Monbiot family pork sambal

Ingredients:

2kg pork belly
16 shallots, peeled and roughly chopped
8 fat cloves of garlic, peeled and halved
16 chillies, roughly chopped and deseeded
2 tbsp belacan (shrimp paste with chillies)
3 tbsp peanut oil
2 tsp turmeric
8 tbsp tamarind water
8 tbsp fish sauce (approx, add more to taste if needed)
4 tbsp brown sugar
4 stalks of lemongrass, outer layers removed and cut into 1 inch sections
chicken stock
sea salt, to taste

Cut the pork belly into 2 inch by 1 inch pieces. Blitz the shallots, garlic, chillies and belacan in a food processor until smooth. Sauté the paste in peanut oil for five minutes or so until fragrant. Add the pork belly pieces, turmeric, tamarind water, fish sauce, brown sugar, lemongrass and enough chicken stock to cover the pork. Bring to the boil and simmer covered until the pork is soft and tender. Taste and season with sea salt to taste.

Serve with steamed rice. This is even better made the night before.

Proper English Bacon

We find American bacon too sweet as a great deal more sugar is used in the curing process. This recipe is for old fashioned, no bells or whistles English dry cured bacon. It's lightly salty, meat-sweet rather than sugary, porky and, in my mind, the way bacon should taste.

Buy the best quality pork belly that you can afford, ideally from the back of the pig's belly where it will be thicker. The meat towards the front lies over the ribs so will give you thinner slices of bacon. I use Hampshire pork, a breed originally from England that is raised in the wild, fed on clover, grass and herbs and then slaughtered as humanely as possible. Stress at the time of death has a deleterious impact on meat quality, particularly in pigs where it can lead to blood spots that ruin the meat's texture and flavour. It's simple really - happy pigs equals good meat!

Ask your butcher to take off the skin leaving as much fat on the meat as possible. You can save the skin to make pork scratchings.

I choose not to use sodium nitrite (pink salt) in the curing process. Nitrites are used commercially to impede the growth of harmful bacteria like botulism in particular and result in the meat retaining a pink colour that is considered appealing by some. I find the colour looks unnatural and prefer not to use chemicals for home production.  The likelihood of botulism is very low and sea salt has a certain amount of naturally occurring nitrates but this is a decision each person should make for themselves.

There's no need to use the more expensive flaky sea salt as fine grained crystals will penetrate the meat more evenly.

Ingredients

a skinless pork belly - how much is up to you!
Fine grained sea salt
Granulated sugar
Coarse ground black peppercorns

What to do

First give your pork belly a quick rinse, dry it off and trim off any scraps of meat or fat that hang off the main piece. Measure the height of the thickest part of the belly and make a note. Then weigh the belly and use the following proportions to work out how much salt, sugar and pepper you will need. 

30g salt per kg of meat
10g sugar per kg
4g peppercorns per kg

You'll see it's really not very much at all but don't worry - it's all you need. Mix the seasonings together and rub them evenly over the exposed meat and fat. Make sure you rub everything in well, get into any crevices and go around all the edges. Lay a sheet of cling film on a table and add an overlapping sheet if necessary so that you will be able to fold the edges over the belly on every side. Lay the belly on the cling film, fold up the edges and then put another sheet over the top. Wrap the belly tightly in several more layers of cling film so it's completely sealed and place it in a waterproof tray in case any liquid works its way out over the coming days.

Leave the wrapped belly to cure for one day per half inch of thickness plus two additional days. Turn it over once a day to help the cure distribute. You should keep the belly in a cool place, ideally at 1.5°C (35°F), so it doesn't spoil. Smell the wrapped belly when you turn it each day - it should not smell sour or funky in any way.

Try to keep humidity at around 80% for the best results during curing and drying. In the winter I cure and dry my pork in an unheated room with a humidifier next to it set to 80%.

