Roast pork, anyone?

What I have learned about porcine perfection

<First appeared in The Sunday Times Ireland in September 2024>

It has been a long time coming, and we’re not there yet, but it looks like we’re going to have two cucumbers grown out of doors. Yes, even having had a pretty miserable excuse for a Summer, the two surviving plants, in a large pot of mainly manure, have each produced a fruit. And there may be a couple more, weather permitting.

I suspect what has helped this unexpected outcome – we lived more in hope than expectation – is being tucked in a warm corner, facing South. The cucumbers, as is the way with the less tender varieties, are decidedly prickly so peeling will be advised. I suspect we can pick within the next few days

(The cucumbers were very good to eat but very small. I shall try again next year, for sure.)

Balancing this good news has been the realisation that I completely forgot to sow leeks this year. This is going to leave a considerable hole in the Winter vegetable repertoire and we will doubtless have to have shameful recourse to bought leeks for the first time in years. I wouldn’t mind so much, but I had three packets of seed. Three!

I took some solace in turning to a free range pork roast from Glenbrook Farm by way of our local butcher’s, the excellent Fitzgerald’s in Fermoy (who also sell some very decent wines). I was determined to get the crackling just right and to keep the flesh moist, quite a balancing act and, more often than not, I’ve ended up with meat that was just too dry.

There have been times, too, when the crackling has gone to extremes: either leathery or so crisp and hard that fillings and crowns are put in extreme danger.

So, I took my 1 kilo roast (there are only two of us here these days), on the bone (the skin having been professionally scored) and set about cooking it. Leafing through no fewer than a dozen trusty cookbooks, I was none the wiser as to how to get it just right. For a start, few dealt with joints on the bone; and those that did were at odds with each other.

The Good Housekeeping Step-by-Step Cook Book (1983) advises us to cook such a joint at 220ºC until your meat thermometer reads 93ºC. That way dryness lies, I expect. In the 1950s, Constance Spry was recommending a “moderate oven” (meaning, I think, around 180ºC) for 35 minutes per pound and advises rubbing the skin with olive oil.

At least there was some online consensus as to the internal temperature that should be reached. Well, up to a point. I decided to aim for 75ºC. I pre-heated the oven to 220ºC and, having taken the meat out of the fridge two hours before cooking, made sure the skin was thoroughly dry and rubbed it first with olive oil and then with some fine sea salt.

The joint spent between 20 and 25 minutes at 220ºC at which point the crackling was, well, crackling along nicely, at which stage the oven temperature was dropped to 200ºC. After just shy of an hour in the oven the thermometer hit the desired temperature and the meat was rested, uncovered of course, for 15 minutes.

It was the best cooked piece of pork that I’ve ever managed and the crackling had the perfect  texture: crisp but crumbling. The flesh was cooked through but juicy. Now, the question is, can I replicate it? Pride before a fall.

A big part of my success on this occasion was the quality of the meat. It had proper skin and proper fat beneath, and the joint was not oozing liquid. It was perfectly dry. The olive oil and the sea salt could work their magic without the meat steaming away. Wet meat is an abomination.

Thanks to a tip from my GP of all people, we have found a good supply of fish in Fermoy on Fridays where a food truck parks outside Toss Bryan’s hardware store. And thanks to this outlet we have discovered smoked hake, firmer and meatier than our usual smoked haddock. Poached, along with an egg, and dished up with crumbled black pudding, it makes a fine dish.

Now that I have the mice under control – I think – in the polytunnel I need to make an Autumn sowing of peas. You need an early variety for this, the best of which is Meteor but I have a couple of packets of Kelvedon Wonder, a very slightly later variety, and I’ll stick with that.

It’s worth making an Autumn sowing outside if you want an early crop but do keep an eye out for mice and pigeons which can destroy a whole sowing in a day or two. In the tunnel, this crop will be ready at end of April, outside you will be picking in May.

Coriander is another one for sowing inside at this stage. The advantage over earlier sowings, I find, is that it’s slower to run to flower, coriander’s invariable Summer habit. We have basil coming up in pots in the kitchen at the moment as it’s far too tender even for the tunnel once the frosts come. Parsley, of course, is as tough as old boots and, if you give it a bit of freedom, it’s a prolific self-seeder. Our sage needs to be replaced, with bought plants or cuttings cadged from friends, rather than sowing. The sage bush had given of its all for over a decade and had been declining for the past year or two; that’s a good innings for this woody herb.

The conventional wisdom is that sage is the herb for pork, rosemary for lamb. Well, as we are sageless at present, that roast pork was cooked with a big fistful of rosemary and it tasted so at home. Tradition doesn’t always get it right.

<wine>

A taste of something a bit different here from the Agiorkito grape in the form of Specially Selected Nemea 2018 (€9.99, Aldi) from the Peloponnese, in sight of Homer’s wine dark sea (okay, that’s strictly the Cyclades). It’s rich with berry fruits, a touch of ripe plum and a subtle seasoning of oak delivering a hint of vanilla that goes very well with Agiorkito’s trademark dark chocolate. The extra bottle age means that it's beautifully evolved, so there’s quite a lot going on here. It’s made for meat, especially lamb, but my perfect match for it was a moussaka made with minced beef.