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Sunday 26 December 2010

Roast Pork (and its remnants)

There are three parts to this recipe which make it interesting 1) the trivet 2) the crackling and potatoes and 3) the gravy.
  1. A trivet keeps the meat off the bottom of the roasting pan and are usually metal, this one is edible. Use root vegetables, possibly onion (will be strong), herbs and garlic under your roast to catch the juice from the meat. Once the meat is cooked, take the trivet out of the pan, remove the garlic skin and blend the whole lot and add it to your gravy. If you don't want the floury texture of the potato, blend everything else and eat the spuds.
  2. Before you start roasting, pat dry the meat and rub sage salt into it. When the meat is cooked, remove the skin as a whole piece with a knife and place on a rack above your roasting potatoes and crank the temperature to 220C. Pour the remaining fat from the roasting pan over the potatoes as well and baste occasionally. To achieve perfect potatoes, cut the potatoes in half length wise and place flat side down, roast without turning and baste.
  3. Place the pan on the stove top over a medium heat, add a couple of teaspoons of sugar to the tray and allow it caramelise before deglazing. In this case I used cranberry juice to deglaze. It was great. Once you have deglazed the pan, pour the contents into a saucepan, its easier.
2kg rolled pork loin roast
1-2tbs sage salt
X amount of medium sized potato
2 carrot
6 garlic cloves
1 cup cranberry juice
2 tsp sugar
1 cup white wine
1 cup stock
1 tbs minced parsley


Preheat oven to 250C. Pat down the pork with paper towelling and rub the sage salt all over. Create a trivet by arranging 2 halved potatoes, 2 halved carrots and 6 garlic cloves (all oiled) in the middle of the roasting pan, making sure that the garlic is in the middle or it will burn. Place the pork on top and put in the oven for 20 minutes at 250C the reduce the temperature to 180C. Roast for a further 1 hour 40. With 45 minutes to go, place as many potatoes halved and oiled as you need, cut side down onto another roasting tray and put in oven. Roast potatoes for an hour.
When the meat is ready, remove from oven, carefully take off skin in one piece and place on a plate, cover with foil and place somewhere warm or cover with a tea towel. Put the skin on the oven tray over the roasting potatoes and pour over any pork fat over the potatoes. Increase the temperature to 200C for the remaining roasting time.
To make the gravy, remove the trivet and blend. Put the roasting pan over a medium heat, sprinkle some sugar over the pan, allow to caramelise, deglaze with cranberry juice, scrapping up any browned bits. Pour into a saucepan adding the wine, stock and trivet blend. Reduce over a medium heat to your desired consistency. Pour any of the resting juice into the saucepan. Just before serving, add in the parsley.

The remnants:

The following day, reheat over a medium-low heat any remaining gravy and thin out slightly with either water or more cranberry juice. Crack in as many eggs as will fit, poaching until just cooked and serve on toast. Sounds gross but it is amazing.

The left over meat is great with Jarlsberg cheese, mushroom and porcini salt on a toasted sandwich.

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