Once the belly has cured it's time to dry the meat and prepare it for smoking. Unwrap the belly and then either hang it on metal hooks or I find it easier to lay the belly on a metal rack over a baking tray. Let it dry for two days, turning each day. The surface should be dry to touch and not slimy. At this stage you have made bacon. You can use it now as greenback bacon and store it for three months or more providing it is kept tightly wrapped and in a fridge.

Or you can cold smoke it to add more flavour! I like to smoke mine with oak wood for four hours to give it a light smokey kiss that doesn't overwhelm the porky of the bacon. The cold smoking process couldn't be easier. I use a Pro-Q cold smoker with oak dust and put the bacon, metal rack, tray and all in a large cardboard box with the lit smoker and punch a couple of small holes on either side of the box. I seal the top with wide tape and that's it. Just make sure the outside temperature is not above 26°C and preferably lower.

After smoking wrap your bacon in cling film again and let it rest for a week to allow the flavours develop and distribute. You don't have to do this if you can't wait but I do think it improves the final result.

Savoury pork ribs

Ribs are one of the best antidotes to the cold weather outside and a thrifty way to indulge oneself during these double dip disaster days. My only gripe in the past has been how long it takes to prepare them if you intend to go the whole hog with a 24 hour marinade and a long, slow roast to tease the flesh gently from each bone. While I am a sucker for experimenting with recipes that have ninety nine steps, some days you just want to come home, fill your belly and dive under a duvet.

Hello Quick Ribs. Perhaps not quite the same as 48 Hour Ribs, but still pretty damn good. These are delicious on their own - hot, spicy and juicy. The vinegar and lime add a fruity sourness to cut through the rich, fatty meat, while sweet and savoury flavours are punctuated with smokey, almost bitter nuggets of darkened garlic. Dipped into the sauce they become an epiphany of pig and Asian flavours.

a small rack of pork ribs
a good sprinkle of cinnamon, paprika, sumac and cayenne pepper
four garlic cloves, roughly chopped
two tablespoons of soy sauce
two tablespoons of rice vinegar
the juice of a lime
half a tablespoon of palm sugar
sea salt ground black pepper
olive or rapeseed oil

Wash the rib rack and lay it meaty side down. Season this side with salt and pepper and then turn the rack over and place it on a sheet of foil, large enough to enclose the rack. Evenly cover the meat with the rest of the marinade ingredients, before sealing the foil tightly around the ribs. Put the package in the oven for 45 minutes, before opening up the foil and allowing the garlic to caramelise
And the sauce to reduce to a spicy sweet/sour stickiness.

Prawn and pork sesame cakes

When its cold and wet outside I feel like there are two very clear, very different options for what to eat. Either it's some serious comfort food, a good book, and a warm, enveloping duvet, or it has to be something with a good kick of chilli heat to drive the damp chill out of my bones. In the deepest darkest winters in New York I used to make a bowl of rice noodles each morning with coriander, bean sprouts and steaming hot beef broth, piled high with sliced bird's eye chillies. This was rocket fuel for the trip from my little downtown studio flat to the relative warmth of the subway and finally the office. Here in London the cold seems less bitter, but somehow wetter and I find adding something fried and crispy to the chilli mix is the perfect remedy.

200g raw shelled prawns
60g streaky unsmoked bacon, the fattier the better
two small shallots
two tablespoons of dried shrimp
one or two small bird's eye chillies
a pinch of flaked dried chilli
a tablespoon of fish sauce
plenty of ground white pepper
black and white sesame seeds
coriander leaves, to garnish

If you have a food processor, blend together all of the ingredients except the prawns and sesame seeds. Mince the prawns by hand (so they end up with a slightly coarser texture than everything else) and then mix well with the processed paste.

