Ingredients

• 1 chicken stock cube
• a handful of frozen stir-fry veg, quickly fried
• 1 far garlic clove, thinly chopped
• 1 red chilli, thinly sliced
• a few good slugs of soy sauce
• a few shakes of Worcester sauce
• thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger root, thinly sliced – it’s always a ‘thumb-sized’ piece of ginger. Perhaps because ginger looks like thumbs.
• 1 teaspoon Chinese five spice
• pinch of chilli powder
• some sugar or sweetener, e.g. honey or agave nectar
• 2 packets of thick easy-cook ramen / udon noodles – the moist ones.
• 8 strips of pork belly
• 2 tsp sesame oil
• vegetable oil
• sesame seeds
• spring onion, chopped
• some baby spinach leaves
• a sheet of nori / dried seaweed

Method

Rub the pork belly strips with Chinese 5 spice and set aside.

Quickly fry a few handfuls of frozen stir-fry veg in some vegetable oil and set aside.

Add some sesame oil to the pan and turn up the heat. Sear the pork belly strips until they are brown on each side and set aside. Pour off any excess fat.

In the same pan, with all the caramelised porky bits, combine the chicken stock cube, sauces, sweetener, 750ml hot water, garlic, ginger, fresh chilli, a pinch of chilli powder and a pinch more 5 spice. Bring to the boil and simmer for a while. Add more water if required. Add the noodles and veg.

Slice the pork belly in the opposite direction to the strips so each porky chunk has a strip of meat and fat and add to the pot. Simmer gently until pork and noodles are cooked, add the spinach and put the lid on until it has wilted.

Serve and garnish with sesame seeds, spring onion and shredded nori.

This was perfect meal for a wet and not-at-all warm half term supper. Adapted from Jamie at Home.

Serves 4 hungry young hippos.

• 1kg pork shoulder, skin-on, seasoned with salt & pepper
• 1 or 2 onions, thinly sliced
• some fresh chillies
• 2 heaped tsp smoked paprika
• 1 tsp fennel seeds, crushed
• 2 tsp dried oregano and/or marjoram
• 2 red, orange or yellow peppers
• 1 x 400g tin tomatoes
• 2 tbsp red wine vinegar
• rice, soured cream, wraps to serve

Heat the oven to 180C. Fry the pork, fat-side down, in some olive oil in an 0ven-proof casserole for about 15 minutes. When the fat has rendered a bit, put the pork to one side and fry the onions, chilli, paprika, fennel seeds, herbs and peppers for about 10 minutes. Then add the tomatoes, red wine vinegar and pop the pork back in. Top up with water and put in the oven for an hour or two, until the pork is cooked and pulls apart in tender strands.

Serve with rice and / or wraps and soured cream. Delicious.

Life is too short for slow-roasted pork that takes 24 hours to cook. Even Jamie’s 6 hour slow roast is pushing it a bit, frankly. So here’s how I took a recipe from Jamie’s Home and turned it into quick slow-roasted pork, with crispy crackling and succulent pork that falls apart as you pull it:

• Shoulder of pork, fat ready-scored
• 2 sticks of celery
• 2 onions
• 2 fat bulbs of garlic
• splash of apple juice
• a few fennel seeds
• sea salt
• pepper
• sprig of fresh rosemary, finely-chopped
• 2 bay leaves

Put the oven on to 150 C.

In a pestle & mortar, grind the fennel seeds, salt and rosemary.

Rub sea salt into the scores in the rind of your pork. Heat a splash of olive oil in a roasting tray big enough for your meat on the top of the stove. Place your meat fat-side down and fry until the fat starts bubbling up and going golden. While it’s doing this, rub the salt / fennel / rosemary mix into the meaty side.

Thickly chop the onions and celery. Remove the meat from the roasting tray, then make a bed for it in the tray with the onions, celery, unpeeled garlic cloves, bay leaves. Place the meat on top and seal tightly with tin foil. Put in the cool oven. After about an hour, check on it to make sure there’s plenty of juice. If it seems like it’s drying out, add some apple juice or water. It should look something like this:

Then pop it back in the oven for another hour or two – you’ll need to check on it from time to time to see that it’s not burning, and that the meat is cooked. It should be juicy and fall part when you pull it with two forks.

When it’s cooked, whack the oven up hot. Take the tray out, and remove the crackling. Set the meat aside for later. Put the rind in its own small roasting tray and season again with salt and pepper. Cook in a hot oven for 30 mins or so. Remove, dry on paper towels and munch with a glass cider, while you wait for your roast vegetables to cook in the hot oven.

Make gravy with the juices & veg left in the main roasting tray. Put it on the stove, sieve some plain flour in and stir in with a whisk until it thickens a bit. Gradually add half a litre of hot vegetable stock and a splash of soy sauce. Scrape all the bits off the pan and sieve into a gravy jug when nice and thick. Delicious.

We had this with roasted potatoes, parsnips and butternut squash, plus sauce made with home-grown apples simmered with a little butter, sugar, water and a nip of Somerset cider brandy. The aroma was heady and heavenly.

• 4 pork loin chops
• 1 large onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 apple
• sea salt, pepper, olive oil
• 2 sprigs of fresh rosemary
• teaspoon dried thyme

Put the oven on, around 200 C.

Slice the onion roughly and fry in olive oil with some of the rosemary and thyme until translucent. Towards the end add the roughly chopped garlic and fry quickly. Scrape everything into an oven-proof dish large enough to hold 4 pork chops.

Season the pork chops generously with sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper. Fry quickly in batches on a high heat to brown the outside of the chops. Place the browned chops on the onions, add the rest of the herbs. Slice the apple and place a slice of apple on each chop. I sprinkled oil in top at this point, but if you do go sparingly – I ended up with too much.

Seal the dish with tin foil on top and put in the oven for about 45 minutes. The result was succulent, juicy pork chops that were really fragrant. The slice of apple melted and provided a blob of apple sauce for each chop.

We had this with roast potatoes and cabbage fried in butter, lots of black pepper and soused in a splash of vermouth.