thebigfatnoodle

Slow cooked rolled roast pork with a sage, bacon and cranberry stuffing (serves up to 10 people)

Ingredients

1 piece of unscored pork belly, measuring roughly 40cm by 30cm

Stuffing mixture

1 – 1 ½ cups breadcrumbs

12 – 15 fresh sage leaves, chopped

1 cup dried cranberries (feel free to substitute with apricots, dates or prunes)

6 rashers of streaky bacon, sliced

50 grams of slightly salted butter

½ to 1 teaspoon of coarsely ground black pepper

In a bowl, put all of the ingredients and using your hand, mush them all together to form a loose stuffing (it won’t really bind together but don’t worry)

Spread the stuffing mixture along the centre of your pork belly, leaving a 2-3 cm gap free of stuffing from each end (the stuffing will naturally be pushed out to the edge when you start rolling)

Roll up your pork belly and tie it up – I normally start in the middle to hold it all together and then work outwards, with each tie roughly about an inch apart.

When you’re ready to roast the pork, sprinkle sea salt all over the top. Preheat oven to 160 degrees and cook on the middle shelf for 4 hours.

Allow to rest for at least 20-30 minutes before carving.

Apple sauce

4 large cooking apples

2 tablespoons of pickled ginger (I like using the Japanese pink pickled ginger)

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

50 grams butter

2 tablespoons of water

1 pinch of salt

Put all your ingredients into a large saucepan and over a medium heat, cook out your apples. Adjust your apple sauce to taste with salt/sugar/vinegar.

Ketchup

25 tomatoes (a mix of plum and cherry tomatoes which we’d grown)

1 teaspoon of each (ground in a mortar & pestle): cumin seeds, fennel seeds, coriander seeds

1 teaspoon oregano

1 bay leaf

2 star anise

2 teaspoons white/malt vinegar

2 teaspoons sugar

2 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon black pepper

250mls water

Cook your tomatoes, uncovered, for an hour on a gentle simmer

Pass through a sieve and cook again on a gentle simmer until you’re happy with the consistency. Season with more salt/sugar/pepper to taste if necessary

Reheat when you’re ready to serve