Roast Pork with Onion Stuffing and Roasted Fennel
The ideas for this one came from a programme on the Food Channel (The People’s Cookbook or a similar title, and a recipe for roasted belly of pork in Jamie Oliver’s latest, Cook With Jamie that I cooked for friends on New Year’s Eve). It’s a simplification of both recipes and worked out really well as a way to pep up a piece of supermarket pork for Sunday lunch.
Serves 6-8 hungry carnivores. Easily stretched further by increasing the veggies.
- 1.5-2kg boneless shoulder pork
- 2 onions, finely sliced
- Olive oil
- A handful of thyme leaves stripped from their stems
- 1 large or 2 small fennel bulbs, finely sliced
- 250mls dry vermouth
- Marigold Vegetable Bouillon
Heat the oven as hot as it will go – we’re going to get crackling from this recipe!
Fry the onions gently in the olive oil until soft. Remove the string from the joint and unroll, skin side down. Mix the thyme and the onions and spread over the meat. Roll up and tie the joint. Put in a roasting pan, rind up and sprinkle with Maldon salt.
Put in the hot oven for 20 minutes – the crackling should be starting to form clearly at the end of this period. Leave it a little longer if you’re unsure.
While the meat is in the oven, slice the fennel and measure out the vermouth.
Take the meat out of the oven and reduce the temperature to 190C/375F/Gas 5. Take the joint out of the pan, or move it to one side and spread the fennel slices over the bottom of the roasting pan. Pour in the vermouth. Settle the pork on top of the fennel.
Roast for 35 minutes per 500g. Have a look now and again to make sure the vermouth hasn’t dried out. This isn’t a problem in my pan, but if you’ve a larger one, you may suffer more from evaporation. Add more if it looks as if it’s drying out.
When the pork is cooked – I use a meat thermometer to check – remove the meat from the oven and turn the temperature up if you have roast potatoes in the oven (the pork will go equally well with garlic and olive oil mash, but Sunday demands roasties, IMO). Put the pork on a carving dish and let it relax while you finish the sauce and vegetables.
With a slotted spoon, remove the soft and slightly caramelised fennel to a warmed dish and cover to keep warm.
How you make the sauce depends on how much liquid remains. You may need to dilute things down a bit with some water, but whichever way, I like to sprinkle in some Marigold Vegetable Bouillon powder as it somehow brings the flavours together. You may need to boil to reduce the liquid to get the flavours. My aim is to get taste not volume – this isn’t a great, heavy, all-encompassing gravy. Perhaps just a small puddle of interesting flavour to complement the pork.
Remove the crackling from the joint and break, cut or otherwise make it into individually sized pieces. Carve the pork and serve on a platter drizzled with some or all of the sauce – put the remainder, if any, in a sauce boat.