If belly pork had a selling point, it would have to be its fat. But if there’s one thing that turns people off about belly pork, is its fat. Seemingly eating great mouthfuls of lard is not considered a pleasant experience, unless of course its chocolate.
Luckily, for most people belly pork is not an everyday foodstuff (unless you include bacon?!), and so therefore we need not worry about its fat content and can just get on with enjoying it for what it is and play to its strengths. In this case, the pork sits over a bed of fennel and the joint gets a good four or five hours in a low oven, long and slow, which sets its juices flowing throughout the meat and right over the fennel, confit-ing it in the process. It’s a win win situation.
Pork and fennel are a killer combo and one that is popular with the Spanish. Unfortunately fennel is another hard sell, so I go for the kill and bling it up with chorizo, garlic, sherry and saffron.
To complete the theme, I add butter beans to the resulting broth and season generously with fresh parsley. A good bottle of white Rioja would go very nicely with this, as would Julio Iglesias’ greatest hits.
Ingredients
(Serves 6)
2 kg piece of belly pork
2 x tablespoons of fennel seeds
4 x cloves of garlic
3 x large fennel
200ml sherry or Madeira
3 x 400g butter beans, drained and rinsed
2 x small onions, sliced
6 x cloves garlic, sliced
½ a 225g chorizo sausage, sliced
Large pinch saffron threads
500 ml chicken stock
Preheat the oven to 200⁰C.
Crush the garlic and smear it over the underside of the pork, then scatter over the fennel seeds and season generously with freshly ground black pepper and sea salt. You can do this the night before if you’re organised enough.
Trim the tops off the fennel and remove the outer layer if it looks a bit ropey. Cut them in half vertically and lay cut face down in a roasting tin. Pour over the sherry then lay the pork on top skin side up.
Shove it in the oven and turn the heat down to 150 ⁰C.
After an hour/ hour and a half, remove the pork from the oven, and leaving it in its roasting tin, remove the skin with a sharp knife, taking as little fat as possible.
Return the pork to the oven for another hour before removing the fennel from underneath the pork. Pop it back in for the remainder of its cooking time. There should be sufficient liquid in the bottom of the roasting tin, but best to check now and then it hasn’t run dry.
When the skin is cool enough to handle, scrape any remaining fat from the skin and portion into strips. Sprinkle generously with salt and leave to one side.
When the pork is done, remove it from the roasting tin and leave it to rest; pour the contents of the tin through a sieve into a jug/bowl and reserve.
Whack up the oven temperature to 220⁰C to finish off the crackling. Lay the strips on a baking sheet and place in the hot oven for 10 – 15 minutes.
In a hot sauté pan, add the chorizo without any extra oil and fry until coloured. Remove the chorizo from the pan and fry the garlic in the same pan in the oil left behind by the chorizo, until starting to colour. Remove with a slotted spoon and add to the awaiting chorizo. Now fry the onion in the same pan until starting to brown, then add back in the chorizo and the garlic, along with the butter beans, and saffron, the reserved juice from the pork and top up with chicken stock. You may not need all of it, the liquor should be loose and broth like, it won’t be thick and saucey.
When the broth has come back up to a simmer, season with salt and pepper and add two or three tablespoons of chopped parsley just before serving.
Serve in large risotto style bowls, with the pork on top of the beans along with the fennel and a couple of pieces of crackling.