Week 20: Roast Pork

The book: How To Boil An Egg (Jan Arkless)

The recipe: p171, "Roast Pork"

It's the month of the descriptive recipe titles, isn't it? Following on from last week's epic "Vegetables For One", Jan Arkless and her How To Boil An Egg bless us with the similarly unromantic "Roast Pork".

In fairness, for all its intended simplicity, this book does contain some more interesting recipes involving the humble pig, from the rewarding (a promising-sounding rub for spare ribs) to the bizarre ("Pork In A Packet". Erm...).

Today, though, we land on the section entitled 'Sunday Lunch' Dishes and a simple method for preparing a pork roast. While essentially a glorified suggestion for how best to cook the meat in question, it comes under a dedicated recipe heading, covers a whole page of the book and contains various recommendations for cuts and accompaniments, so I'm taking that as a green light for some Random Kitchen action. If only as a welcome contrast to last week's plate of barely-microwaved veg. (Yes, it still hurts.)

The prep: After our first adventure with this book way back in Week 1, I'm naturally a little sceptical about just how basic this might end up being, but I suppose you can't go too far wrong with a decent slab of meat. And I don't really cook slabs of meat very often, so starting from the basics mightn't be such a bad idea.

Jan informs us that leg is "the leanest and most expensive" cut, while shoulder is "cheaper and just as tasty". Fortunately, a quick browse of the shelves at Sainsbury's reveals some exciting and relevant news: HALF-PRICE PORK!

 

So I think we'll splash out on the leg.

Jan informs her student audience that "pork is traditionally served with sage and onion stuffing and apple sauce". That can be arranged: the aforementioned supermarket does stuffing mix in two-person-household-sized packages nowadays, and I think we ought to have the leftovers of something suitably applelicious in the freezer...

The only other instruction on the prep front is "also serve it with roast potatoes and parsnips or other vegetables". Again, not a tough criterion to fulfil, particularly since we've been a bit lax in terms of using up the contents of the veg box this week. I decide to interpret "other vegetables" as "some carrots" because, well, because that's what's in the fridge. Radical, I know.

The making: No fancy business for Jan. The pork joint is rubbed with oil then sprinkled with salt, and into a hot oven it goes. It's about 90 minutes for this particular size of pig-chunk; some peeled, chopped, thyme-and-oil-tossed root vegetables join the tin with an hour to go, followed by the stuffing half an hour later, and that's about it.

For all I jest about the simplicity of How To Boil An Egg, it's actually useful for the novice chef to be told why things are the way they are: the tin needs to be coated with a bit of oil or fat because it stops the joint from sticking, the oven needs to be nice and hot so that the crackling is suitably crisp, you can cover the joint with foil once the crackling looks right so that it doesn't get too brown, and so on. This may be fundamental knowledge, but two thumbs up to Jan for covering all the bases.

 

Er, those aren't thumbs? Never mind, you get the idea.

Anyway, everything comes together nicely on schedule. Gravy is swiftly prepared (from granules, obvi, but with added meat juices), and our Sunday dinner is ready and raring to go.

The eating: With no actual seasoning other than salt, there's nothing particularly exciting about the meat (other than being HALF PRICE, which always tastes better), but it's cooked nicely and the crackling is suitably... crackly. Come on, it was always going to be a struggle to find anything particularly thrilling to write about "Roast Pork", wasn't it?

It even looks exactly like you'd expect, right down to the reassuring slop of the gravy.

The roasted potatoes, parsnips and carrots don't end up quite as crispy around the edges as usual, presumably because of being done in one big tray along with the meat rather than separately, but they boast the resulting fat-infused flavour, so it's a compromise worth making. Meanwhile, the much-maligned Apple Butter actually comes into its own here, with the flavour of cloves and cinnamon adding a touch of the exotic to a plate that could otherwise risk being a tad bland.

All in all, it's job done: a hearty meal has been enjoyed, I've come a step closer to conquering my irrational fear of (over)cooking a good joint of meat - though the pressure-lifter of knowing it was cut-price was probably just as important as Jan's simple instructions - and I'll know what to do to make things a bit more exciting next time. I'd certainly have been happy to make and eat this in my student days (hah! As if I'd have ever done anything that wasn't tinned vegetable curry or pasta with pesto).

One-word verdict: Satisfactory.