Dave's Roast Pork Belly, a favourite dish of the dashing dog detective Napoleon Bones

Napoleon Bones (published by
 Random House Struik).

Napoleon Bones is a noble police dog, a crime fighter, a gourmand, and the star of a recent novel by my mother, South African writer Jenny Hobbs.

One of Napoleon's favourite dishes is a succulent belly of roast pork topped with extra-crackly crackling of great crackliness.

I know for a fact that the recipe my mum had in mind when she wrote her book is the one perfected by my uncle, master potter David Walters. 

It's also one of the recipes featured in my cookbook.  Is this book a family affair? Damned right it is! But then food is all about familie, isn't it? (There's a note about this word at the bottom of the page.)

Here's a paragraph from the book mentioning roast pork belly:

We were patrolling in Woodstock on the dog watch, eight to midnight. Spike was off-duty. A sudden gorgeous waft of aromas had my tongue lolling. Roast potatoes and parsnips. Fennel. Halved heads of garlic browning in the juices dripping from a racked pork belly with the crackling just starting to crisp.

Doesn't that sound toothsome?

I've referred a number of times to Dave's beautiful hand-thrown dinnerware on this blog, because I often photograph my food on plates, platters and bowls he's lent or given me.  But I haven't spoken much about my mum, apart from mentioning that I learned to cook at her elbow.

Because her new novel has much to do with food and eating (or wolfing down, arf arf,  in the case of Napoleon Bones), I thought I'd tell you more about it, and about her.

Jenny Hobbs, novelist, and director of
the Franschhoek Literary Festival.

I read my mother's novels with joy and appreciation, but there's often a level of trepidation because I know that at a certain point something from my childhood will leap off the page and seize me by the heartstrings.

This might be a character I recognise, or a favourite expression, or a line from a poem, or a whiff of something strange and beautiful and half-forgotten.

 In the case of her latest novel, I enjoyed juddering belly-laughs reading the droll observations of the dog Napoleon Bones.

Napoleon, a keen-nosed connoisseur and relentless chaser of frisky bitches is, you see, something of a composite of all the dogs I've ever known. Jenny has dedicated the book to all the stinky mutts of my childhood, including my beloved Mugsy, a bulldog of distinction.

Also, the text is scattered with family jokes and sly verbal references that cannot be appreciated unless you were actually there (the Strategic Fart is one example).

And then there's the language. A little-known fact about my mum is that she wrote, as Blossom Broadbeam, a popular column for Darling magazine in the early Seventies.

Her column became famous as a rich source of 'Seffrican', and many of the slang words she observed and used for the first time in print have been preserved in several dictionaries of South African English. I'm proud to tell you that some of these words were harvested from the mouths of her four daughters. (Okay, they're expressions not used much these days, but there was a time around 1975 when it was extremely cool to say 'tit', 'China', 'boney' and so on.)

She's put her keen ear for South African slang to good use in the new book, and I found myself performing the famous coffee-nose-spurt reaction several times as I raced through its chapters.

Really crackly crackling, all brown and blistered. 

But back to the food.  My uncle Dave and his family live right next door to my mum in Franschhoek, so there is a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between the houses, and much merrymaking and feasting when my extended family swarms into Franschhoek.

Whenever an extra-special feast is called for, Dave makes his Famous Pork Belly, usually preceded by his equally famous Smoked Franschhoek Trout with Hot Sesame Oil.

I can heartily recommend both recipes to you.

Dave's Pork Belly

1 large pork belly, bone in (about 2 kg, or enough for 8; see Cook’s Notes)

¾ cup (180 ml) olive oil

10 bay leaves, dried or fresh

8 cloves garlic, peeled

milled black pepper

1 Tbsp (15 ml) salt

Score the skin of the belly, not too deeply, into a narrow diamond pattern using a very sharp knife or the blade of a sturdy craft knife. If you’re not confident about this, ask your butcher to do it. A few hours before you cook the belly, put the olive oil, bay leaves and garlic into a food processor and whizz to a fairly coarse paste (don’t add any salt). Brush the mixture all over the scored skin, pressing it well into the cuts. Grind over plenty of black pepper. Cover with clingfilm and let it stand for 2–3 hours.

