I GOTTA SAY IT WAS A GOOD DAY

She saved her nickels — it sure adds up
Now she’s got ‘em in a paper cup

It was HS who suggested that some Roast Pork for Sunday lunch might be nice. I dutifully made my way down to Borough Market on Saturday before the hordes had arrived to see what looked good.

Our Pork joint of choice is Loin but today day they all looked a bit lean. Then I spotted a Rolled Shoulder. It looked to have plenty of fat and enough skin to make some good crackling.

The night before I cooked it I dried the skin and rubbed in plenty of salt. I chopped up some sage, lemon zest and a little garlic and stuffed this into the joint at various points. In the morning I dried the skin off again – the salt having drawn out some moisture – and rubbed some oil in and more table salt. I finished off with some coarser sea salt. After coming to room temperature the joint went into a hot oven for about thirty minutes then I turned the over down to medium and basically left it alone for about four hours. In the meantime we drank a rather fine chilled Manzanilla with Almonds and Anchovy Olives.

After the joint was cooked I let it rest for a bit while I made a little gravy with some decent Cider. There was an Apple Sauce and some veggies on the side and a bottle of St Aubin to help it all down.

I haven’t had a Shoulder of Pork for a long, long time and it was a revelation. The meat was very dark, quite unlike the usual pale colour of Roast Pork. It came more in chunks than slices which is fine by me. The flavour, somewhat predictably, was fantastic. The fat had had kept the meat moist but had rendered off so that the taste was quite clean. We had no trouble in finishing off all but a small bowlful of the two and half kilo behemoth. HS declared the crackling some of the best he had eaten which if you know him is high praise indeed. Some sort of success then.

A DOS HERMANO SUNDAY

I was scrapin' bottom
Gropin' in the dark

For one reason or another it’s been a while since I’ve had a typical Dos Hermanos Sunday and even though HS wasn’t available I decided to put things to right today.

First a leisurely walk to Apostrophe for my usual double Macchiato and Cinnamon Swirl followed by a brief wander around the markets in the areas between Spitalfields and Brick Lane.

There are a number of new restaurants being built this year the most notable of which are The Luxe from John Torode and The Bouchon Breton. Less notably there will also be branches of Gourmet Burger Kitchen , Wagamama (groan), and La Tasca (please kill me now). And with that Spitalfields will be well and truly Covent Garden’d.

A swift walk home, The Dan on the stereo and fix myself a Beefeater Dry Martini. I’d shoved all the fixings and stemware in the freezer before going out so everything was good and cold. Nothing worse than a warm DM.

The meat of the day was a Loin of Pork from Northfield Farm in Borough Market. Like cooking steak I’ve got my procedure down pat so it’s pretty failsafe.

First make sure the skin is scored properly – they sometimes don’t do it properly in the butchers. Dry the skin with some kitchen towel and massage a bit of Olive Oil in. Apply a sprinkling of fine table salt that will get in the cracks and rub that in as well. Add final sprinkling of coarser Maldon Sea Salt. I sometimes sprinkle some crushed fennel seeds or juniper berries on as well.

I usually poke holes in between the fat and the flesh and poke in some sage and shreds of garlic but this time I just rested the joint on a bunch of sage and some crushed cloves of garlic. I bunched up some foil to get the skin level so that it crisped evenly.

Following the teachings of St. Hugh of Fearnley-Whittingstall, the patron saint of meat and meat products – the joint went into a hot oven (220C) to get the crackling going then the heat was turned down to about 160C for the rest of the cooking time. Followed by plenty of rest, of course (not for me - for the joint, stupid).

Meanwhile I made a Bramley Apple Sauce which I do without sugar - I like the tartness - but to which I added some shredded sage, cloves and crushed cardamom.

For my greens I had a packet of Pimientos de Padron knocking around (as one does) which made the meal somewhat Iberian.

And that was it. A nice Rioja to go with the pork and some English Strawberries to pick at. A little aguardiente (don’t mid if I do) followed to aid digestion. Perfect, really.