After an extended vacation....the Pickled Gherkin returns!

Welcome back to the Pickled Gherkin blog! After an extended break, I promise to update you lovely readers with much more frequent posts and recipe ideas!

So tonight I am roasting pork belly, with patate al forno (italian - roast potatoes) and carrots, and a really easy sticky toffee pudding for pudding. A great meal to get in the mood for Christmas!
The pork isn't complicated, but it does involve a bit of preparation. Here is a photo of the pork prepared for marinating:

To make the pork belly:
18cm of rosemary
1 large garlic clove
2 teaspoons of fennel seeds
a large pinch crushed dried chilies
1 tablespoon black pepper corns
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tsps good sea salt
pork belly - for 4-5 people, 2 pieces of pork belly in a packet from the supermarket will be enough.
2 onions (see below)
roasting dish with a rack for the pork to sit on.
3 tbsp red wine
1 tsp flour
Potatoes
Carrots

To prepare the meat:
In a pestle and mortar, crush the fennel seeds, peppercorns and chilies together. Then add the garlic clove and the pieces of rosemary and crush them all together - followed by the salt and olive oil, to make a paste. Put the pork on a plate skin side down, and make some shallow cuts in the pork flesh. Push the paste into these cuts and all over the surface of the meat. Cover with clingfilm and put in the fridge for an hour or two, or overnight.

To cook the meat:
Preheat the oven to 160 degrees.
Halve and slice thinly the onions and place these at the bottom of a roasting dish. Pour 500ml of water over the onions. - see photo below.

Place the rack on top, and put the meat skin side up onto the rack - see photo. Rub olive oil and salt into the skin. Place this in the oven and put the timer on for 2 1/4 hours.

When the meat has been cooking about an hour, peel some potatoes and cut them into thick pieces and par boil them in water on the stove. Once they are soft enough that you can put a knife into them, but not completely done, drain them and put them in a roasting pan. Pour over some olive oil, followed by a chopped garlic clove and rosemary and put them in the oven with the pork. Remember the oven is on a low heat, so the potatoes need longer than usual (I nearly forgot this).

Carrots - this is my mum's wonderfully simple recipe, but such a good way to cook carrots. Peel the carrots and cut them into pieces. In a heavy based saucepan, heat up olive oil and a finely chopped garlic clove, and when the oil is hot add the carrots. Stir so that the carrots are coated in oil - and put the lid on with a medium heat. Et voila, just leave them to cook! They only need about 20 minutes so if the meat isn't going to be done, then what I did was I turned the heat right off but left them on the stove, and they continued to cook slowly. You want to be eating them slightly al dente. If you have thyme, that would be nice to add.

When the timer goes for the pork - take the pork out, and turn the oven up to 230 degrees. (Leave the potatoes in - this helps to crisp them up). Remove the onions from the bottom of the roasting pan and put into a saucepan to make the gravy. Put the pork back in the oven on a high shelf for another 15 minutes. This isn't rocket science, but its important to keep an eye on it - you don't want to over cook the tender pork, but you do want to crisp up the skin for good crackling. Timing is pretty accurate so it should work. I found that the potatoes were done about 5 minutes before the meat.
To make the gravy - heat up the saucepan with the onions in it - add 3 tablespoons of red wine, stir, add 1 tsp flour and 250ml of water and let it come to the boil. This takes the amount of time the meat is in the oven. The recipe said to sieve the gravy, but I didn't, as I wanted to leave the onions in.

I hope you enjoy the photos and are inspired to cook this rather inexpensive and simple dish to make! Enjoy with some good red wine.

Easy sticky toffee pudding - this is a Nigella recipe and is very simple. All the ingredients are store cupboard ingredients except for probably the dates. I prepared this whilst the meat was cooking, to then put in the oven when the meat came out.

100g dark muscavado sugar
175 self raising flour
1 egg
125ml milk
vanilla extract
50g butter, melted
200g dates, chopped

For the sauce:
200g dark muscavado sugar
500ml boiling water
25g butter

Butter a 2 litre pudding bowl (I used a loaf tin). Combine the flour and 100g sugar. In a separate bowl combine the milk, egg, vanilla and melted butter. Add this to the flour and sugar.  Then add the chopped dates. Pour this into the tin. It won't look very full, but don't worry! Now sprinkle the 200g of sugar over the top of the mixture, followed by the 25g butter chopped into squares. I then left the pudding like this, and when it was ready to go in to oven, I poured over 500ml of boiling water. (yes this sounds strange, but it works!). Cook for 45 minutes, and serve with creme fraiche. Yum!!
Here is a photo of the pudding before I poured the water over it to go in the oven:

Thank you for reading! More food coming soon!