Heat the oven to 170 °C. Place the belly, skin side up, directly onto the middle rack of the oven, and put a roasting pan underneath it to collect the fat. Roast for 3 hours with the oven fan off, and without letting the temperature go above 170 °C (or the skin will crackle prematurely).

After 3 hours the belly will be soft, juicy and well cooked. Fifteen minutes before you want to eat, take the joint out of the oven and use kitchen paper to wipe any oily puddles and bay-leaf paste off the top of the skin. Sprinkle the skin liberally with flaky sea salt.

Turn the top grill of the oven to its highest setting and wait until it is glowing red. Adjust the rack on which you cooked the pork so the skin is about 15 cm below the grill. Within a minute or two the skin will begin to spit and sputter as it forms crackling: watch it like a hawk to make sure it is not burning.

If it shows any signs of catching, turn the grill down a little, or move the rack down a notch, but don’t remove the pork from the oven. When the crackling is a deep golden-brown and crunchy all over (this will take 8–10 minutes), take the belly out of the oven, put it on a carving board and take it to the table. Serve with apple sauce, a light potato salad and green salad.

Serves 8.

Recipe courtesy of Random House Struik

Cook’s Notes

Order, well in advance, a large slab of top-quality pork belly from your butcher; supermarket pork bellies are of indifferent quality and always too small. If you’re throwing caution to the winds, put some parboiled potatoes in the dish underneath the belly an hour or so before you serve it, where they will roast to golden and fatty perfection

Note:

'Familie' is an Afrikaans word that means, literally, 'family'. But it also has several other untranslatable layers of meaning, among them clan, tribe, loyalty, friendship, closeness, familiarity, and so on. Someone who is familie need not be a blood relative - this could be an old friend, or a neighbour, or someone who has been kind and generous to you over many years. A mensch, in other words.

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Potted Pork Shoulder with Green Peppercorns, from the leftovers of a roast

A generous handful of green peppercorns adds bite.

Every now and then I slow-roast a hefty shoulder of pork, because this is a joint that's still relatively affordable, and because brittle golden crackling is such an old-fashioned treat.  Mostly, though, it's because I crave the toothsome stickiness of tender, fall-apart pork.

There are usually plenty of leftovers the next morning: my kids aren't enthusiastic about pork, although they will politely eat it if there are also roast potatoes and gravy on offer.  I slice up the cold wodges and slap them between slices of fluffy white bread, with plenty of mayonnaise, Dijon mustard and shredded iceberg lettuce, or I heat them up in the microwave with leftover roast potatoes to guzzle on my own when I need to grab a quick lunch.  But my favourite use for the remainders of a pork shoulder is this  indulgent dish of potted, shredded pork with green peppercorns.

The best potted pork, in my opinion, is made with good pork belly - here's my recipe - but this is also a fine way to use up the leftovers of a roast shoulder.  It keeps well in the fridge for up to a week, and is heavenly spread on hot toast or toasted ciabatta slices.

For instructions on how to slow-roast a shoulder of pork and make crackling, please see my Cook's Notes at the end of this blogpost.

It may seem laborious to make a stock for this dish, but I don't find it much of a hassle, as stocks tend to look after themselves once you've flung them together, and this flinging-together really need take no longer than the time it takes for the kettle to boil.

I can't give exact quantities here, because this will depend on how much left-over meat you have.  This is a recipe that involves a lot of tasting, and not much measuring.

Serve the potted pork with hot toast or ciabatta bread, and some capers, caperberries or gherkins.