Have a bowl of water handy to dip your hands into every now and then. Take a small handful of the paste and roll it into a vague ball shape before pressing them into small, two-bite sized cakes. The water helps stop the mix from sticking to your hands. Ready a bowl with a shallow layer of the black and white sesame seeds. Heat a frying pan with about a centimetre of oil but don't let it smoke. Take a little cake, pop it on the sesame seeds and then add to the oil seed side down. It should sizzle gently, if not, turn up/down the heat. Continue with the rest of the cakes and fry each for a minute or two on each side until deep golden brown and beginning to crisp at the edges.

Drain the cakes on some kitchen roll before them piling onto a plate and scatter over some coriander leaves. Serve with the spicy lemongrass dipping sauce below.

Spicy lemongrass dipping sauce

You may decide to tone up or down the amount of chilli and chilli oil in this recipe depending on your taste. I find mine change with my mood and the weather, so I take a tiny lick of a sliced chilli and decide then how much to add.

three cloves of garlic, very finely chopped
a stalk of lemongrass, finely sliced and quickly chopped
the juice from a lemon
50ml rice wine vinegar
a tablespoon of fish sauce
two small bird's eye chillies, thinly sliced
a tablespoon of chilli oil, the Chinese kind with dark roasted chilli flakes
a tablespoon of palm sugar
two tablespoons of water
a good handful each of chopped parsley and either coriander or mint
ground black pepper

Mix together all the ingredients and taste, adding more palm sugar, water, chilli, lemon or anything else that you feel needs more representation in the sauce. It should taste additively sweet, tangy, hot and salty.

Porcine perfection

From Sausage Fest in Basel to a pork feast in Tuscany, Sibilla's birthday at Villa Paterno was a true celebration of all things pig.  The spit roasted Cinta Senese adolescent in the photos was a gift from her half brother Tillo and the offspring of two Cinta Senese pigs serendipitously found wandering around his garden a few years ago. 

This ancient breed of Sienese pig, native only to the Chianti region since at least the 14th century, is identifiable in life by white forelegs and shoulders (cinta is Italian for 'belt' in reference to this distinct stripe of white skin) and in death by an extremely high proportion of fat to meat.

Reared semi-wild on a diet consisting mainly of grass, chestnuts and acorns, both flesh and fat are highly prized, being rich, fragrant and highly flavourful.  The Cinta Senese almost became extinct when farmers shunned the high production costs involved and opted to raise modern breeds of white pigs, seen as more economical and suited to today's market demand. Thankfully a few dedicated breeders in the Sienese Mountains refused to give up, and a recent revival of interest in Cinta pork has helped to prevent this unique breed from disappearing altogether. 

Today there are roughly eighty Cinta breeders in Tuscany. With creatures this special it feels all the more important to ensure that not a single part of the animal is wasted.

Our little pig was spit roasted on Saturday night by Marinella's husband. Great chunks of fatty, tender meat and crisp blackened skin were piled onto wide shallow dishes and served with raw marinated courgettes, melted courgettes and courgette parmigiana, thanks to a garden glut of guess what? 

Being me, I noticed that the head, split in two, was left untouched in favour of less intimidating cuts and pounced, like a cat. First the brains were scooped out and eaten with a sprinkle of salt.  They tasted like an unctuous, creamy, mild pâté. Two halves of a tongue swiftly followed suit. Finally a pair of cheeks, soft and porky, smeared with a whisper of sweet and sour chutney. It was a heaven-sent dinner.

The nest day leftovers were boiled into a meaty broth, rendered for lard, crisped back to the last slivers of crackling and shredded for a cold lunchtime salad with sliced red onion, fennel, tomatoes and lettuce, combined with a lemony mustard vinaigrette to help cut through the fat embalmed meat. Any further remainders were given to Clare and Matilda, white, fluffy Maremmano dogs who's ancestry dates back to the same period as the Cintas. 

In my mind it doesn't take much to recall the the musky sweet scent of Cinta fat. We cooled it to a creamy white consistency and used it for days later, in wild boar cacciatora, to baste a roasting chicken, and for spreading over toasted Tuscan bread, rubbed with garlic and sprinkled with salt.