Jane-Anne’s Perfect Pork Belly
I first tasted pork belly care of über chef Pete Goffe Wood and well, ever since that London Christmas ten million years ago i’ve been smitten! Pork belly is one of those dishes that can be served all fancy like with a whole lot of trimmings or smashed on a board with plenty of Maldon, mustard and a sweet relish or two, for people to pick off the board. This recipe comes from Jane-Anne Hobbs, she of the Scrumptious blog, which as i’ve said before is certainly one of the best food blogs around. Jane-Anne goes to the ends of the earth to research and test and taste and the results are always superlative. This recipe for slow roasted pork belly actually belongs to her uncle Dave, but let’s not let semantics get in the way.
This is the kind if dish i’d serve if we had a bunc of people over for the rugby – but i’d also serve it with a crisp salad as Jane suggests on a lazy Sunday afternoon – kids in the pool and grub on the table.
Dave’s Pork Belly
1 large pork belly, bone in (about 2 kg, or enough for 8; see Cook’s Notes)
¾ cup (180 ml) olive oil
10 bay leaves, dried or fresh
8 cloves garlic, peeled
milled black pepper
1 Tbsp (15 ml) salt
Score the skin of the belly, not too deeply, into a narrow diamond pattern using a very sharp knife or the blade of a sturdy craft knife. If you’re not confident about this, ask your butcher to do it. A few hours before you cook the belly, put the olive oil, bay leaves and garlic into a food processor and whizz to a fairly coarse paste (don’t add any salt). Brush the mixture all over the scored skin, pressing it well into the cuts. Grind over plenty of black pepper. Cover with clingfilm and let it stand for 2–3 hours.
Heat the oven to 170 °C. Place the belly, skin side up, directly onto the middle rack of the oven, and put a roasting pan underneath it to collect the fat. Roast for 3 hours with the oven fan off, and without letting the temperature go above 170 °C (or the skin will crackle prematurely).
After 3 hours the belly will be soft, juicy and well cooked. Fifteen minutes before you want to eat, take the joint out of the oven and use kitchen paper to wipe any oily puddles and bay-leaf paste off the top of the skin. Sprinkle the skin liberally with flaky sea salt.
Turn the top grill of the oven to its highest setting and wait until it is glowing red. Adjust the rack on which you cooked the pork so the skin is about 15 cm below the grill. Within a minute or two the skin will begin to spit and sputter as it forms crackling: watch it like a hawk to make sure it is not burning.
If it shows any signs of catching, turn the grill down a little, or move the rack down a notch, but don’t remove the pork from the oven. When the crackling is a deep golden-brown and crunchy all over (this will take 8–10 minutes), take the belly out of the oven, put it on a carving board and take it to the table. Serve with apple sauce, a light potato salad and green salad.
Serves 8.
Recipe courtesy of Random House Struik
Cook’s Notes
Order, well in advance, a large slab of top-quality pork belly from your butcher; supermarket pork bellies are of indifferent quality and always too small. If you’re throwing caution to the winds, put some parboiled potatoes in the dish underneath the belly an hour or so before you serve it, where they will roast to golden and fatty perfection
