Pork and Pepperoni

The inspiration for this dish riffs pretty heavily on a post from Ideas in Food, I highly recommend getting them into your daily reading list, or hit them up on twitter. I actually have version two of this on the go now as I write, I’ve amped up the seasoning and am going to experiment a little more with the cooking and serving, so not really the same dish but this served as a springboard to push ideas further.

Counter to my last post about getting maximum comfort for little effort this post is really pushing things in the other direction, but holy heck is it worth it! It’ll take a little time and a little bit of investment of going to a butcher and getting a decent slab of pork belly, which may or may not be frozen, a supermarket is not going to have what you need, I’ve never seen a good three inch thick slab of belly at one, and quite frankly you’ll probably be paying twice the price. I ended up by chance at Preston's in town after doing my restock at Yan's Asian supermarket and they just happened to have a good deal going on frozen bellies, so $20 later and more than 2kg heavier, I left a happy chappy.

There is a bit to this but it’s not really all active, there is a lot of down time, so there are no stress about getting stuff done on time. You’re going to have to plan ahead a few days, so here is the rough break down.

• Defrost the belly if you have to, in the fridge.
• Cure the pork, 24 hours.
• Remove, rinse and dry the pork. Dust with white pepper and place on a rack uncovered in the fridge for 24 hours.
• Place in a roasting pan with the braising ingredients, cook for 8 hours at 120ºC.
• Sometime during that 8 hours make some cavatelli, which is about half an hours work.
• Remove and rest for half an hour, uncovered.
• Cook cavatelli and remove excess fat from the braising liquid, taste and season, combine.

So as you can see not really a whole lot of work, mostly down time, but it’s 56 hour investment of time, totally worth it I promise.

Ingredients
Pork belly, 2kg or so
Pepperoni
Bottle of red wine
Tomatoes, 2 cans crushed
White pepper
Cure mix

Cure mix
1 Part Sugar
1 Part Salt
Chilli powder
Garlic powder
Cumin powder
Bay leaf powder


Weigh the pork and work out what 2.5% of the total weight is, that is the weight of sugar and salt to use.


Score the pork deeply to the meat, rub the cure mix in and transfer to a zip lock bag, refrigerate for 24 hours, try to flip it once or twice during that time.


Remove the pork from the bag and rinse, pat dry, coat in white pepper and place on a rack on a pan. Put it back in the fridge for 24 hours.

Time to cook!

Place the pork in a roasting dish. Dice the whole pepperoni and scatter around, add in the tomatoes and the whole bottle of wine, I used a tasty Shiraz. Place the tray into an oven preheated at 120ºC. Set a timer for 8 hours and forget about it.


Well apart from the cavatelli you need to make. Just follow the recipe on this page, I subbed out roasted rye for wholemeal flour but rye would be pretty awesome here too.


Take the pork out of the oven and very carefully transfer it to a board. Pour the braising liquid into a pot and let it settle for a while, skim off any excessive fat as this will be a sauce, place it over a very low flame to keep warm.


Bring a pot of water to the boil and cook the cavatelli, drain and stir through the sauce, keep warm.
By now the pork should have rested for 30–45 minutes. Slice into thick slabs, cutting along the scores, serve with a generous spoon of cavatelli.

The best chicken gravy

This is a really simple sauce that takes no time at all to prepare and really brightens up a roast chicken meal, instead of that heavy gluggy gravy this is a bright sweet and sour sauce with the chicken drippings adding that unctuous roast gravy feel.


In a pot over a medium heat add a couple of tablespoons of sugar and a dash of water, slowly melt the sugar until it caramelises. How far you want to take it is up to you, I like quite a dark caramel.

Deglaze the pan with about the same amount of vinegar and let the sugar dissolve. Use something that will compliment the liquid you’ll add later, I used wine vinegar as I will add red wine, but if you were doing this for pork and wanted to use apple juice or cider, use a cider vinegar.

Add a generous glass of red wine and let the liquid reduce. If you want to add a herby note, now is the time to do it, with chicken I quite like to pop in thyme tied up in a bundle so it can be later removed easily.

Finally, once the roast has rested add the cooking/resting juices to the pan and reduce down again, season to taste and spoon over the served up roast.

Wine Cocktails

Hot summer days are always a good and easy excuse to get boozy, especially if it is ice cold and does a particularly good job at hiding how potent it is. One such drink that seems to crop up again and again in our household on particularly scorching days is the good old wine cocktail. The quantities below will comfortably fill a two litre jug and keep a small group happy and boozy.

