheese on top, then had mussels and chips.  A man with an accordion came in, and my mum got him to play happy birthday. I must have been about nine. Amazing.

Anyway, enough of my (slightly wine fuelled) trip down memory lane. The other thing I love about mussels is that they’re so damn easy. A little labour intensive to clean maybe, but very little skill involved!

And the OTHER thing I love about mussels is that they’re so damn cheap! I bought a kilo of them from Waitrose yesterday (hardly known for being cheap and cheerful) and they were about three quid. It was more than enough for two people with hearty appetites, and feels like a proper treat.

The first, and most arduous, bit of tonight’s meal was cleaning them.  Thankfully these were rope grown, so there weren’t many barnacles. Basically the job involves running them under cold water to get any grit or dirt off, knocking any barnacles off with a knife, and pulling off the beards. (see below for a picture of a mussel with a beard) 

If any are open, give them a good tap on the sink/counter.  If they close they’re fine, if they don’t then get rid of them. There’s always a few that need to be discarded.

Finely chop an onion (traditionally it would be shallots) and a clove of garlic, and soften them in some butter on a low heat, so they don’t colour. Then chuck in 100 ml of white wine, the mussels, put the lid on and whack the heat up. They take three to four minutes, with the odd shake of the pan.

Once they’re opened, pour in about 100 ml of cream and a load of chopped parsley and give it a good stir around. That’s it. Really. And they’re brilliant.

I don’t make chips from scratch, due to lack of deep fat fryer/chip pan. Also, we rarely have chips, so the standby frozen skinny fries do me just fine.

And the best bit? Dipping some nice bread in all the juices that are left in the pan. And having a nice glass of white wine with it. Truly awesome. I now need a lie down as I couldn’t resist a third slice of bread to dip.

Note: I can’t claim moules mariniere as my own recipe, but it’s so good I wanted to write about it anyway.