Roast Pork

From my other blog

(posted originally on Wednesday, October 08, 2008)

Ingredients
1.5kg piece of Belly pork, skin on
1 tablespoon sichuan peppercorns
1 tbsp black peppercorns
1 tbsp white peppercorns
1 teaspoon salt (adjust to taste)
2 teaspoons Chinese five-spice powder
2 teaspoons fine sugar

2 tbsp coarse salt for roasting/drying the skin

Directions
Spike or score the skin with a fine skewer or sharp knife as many times as you can, piercing the fat but not going so deep as to pierce the meat. Then pour about 1-2pints of boiling water over the skin & then dry well.

[A sharp knife works well. Skewering is a bit difficult unless you have a sharp pick or s special utensil with multiple spikes.]

Making the dry-rub
Heat a dry, heavy-based frying pan over a high heat & add the three peppercorns & dry fry until you can smell the aroma. Turn off the heat and add the five-spice powder onto the hot pan to toast. I also add about a tbsp of chilli powder to toast, but this is optional.

In small batches, add peppercorns to a pestle & mortar & bash the hell out of them until you get a coarse grind then add to a bowl with the salt, five -spice powder & sugar. And chilli powder if using.


[I like this bit. Dry-frying the peppercorns caused the pepper corns to give out a wonderful aroma.  

The dry-rub is for the meat. If you do not want to go to this much trouble (toasting and bashing the peppercorn), you could just use ground pepper, sugar, salt, and five-spice, or just a simpler dry rub (salt and five-spice). Or no dry-rub if you like your roast simple.]


Turn the pork flesh side up & rub in the dry-rub/spice mixture & then set aside somewhere cool for a few hrs or overnight. [You don't have to use a ziplock bag, but it was what I used.]


Preheat the oven to 200degC/400degF/gas mark 6. Turn the pork skin side up and place on a rack, resting on top of a roasting tin of water. (See picture below. The small container has hot water.)

[I "rubbed" coarse salt into the skin before roasting for about 30 minutes, then removed the salt. This helps to dry the skin which is important for the skin to be crispy. See picture. The coarse salt just sits on top of the skin. I used foil to "fence" the salt in and prevent the grains from rolling off.]

Tip: The skin side may curve leaving some parts farther from the heat and resulting in uneven roasting (and crisping). To prevent this, you can use long metal skewers to straighten the meat, or placed the meat in a roasting pan, and use bunched up foil to raise any drooping portions.
Roast the pork for 15 - 30 mins & then remove the coarse salt, and lower the oven temp to 180degC/350degF/gas mark 4 & roast for a further 2hrs, topping up the water in the roasting tin when it starts to get low, so keep checking the level of water as you do not want it to run dry.

After the 2hrs of roasting, check if the skin has crisped. If not, increase the oven temp once more to 230degC/ 450degF/ gas mark 8 and continue to roast the pork for a further 15mins until the skin is crisp. If parts are crisp well other parts are not, use foil to cover the crisped portions to prevent burning as you try to crisp the rest of the skin. When most if not all the skin is crisp, remove from the oven & leave to cool, this dish is best served warm.


[The final bit of crisping the skin could have been done better as the skin blackened in some parts. I used an aluminium foil to protect the skin after removing the coarse salt crystals, removing it only in the last 10 minutes to let it crisp. At that point watch the oven regularly and intervene at the first sign of smoke. :-)]

This is really good when it's served still warm from the oven (within 2 hours of roasting).