Pork & Potatoes Redux

 

So, here we are again with another Sunday evening post of food at Fairview. I've been dog-sitting for the boys: my son and his husband, who were off up Ogwen and beyond, filming today. Jane was at work and so it was just me and Lady [Lady Day to me and Jane, privately, as jazz fans], for the day, so to speak. Lady is a lovely Lab/Collie cross, with the temperament - and appetite - of a Labrador, and with the intelligence and speed of a Collie, a great mix, if a little difficult to keep up with at my age. Still, we've got a decent-enough-sized garden for her to charge around like a loon when she needs to stretch her legs, in between bribes of buttered toast to get her back into the house and into her bed whilst I get on with stuff. All good. She's a good dog and great company.

As to the nosh pictured, it's one of my staple go-to's these days, as I've written about quite a few [probably too many] times thus far: roasted belly pork strips and Greek-style lemon and garlic roast potatoes. I hold two main views on the roasting of belly pork: one - tonight's, using supermarket skinless strips - simply roast in a pan with some white wine, olive oil and seasoning until rather biltong-like in the meat department, but still possessed of a layer of soft, lardy fat: not ideal, but still very tasty. The proper way to cook belly pork, however, requires a decent-sized piece of belly, skin-on, from a proper butcher. I have in the past cooked a whole side of pork belly for a large gathering of people. But these days we lack the size of oven needed for such an enterprise, and, to be frank, the audience to entertain with it.

However, the technique is simple: place the piece of meat, with its scored skin upwards on a trivet or grill in a suitably-sized roasting dish or pan. Add a suitable alcoholic beverage to the pan: dry cider or dry white wine, so that it doesn't quite reach the meat. Oil and season the skin of the pork, cover the roasting pan/dish tightly with a tent of aluminium foil that doesn't contact the pork, and place in an oven pre-heated to around 230 degrees C. Turn the oven down immediately to around 140 and let it cook for the afternoon, checking occasionally. When you're getting close to needing the meat, uncover the pan/dish and return to the oven, turning it up to 230C. After half an hour, check on it and turn the dish/pan around. Once the skin/crackling is to your liking, take it out of the oven and rest the meat for at least twenty minutes to half an hour before carving and serving. You're absolutely guaranteed meltingly tender meat with crispy crackling, between which layers you will find strata of the most unctuous fats imaginable: well worth the wait and the investment of both your patience and your fuel.

Oh, and while I'm at it, the Greek style potatoes: make wedges, skin-on, out of baking potatoes cut into eighths, marinate them in the juice of half a lemon to two spuds, a generous gloop of good olive oil, two teaspoons of garlic paste [available from Asian supermarkets almost anywhere and totally invaluable], salt and pepper. Half an hour or more covered should suffice. Whack them into a hot oven and cook until nicely coloured, turning occasionally. No fuss, no bother; just great-tasting potatoes. There you go...