Belly of Pork weighing 1.5 to 2 Kg – 2 Tablespoons of fennel seed
– 1 tspn of chilli flakes – 15g of rough salt – 2 onions,
quartered – 2 carrots, roughly chopped – 2 sticks of celery, roughly chopped –
2 courgettes, sliced into 3 cm pieces – 1 fennel bulb, sliced 5 cloves of garlic, peeled – 1 Tablespoon of fresh thyme and chopped rosemary – 2 bay leaves – – 1 Tablespoon of olive oil - 1 bottle of unwooded
chardonnay – salt and freshly ground black pepper
Turn
your oven onto its hottest setting. Grind the fennel seed, coarse salt, & chilli
flakes in a pestle and mortar until you have a powdered spice mix. Using a very sharp
knife or even a Stanley knife, score the skin of the pork in strips every
centimetre. Do not go deep enough to cut the meat, just the skin and the fat. Rub the spice mix into the top skin, working it well in. In a roasting tray, put all the
vegetables, garlic and herbs, give them a good sprinkling of olive oil and
then rest the pork belly on top of them. Put into the oven for 20 minutes or
until the skin starts to bubble and crisp, but not burn. Turn the oven down to
170ºC and roast for an hour. Then add two thirds of the wine to the base of
the pan. Return the pork to the oven and roast for another hour. Check that
it is not burning on the bottom; if it is, just give it a stir to mix up the
juices. Then add the rest of the wine and cook until the pork is tender and
pulls apart easily – at least half an hour, perhaps more. The crackling should
be nicely crisp and most of the fat should have roasted off. Serve with mashed
potatoes, all the vegetables in the bottom of the roasting pan and the gravy
they have produced. This will go well with a good Chardonnay like our Wine of the Week, Bellevue Chardonnay
All content © John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus
No comments:
Post a Comment