Starters - My favourite ingredient
Paul Morgan, chef-patron of the Hampshire Arms, Crondall, Hants, on…… belly pork.
"Belly pork is what your grandmother bought after the war because it was cheap, but our main belly pork dish is outselling fillet steak. Our butcher is Small Bones in Farnham. We're going down the route of being able to name the breed and where it comes from. I could ring up the butcher and get the pig's mother's name, but obviously we won't go that far.
"It's important to draw the water out, so we'll get some juniper berries, orange skins, salt, thyme and a bit of Chinese spice, rub it on and leave it for two days in clingfilm to draw out the moisture. "For our à la carte dish we remove the ribs, take the skin off and trim the fat. We then place the skin between two trays and cook it in the oven so we get very thin crackling which we use for garnish.
"Then we roll the belly and stuff it with prunes, wild mushrooms, fresh sage and onions to bulk it out so we can give them a thinner slice. We tie the meat so it becomes a lovely round shape and serve a slice an inch thick, which we rest on top of macerated dates with thin slices of apple and potato and a sage leaf between each layer. When our new brasserie opens we'll also use belly pork: a foot-long piece with smoking liquid rubbed into it, immersed in goose fat and cooked at 100°C/210ºF for three hours. Serve with a baked apple stuffed with black pudding, and sultanas. It's about £1-worth of meat and you'll get £14 for it. It's a great GP producer which can make up for the margin you can't make on fillet steak."
