Great meals for wintertime:
Pork Belly Recipe from Jamie Oliver:
Ingredients
• 1.5kg pork belly (roughly 3lbs)
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2 red onions, halved
• 2 carrots, peeled and halved lengthways
• 2 sticks of celery, chopped in half
• 1 bulb of garlic, skin on, broken into cloves
• a small bunch of fresh thyme, leaves picked
• 600ml water or stock
Serves 4
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 2.5 hours
Preheat your oven to full whack, it needs to be at least 220°C/425°F/gas 7.
Place your pork on a clean work surface, skin-side upwards. Get yourself a small sharp knife
and make scores about a centimetre apart through the skin into the fat, but not so deep that
you cut into the meat. Rub salt right into all the scores you’ve just made, pulling the skin apart a little if you have to. Brush any excess salt off the surface of the skin and turn it over. Season the underside of the meat with a little more salt and a little black pepper. Place your pork, skin side-up, in a roasting tray big enough to hold the pork and the vegetables, and place in the hot oven.
Roast for about half an hour until the skin of the pork has started to puff up and you can see
it turning into crackling. Turn the heat down to 180°C/350°F/gas 4 and roast for another hour.
Take out of the oven and baste with the fat in the bottom of the tray. Carefully lift the pork up and transfer to a chopping board. Add all the veg, garlic and thyme to the tray and stir them into the fat. Place the pork on top of everything and pop the tray back in the oven. Roast for another hour. By this time the meat should be meltingly soft and tender. Carefully move the meat to a serving dish, cover with tin foil and leave to rest while
you make your gravy.
Spoon away any fat in the tray, then add the water or stock and place the tray on the hob.
Bring to the boil and simmer for a few minutes, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon to
scrape up all those lovely sticky tasty bits on the bottom of the tray. When you’ve got a nice, dark gravy, pour it through a sieve into a bowl or gravy boat, using your spoon to really push all the goodness of the veg through the sieve. Add a little more salt and pepper if it needs it. Serve the pork with the crackling, gravy, some creamy mashed potato, nice fresh greens and a dollop of English mustard
Notes:
I decided to pour the gravy into the serving dish with the pork belly to keep it moist. Just before serving I cut up the pork belly because the skin can get pretty hard. Overall, this recipe is a definite keeper.
German Lentil Soup – Linsen Suppe
-
- 1 lb lentils
- 1/4 lb bacon ends cut into chunks
- 2 medium onions, sliced
- 2 medium carrots, diced
- 2 quarts water or stock
- 1 cup celery, sliced
- 2 1/2-3 teaspoons salt
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 large potato, pared
- 1 ham bone or smoked shank (optional)
- kielbasa or frankfurters, cooked or smoked, and sliced (optional)
- 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice or red wine vinegar
Directions
- The night before, wash the lentils and let soak overnight covered in cold water.
- Next day, drain the lentils.
- In a large dutch oven or soup pot, saute half the diced bacon until golden brown.
- Add sliced onions and diced carrots and saute until the onions are golden.
- Add the lentils, water or stock, sliced celery, salt, pepper, thyme and bay leaves.
- With a grater, grate the peeled potato into the lentil mixture (you can also dice it).
- Add the ham bone if using. Add the rest of the bacon.
- Simmer, covered, for about 3 hours. The lentils should be tender.
- Remove the bay leaves and ham bone. Cut all bits of meat from the ham bone and return the meat to the soup. Add cooked kielbasa or frankfurter slices if using.
- To serve at once, add red wine vinegar and enjoy!
- To serve the next day, refrigerate soup and then add the red wine vinegar and reheat.We add red wine vinegar individually at the table, and serve with some Spaetzle (German dumplings) in the soup, or with crusty bread on the side.
