The Simple Pleasures - The Viking Roasts!

There’s something undeniably British about a Sunday. We all have our routines – I, for example, tend to wake up earlier than is entirely necessary given that it’s supposed to be a day of rest. Then, I walk down to the shops, grab a paper, return to my sofa and stick on Goals on Sunday while flicking through the culture section. Later, if the mood should take me, I might sneak off to the local for a pint of Old Knickertwister before coming back home only to find that my Gran hasn’t nipped around and done a roast for me.

This is, I’m sure you’ll agree, completely selfish.

And then, because it’s Sunday and I can be a lazy so-and-so at times, I stamp around the house complaining “cor, I could murder a Sunday Roast right now. I mean it. I could eat the side out of a cow” in the vain hope that someone somewhere will hear my plea and decide to end my misery. They never do, you know.

If you haven’t already guessed, I love a Sunday Roast. I love it so much I capitalise it. I love the smell of it as it permeates the house. I love the social aspect, getting people around a table to talk and eat together. I love leaving the meat on low to disappear to the pub for a pre-lunch loosener. I love placing a big, juicy bit of meat on the table and watching everyone’s faces as you carve in to it, the anticipation lighting a fire in their eyes. And gravy. I adore gravy. I would swim in gravy if a) I had a swimming pool, b) Bisto sponsored me to do it and c) if my wife wasn’t totally against that sort of thing. How you can be against swimming in gravy I don’t know, but then I suppose it takes all sorts in this crazy world.

The thing that I find with roasts is that people often tend to look at you as if you’re some kind of wizard in the kitchen if you say you can cook a roast. I guess that’s because sometimes, due to the sheer scale and amount of food that can be laid out, a roast can seem like a pretty intimidating thing. Whereas the truth is that roasting a piece of meat is easy. Today, I’d like to share with you the easiest roast in the world that will leave you utterly satisfied and is guaranteed to impress your Mum if she thinks you can’t do a roast yet, even though you’re thirty and you left home twelve years ago.

Firstly, let’s talk about meat. We all have our favourite roast (mine is beef), but for this little concoction I used a piece of Pork belly. The belly is a much underrated cut of a fantastically flavoured animal for a few reasons – it’s melt-in-the-mouth tender, it gives great crackling with little effort, it can be cooked in approximately infinity different ways and, most importantly, it’s cheap. Seriously cheap. A cut of belly – in Waitrose – will cost you less than three quid, and it’ll be enough to feed three or four people. Or two greedy ones.

So, grab yourself a nice bit of pork belly. You’re looking for a piece that has a good bit of meat on it, and a reasonably thick layer of fat under the skin, maybe up to an inch. Turn your oven on to gas 7 (220 C) and pop your pork belly on to a roasting tray.

Lightly score the skin of the pork with a sharp knife.  Don’t go too deep in to the fat – you only need to break the skin – and definitely don’t cut right through to the meat:

Make sure your knife is good and sharp.

Using your fingers, separate the score marks slightly and then rub a nice bit of flaked sea salt over the skin.  This will aid in making the crackling later on.  Add a grind of black pepper, and then chuck it in to the oven for half an hour.

(Soon to be) Crackling - nothing like it!

Meanwhile, get on to the veg.  Roast potatoes are integral to a roast.  Some people (who aren’t really people) only have boiled spuds on their plates– no way Jose, not on my watch.  Peel a good big pile of potatoes, I prefer a red potato: I used Mozarts this weekend and they really worked very well indeed.  Once peeled, cut into quarters and leave to one side in a saucepan full of water.  At the same time, peel and halve some carrots, and leave them aside too:

After half an hour, check on the belly.  You’ll be able to see it starting to colour, and the crackling will already be browning.  Turn the heat right down to gas 4 (180 C), and then leave for one hour.  An hour, for you, all to yourself.  Maybe play some X-Box, or go for a walk.  It’s up to you.  Anyway, after an hour, get thee back to the kitchen.  Put a lid on the potatoes, add some heat, and boil for five minutes.  In the meantime put a good swig of Olive Oil in to a large roasting tray and put it in to the oven to get nice and hot.  Once the potatoes are parboiled, drain the water out of the pan.  The next bit is really important – beat up your spuds a little bit.  Not too much, just so that the potatoes are flaking at the edges.  This gives the olive oil something to cling on to and will get you nice, crispy edges on your roasties.

Remove the roasting tin with the oil in from the oven, and the oil by now should be shimmering hot.  Being careful not to burn yourself, transfer the spuds from the saucepan to the roasting tin.  They will sizzle, so you need to work quickly.  With a large spoon, turn the potatoes over in the oil so they’re nicely covered (you can add extra at this point if you need to).  Sprinkle with some flaked salt and Rosemary, and then back in to the oven.

Now remove the pork belly, baste, and get your carrots.  Arrange them on the tray, and then place the belly joint on top of them:

Sort of like a pork bridge with carrot supports.

You could add any sort of veg around the edges to this – I would recommend some quartered onions, some parsnips and perhaps some swede.  Once you’re done, back in to the oven with it, and then increase the heat to gas 6 (about 200 C).  Leave for another hour.

After an hour is gone (did you enjoy that?) return to the oven and remove the meat.  It’ll be cooked by now, but to make sure skewer the fattest part of the meat.  If the juices run clear, you’re done.  Cover with some foil, and rest for 10 minutes.  Check on your potatoes – if they need extra browning, whack your oven up to full to finish them off.

Spuds as spuds should be.

Slice your meat in to appropriate portions.  It might be easier to remove the crackling with a sharp knife before you carve.

Tender, moist and I need a napkin.

Once the crackling is removed you can put it under the grill if it needs a final push to get nice and crisp.  Try and leave some fat attached, as that is going to give the crackling loads of flavour.  Arrange your veg and meat on the plate, and garnish with nice, thick gravy:

Do you like how I tried to be cheffy with my presentation there?  Needless to say, minutes later this plate was covered in the good stuff.

If you’ve removed your crackling before carving, break it up and share it evenly with everyone.  But hey, if you cooked it no-one’s going to know if you gave yourself the best bit, right?

I didn’t have a drink with this one, but I know that a nice white wine would have worked wonders with that lovely white pork meat – perhaps a Californian Sauvignon Blanc.  Otherwise, for the ale drinkers among you, something fruity with not too much in the way of hops.  If you can get it, Badger makes a beautiful beer called Stinger (brewed with Stingy Nettles, would you believe?) which I think would compliment this dinner wonderfully.

So there we have it.  A lovely roast dinner that will comfortably feed up to four people for well under ten quid.  Your Mum will be impressed, your Dad will be stuffed full, and you (as you close your eyes for your well-earned Sunday nap) will not have to do the washing up.  Because that’s the most important thing, isn’t it?

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Roast Dinner!