Monday 4^th January 2010

We are lucky to be able to peer into our freezer and take out a piece of our own home grown, home killed, home butchered organically reared Tamworth pork which spent a happy life eating organic barley and drinking organic milk and whey (from the cheese farm down the road) and roaming amongst our woodland which mum planted 11 years ago when we arrived. It was a smallish portion of meat for all of us, but after the Christmas excesses I only wanted a taste of meat, and with all that sticky melty fat and crispy crackling, was more about succulent juicy flavour than quantity. The idea was to pop it in, pop to the cliffs for a romp, and pop back to find it all ready… We don’t normally have roast on a Monday, but to me, with the kids still off school until tomorrow, today was definitely a ‘Sunday’…

Roast Belly of Pork

Serves 6 (just), but if you are greedy for it, it may only serve 2 (but belly is quite rich, so you have been warned)!

onion x 1 large, finely chopped

celery x 3 small sticks, finely chopped

carrot x 1 large, finely chopped

pork belly x 1kg, skin scored in 1 cm strips (depth of the skin only) with sharp knife or Stanley knife.

salt

pepper

lemon x juice only of ½

Lay some foil onto the roasting pan. Put the chopped veggies in a pile in the middle. Score the pork. Place the meat, (skin side up), on top of the veggies. Rub in salt, pepper and lemon. Seal the foil carefully so there are no holes, with a bit of space above the meat. Roast on hot, 200°C for 30 minutes. Then turn down to 130°C for approximately 4 hours, until you are back. Meanwhile par boil your roast potatoes for 3-5 mins depending how waxy/fluffy they are and strain, shake in pan with lid on to make fluffy around edges, then leave until you return.

Turn up the oven when you come back, to hot - 200°C. Unwrap the pork, take off the foil and the veggies and cook meat without veggies for a further 20-30 minutes until the crackling is very crisp – pour off the fat regularly. You can take off strips of crackling if they are done, and keep others on to crackle some more. It will blister and really snap when it is ready. A lean indoor reared, commercial breed pig, may not crackle, beware, always buy good meat!

Meanwhile tip the fat off the foil into another roasting pan for the potatoes, season and roast them on hot until crisp and brown.

Take meat out when fully cracked and remove all crispy crackling. Resist temptation (impossible) to nibble it and put on an open plate so it doesn’t steam. Cover pork with foil to rest at least half an hour. This is very important, it is a bit like the difference between eating yourself just after a run, or when you have relaxed for half an hour after running, those hard muscles have gone tender and floppy again, and that is exactly what happens to the meat. I hope you like yourself enough and are not put you off your pork with this analogy!

Use the previously roasted veggies to thicken the gravy (mush with the zummer) and I’m afraid I often use Bisto Original powder (NOT the granules), but you could use cornflour or flour. Add veggie water. We had sprouts today, which were a bit sprouty due to the fact that they froze on their sticks the wild arctic weather. We also had apple sauce (just mushed stewed apple, no sugar) and great parsnips, see recipe below.

Amanda Nantgwynfaen

www.organicfarmwales.co.uk