Potted Pork Shoulder with Green Peppercorns, from the leftovers of a roast

leftover roast pork shoulder, still on the bone (see Cook's Notes, below)
4 Tbsp (60 ml) butter
a large sprig of fresh thyme
a few tablespoons of green peppercorns, drained, and to taste
a pinch or two of freshly grated nutmeg
salt and milled black pepper, to taste

For the stock: 
one large onion, skin on, quartered
2 carrots, peeled and thickly sliced
1 cup (250 ml) dry white wine
2 cups (500 ml) water
2 bay leaves
a big sprig of thyme
10 peppercorns
a few stalks of parsley

Heat the oven to 200 ºC. Strip most of the meat off the joint, leaving behind the fatty bits and any pockets of meat close to the bone. Put the stripped-off bits on a plate, cover with clingfilm and refrigerate.

Place the bones in a roasting pan and add the onion and carrots, along with any left-over crackling.  Roast the bones and vegetables for 20 minutes, or until they have a nice golden colour. Put the roasting pan onto the hob, turn on the heat and add the wine, water, bay leaves, thyme, peppercorns and parsley.  Bring to the boil, stirring well to dislodge any residue on the bottom of the pan. Now tip the contents of the roasting pan into a stock pot, place over a low heat and simmer, uncovered, at a gentle burble, for 2 hours, turning the bone over now and then. Strain the stock into a bowl and discard all the solid bits. Return the strained stock to the rinsed-out pot, cool to room temperature and refrigerate overnight.

Lift off all the solidified fat from the surface of the stock - which with any luck will have jellied by now -  and place the pot back on the hob. Cook over a lively heat, uncovered, until the stock has reduced to about a cup of liquid.  Strain this through a fine sieve and set aside to cool slightly.

Tear the reserved stripped-off meat from the joint into shreds and place it in a bowl.  Strip the leaves off the thyme sprig and add these to the bowl along with the green peppercorns (again, I can't give you quantities here, but be generous, and reserve a few for scattering on top).  Season with nutmeg - just a whisper -  and with salt and plenty of black pepper.  Mix everything together and pack the meat into a pâté or terrine dish, or into several small ramekins.

Press down firmly on the surface of the meat to level the surface, but don't pack it in too tightly, or the stock will not seep between the shreds of pork. Trickle some of the still-warm stock over the meat so that it is well moistened, but not drowned in stock (the liquid should be just level with the surface of the meat).  Refrigerate until the stock has jellied.

To seal the potted meat - which will make it last longer in the fridge - melt the butter in a saucepan and skim all the white foam off the top. Remove from the heat, allow to cool for a few minutes, and then strain through cheesecloth or a fine sieve onto the top of the potted belly. Press a bay leaf or a sprig of thyme on top, cover with clingfilm and refrigerate.

Serve with hot toast.

Cook's Notes

To slow-roast a shoulder of pork: 

1. Ask your butcher for a whole, untrimmed pork shoulder, on the bone. This is important, because butchers sometimes 'neaten' the shoulder and remove some bones, but what you want is the Full Monty. Ask him to score the skin into 1-cm-wide strips, or do this yourself at home using an extremely sharp craft knife.

2. Heat the oven to 130 ºC.  Place a layer of thickly sliced carrots, onions, celery, lightly crushed unpeeled garlic cloves, and herbs of your choice on the bottom of a heavy roasting pan. Perch the pork, skin-side up, on top.  Pour 250 ml wine (or cider, or apple juice) into the roasting pan, cover it with two layers of heavy-duty tin foil, and bake undisturbed for 3-4 hours (depending on the size of the shoulder) or until the meat is so soft and tender can be pulled apart with a fork.  Alternatively, you can set the oven to a very low temperature - 100 ºC - and bake the pork overnight.

3. To make crackling: Take off the tin foil and turn the top grill on to its highest setting. Peel the skin off the shoulder in one piece and place it, fatty side down, on a baking sheet. Sprinkle the skin generously with salt.  When the grill is glowing red, put the baking sheet into the oven, 15-20 cm below the grill.  Leave for 8-10 minutes, or until the crackling is golden, crunchy and blistered.  Watch the crackling like a hawk: it burns in an instant. If it shows any signs of catching or charring, turn the grill down a little, or move the rack down a notch, but don’t remove the skin from the oven.


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