1 Bottle still white wine
1 Bottle sparkling white wine (drier the better IMO)
250 ml Brandy
1 Orange sliced and frozen
1 Peach sliced and frozen
Pomegranate seeds and Strawberries to garnish

It's not rocket science, mix the whole lot together in a jug and then place a couple of sliced strawberries and generous amount of pomegranate seeds in each glass, pour, and oh yeah drink responsibly (no left overs).

Sangria Blanca

When there are no clouds in the sky and there is no escape from the heat, nothing beats a ice cold glass of Sangria Blanca. It has become my favourite drink this summer, not too alcoholic, not heavy like beer, and you can pretend it's kind of good for you (it's got fruit in it).

The best Sangria is made the day before, or at least a few of hours before you intend to drink it. Fill a jug two thirds full of wine (I like Sauvignon Blanc), slice up some fruit (nectarines, apricots, orange and lemon are good) and put in the jug, cover and chill.

When you're ready to drink, pour in ginger ale to fill up the jug (yes, wine and ginger ale, don't ask me why this works it just does).

Cottage pie

The line up for the stew, brown the shins, remove, then soften onion and carrot, deglaze with the red wine, add bay leaves, mustard Worcestershire sauce, paprika and thyme. Cook until done, you could do this in a slow cooker, oven, stove or pressure cooker.

Prepare the vege, I used some pickling onions just simply peeled, small mushrooms and a large dice of carrot.

Once the meat is falling off the bone tender, pull the meat out on to a board and pull in to large chucks. Make sure to push the marrow out of the bones (discard the bone). Strain the liquid, and start reducing it, make sure to taste it so you don't over reduce and can adjust the seasoning. Add the vege and meat to the liquid and cook till it's almost a glaze.


Pile the mixture in to a dish.


Spoon over some pea purée (which you'd obviously make while the above part is cooking), A dash of lemon, cooked peas, salt and pepper with a small amount of garlic whizzed up.


Mash potatoes with some butter and milk, season well.


Spread it on top of the peas and score with a fork.


Grate some cheese on top.


And either place under a grill until golden, or you could prepare the dish the day before and then bake until hot and golden.

Chicken and Red Wine

Alone at home for 2 weeks, and I hate preparing meals for one. I over do it for two.

I found a corn-fed free range chicken at the supermarket on the way home, well after spending about 15 minutes staring at the fish and meat and having no idea what i was going to do for myself. Finally I decided on chicken, I figured a quick and easy roast was the best option, plus I'd have left overs for the next night.


I pulled out the cider vinegar and olive oil, when half a bottle of merlot caught my eye. This changed everything. I didn't know exactly what I was going to do, I just knew it involved slicing a chicken in half and lots of wine.

Along with the wine I used thyme, paprika (hot and smoked), smoked salt (yes I am obsessed), bacon, onion, salt, pepper, olive oil, lemon, black olives (I really think those tinned 'Pelion' olives are best when roasting), sunchoke, 1/2 a bottle of wine, garlic and lemon zest.

Slice the onions, peel the sunchoke and put in acidulated water (to stop it discolouring), dice bacon, zest lemon, grate the garlic, slice lemon and get a few olives out(10ish). Oh and slice your chicken in half.


Place a pan on a medium heat and pour in a small amount of olive oil and place in the bacon (while pan is still cold, this helps to render out the fat). Wait until you hear a few pops and sizzles and then turn the heat up, wait until the fat has rendered out then add the onions and cook until softened.


Once the onions have softened add the herbs & spices, cook till aromatic.


Add the wine and reduce to about 1/3.


Spread out in a roasting pan and add the lemon slices.


Place the chicken halves on top, and rub in the garlic and lemon zest. Scatter the sunchoke and olives around the chicken. Finally cover with foil and cook at 180°C for about 30-40minutes depending on the size of your bird.


Once the cooking time is up uncover the dish making sure nothing sticks to the foil, place back in the oven for 10-20minutes depending on the size of the bird.


Once the skin is crisp and the bird is cooked, portion, serve, eat.

This is now my go to chicken dish with out a doubt, no longer is it a quick and easy roast with vege. It's falling off the bone tender, juicy, crispy skin, and a sauce that is awesomely rich.

A note on this would be to make sure your lemon is not too acidic or too big, the lemon can kill it, if in doubt use half a lemon.