Mouthwatering pork belly, mustard mash and greens
1st Jan 2015 Recipes
This is a favourite dinner-party recipe. The individual, gastropub-style squares of pork belly look so impressive, but they couldn’t be easier to cook. Here's how to rustle up this dish to impress eight of your friends.
Ingredients:
- 2–2.5kg pork belly, boned, skin intact and finely scored
- 4 carrots, rough dice
- 2 onions, rough dice
- 1 fennel bulb, rough dice
- 2 bay leaves
- 1tbsp peppercorns
- 45g butter
- 45g flour
- Lemon
- Vegetable or chicken stock, to cover (2 litres, depending on size of roasting tin)
- 1.5kg (King Edward, Maris Piper, Desiree), peeled and rough dice
- 75g butter
- 100ml milk or cream
- 4tbsps grainy mustard
- Spring greens
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 150°C. Place the pork belly, skin-side up, in a roasting tin and scatter the carrots, onion, fennel, bay leaves and peppercorns round the edge.
- Bring home-made stock up to a simmer. If you’re using shop-bought stock cubes, then make it weaker than pack instructions—it will be too salty otherwise, and there are plenty of vegetables to boost the flavour during cooking.
- Pour the stock over the pork belly so it’s covered, roast at 150°C for three hours. Remove and set to one side, leaving the belly and stock to cool in the pan for 45 minutes.
- Lift the pork belly out of the roasting pan and place it, skin-side down, on a tray. Put a chopping board on top of it with something heavy on top (e.g. kitchen weights, tins of tomatoes) to press the belly. Refrigerate for anywhere from 2 hours to overnight. Meanwhile, strain the stock and also refrigerate until it’s needed.
- Preheat the oven to 200°C.
- Put on the potatoes to boil. Once they’re cooked, drain and mash with the butter, milk or cream and mustard.
- To finish the pork belly, put it skin-side down on a board and cut it into eight squares. Rub a pinch of salt into the skin and cook the squares, skin-side down, for 20–25 minutes until the fat is melting and the skin is crisp and golden.
- To make a gravy, heat the butter in a pan, add the flour and cook for 1 minute on a low heat until it’s a deep straw colour. Add a ladle at a time of the strained juices that the pork was cooked in, stirring constantly until you have a smooth consistency. Taste and then season with a squeeze of lemon, salt and pepper. Tip into a warmed gravy jug.
- Blanch the spring greens in boiling water, toss with the butter and pinch of salt, and tip into a warmed dish.
- Plate up each portion by putting a scoop of mustard mash in the middle of a warmed plate and place a pork-belly square on top. Put the gravy and spring greens on the table so everyone can serve themselves.