The pork's a bit too pink!

So by now you've probably realised that no matter the mis-adventure, Lupo is never deterred from the kitchen and always willing to give it another go! So what did he give another go? Cooking roast pork for his friends.

Sugar vs salt? Not a problem - we've got that sorted now!

What was the issue this time? Being hungry and eager and not letting the pork cook for long enough! I suggested 3 hours. Lupo took it out at about 1.5 hours.

The result?

Beautifully cooked pork around the edge - rather pink and undercooked pork in the middle.

There was not food poisoning afterwards.

So, win-win really!

Recipe: Slow roasted pork belly

Here's a great, simple recipe for doing a slow roasted pork belly - yum! Simple recipes are the best!!!



Roast Pork Belly with Caramelised Onions
(Recipe source: Open Source Food)


This is a really simple recipe that gives you a great base for a meal with next to no effort - you just bung it in the oven and forget about it. As the pork cooks, it releases fat which caramelises the onions underneath it. I served the pork resting on a bed of the onions, with brussels sprouts on the side.


Ingredients

• 1 medium block of pork belly
• 1 large red onion, finely sliced
• glug of white wine
• rosemary or thyme sprigs (or both)
• 4 or 5 cloves of garlic, smashed whole
• salt, pepper, olive oil

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 230C.
2. Score the skin / fat of your pork with a very sharp knife. Season the skin generously with salt and pepper. Set aside to dry out a little.
3. Slice the onions very thinly. Create a "bed" of onions on the baking tray, to go underneath the pork (so don't spread them all out - you want the fat to drip down on them). Lay the herb sprigs and garlic on top of the bed of onions and season with a little salt and pepper.
4. Lay the pork on top of the onion-herb bed. Drizzle generously with olive oil, to cover the pork skin. Pour white wine around the onions. Put in the oven for about an hour. You'll need to keep checking it throughout, to make sure the skin isn't burning or the liquid hasn't all gone - if things are looking a bit dry add more wine. Adjust temperature and cooking time until the pork is done to your liking.
5. Remove pork and IMPORTANT! let it rest for about 10 mins. This will make it easier to carve. You can put the onions back in the oven to cook more if you like.
6. Carve and serve!

This guy suggests using white wine to line the bottom of the pan - you can use water too if you're not a fan of wine.  It helps prevent the onion from burning - which I always find happening when I use my industrial baking dish!!! Otherwise, I just keep the pork on a baking rack and let the juices drip into the pan - it's healthier this way, so I tell myself!


I also reduce the oven temperature to ~180 degrees celsius after the first 20 minutes and slow roast it for awhile (up to 3 hours, depending on the size of your piece of pork!). And I omit the pepper from the recipe - just a personal preference!


But I think my number one tip would be to buy the pork belly from a good butcher! They are often more than happy to score the skin for you too :-)

Sugar roasted pork

Ah, the sugar roasted pork. Wasn't this one a gem? So we both absolutely love roast pork, especially roast pork belly... yum!! Slow roasted pork belly, apple sauce with a touch of cinnamon, a few roast vegies (sweet potatoes normally feature)... mmmmmmmm.

Anyway, the first time we invited Lupos' friends over for dinner it was on a week night. So, no time for me to rush home and cook. Having decided doing roast pork, I gave Lupo instructions on how to do it all. My instructions where:
- Score the skin of the pork
- Rub a generous amount of salt into the skin
- Put it in the oven...

I'd even made a note to say that the salt was in the smallest container. Why? Well, we have our salt, sugar, corn flour and other white colour things in matching containers that vary in size. The funniest thing is to always see Lupo taste testing the salt or sugar, to see if it's salt or sugar.

So, back to the roast pork night. I came home, around 5:30 or 6pm, and could smell something sweet in the air.  My first thought was, 'Wow, Lupo's done the roast pork AND found time to bake a cake!', immediately followed by, 'Lupo doesn't know how to bake a cake.' So I walked down the hallway and into the kitchen and the first thing I noticed sitting on the kitchen table was the sugar. Hmmm... Then I peeked into the oven and noticed the entire top layer of the pork was black! BLACK!!!

So at this stage I'm freaking out. Coz we have people arriving in about an hour and we have nothing to serve them except for black roast pork. Meanwhile, I'm screeching at Lupo and saying, "What did you do? How hot did you have the oven? Didn't you check up on it? Couldn't you smell the burning????" And he's like, "No, I just put it in the oven like you told me to..." Then! I said (or screamed), "Did you use the sugar?" And he's like, "No, the salt." And so then I point that the container full of sugar and say, "That's sugaaaarrrr!!!!!"

Oops.

After I calmed down, I had another looking at the black, roast pork and decided that the meat was probably still ok and that it was probably only the skin that was burnt. So we left it and hoped for the best.

Lupo's friends came over. We took the roast pork out. Took off the black, black skin (it lifted off quite easily!) and the meat underneath was PERFECT! Juicy, tender and very, very yummy. The only sad bit about it was the fact that we didn't have any crackling to go with it :(

Anyway, it made a great dinner table story for the night and it still pops up every now and again as one of those stories. Hehe.

Later that night, Lupo confided in me that the method he adopted to put the salt (i.e. sugar) over the skin was as follows:
- place the pork on the tray
- pour a copious amount of salt (i.e. sugar) all over the pork (and let it spill all over the sides and all over the table and the floor)
- lift the tray out of the baking dish
- pour the excess salt (i.e. sugar) from the baking dish into the sink
- put the tray back in the baking dish

The reason why he admitted this to me was 'coz I queried why there were so many salt (i.e. sugar) granules all over the kitchen.