A favourite Sunday lunch, slow roasted pork belly

Of all the roasts, this is probably my favourite.  I know it's very fatty, but slow roasting reduces the fat by quite a bit and leaves to meat tasty and melting in the mouth.  Most of the cooking fat is simply thrown away, but it's essential to use some of the cooking juices for the flavour.  Best of all is the wonderful crackling :-)

Ingredients

2-3 ribs of pork belly per person depending on appetite, skin scored

1 tablespoon cumin seeds

1 teaspoon black peppercorns

½ teaspoon of salt

5 cloves of garlic

5 or 7 sprigs of fresh thyme

1 large carrot

1 large or 2 small onions

Salt and pepper to taste

1 large old potato per person

1 small brown onion per person

600ml chicken stock

125ml white wine

A handful of curly kale per person, tough central stalk removed
2 large teaspoons cornflour

Method

Preheat the oven to 200°C.  Dry fry the cumin seeds and black peppercorns in a non stick pan over  medium heat until they release the flavour.

Add the seeds to a mortar with the salt. Pick the leaves off the thyme and add them to the mortar, then crush the garlic cloves and add these too.  Grind the mix together until it's a paste.

Peel the carrot and the onion, chop into medium chunks and add them to a roasting tray so you can rest the meat on them.

Prepare the meat by washing and drying thoroughly, then coat the underside of the meat with the herb and spice mixture and add it to the roasting tray skin side up on top of the onion and carrot.  Now add a liberal amount of salt to the skin, cover the meat with aluminium foil and place in the oven.

Peel the potatoes and onions and slice them thickly (1 cm slices is perfect) and add them to a second roasting tray.  At this stage I add a couple of cloves of garlic sliced thinly but this is optional.  Add a sprinkle of salt and a good few grindings of black pepper and mix the potatoes, onion and garlic together.  Pour the chicken stock over the mixture and set to one side.

After 30 minutes, take the meat out of the oven and check to see if the carrots and onions are starting to brown, if not then put the meat back and leave for another 10 minutes. When the carrot and onion is browning, turn the heat down to 150°C, take the meat off and scrape the cumin and peppercorn mix off the bottom into the roasting tray.  Now place the meat on top of the potato and onion mix and put it back in the oven for 3 hours.

Meanwhile, make the sauce.  Drain the fat from the roasting pan keeping the juices. De glaze the roasting pan with the white wine to get off as much of the roasting juices as possible - you may need to add a little water to this. After 1½ hours of cooking, decant off about 200ml of the stock and roasting juice mixture from the oven  and add this to the sauce.  Turn the heat to medium under the sauce and start reducing the sauce to concentrate the flavour.  As you cook more vegetables, add 100-200ml of the cooking water to the sauce when you drain them to add more flavour.

When the 3 hours is up, take the meat out of the oven, put it on a warmed plate and cover with foil to rest it.  At this point, if the potatoes and onions still have a lot of liquid, add it to the sauce leaving about ½cm in the bottom of the tin.  The potato and onion mixture should be nicely browned on top, if it isn't turn the oven up to maximum and put the mix on the top shelf to crisp it off.

Cut the skin off the meat and brown it under a hot grill to make the crackling.  I find the best results are to put the grill pan on the bottom of the shelf leaving a 10cm gap between the element and the skin otherwise the crackling will burn in some parts but won't be cooked in others.

Meanwhile cook the kale for no more than 2 minutes in boiling water, drain and keep warm. Mix the cornflour with a little water and add this to the sauce to thicken, season to taste and keep the sauce warm.

Carve the pork and plate up, add a spoonful or two of the potato and onion mixture, a little cracking and some kale and serve with the sauce and a glass or wine.  I prefer white with pork, but read works equally well!