Glazed Roast Pork Neck with a Gingery Fresh-Prune Relish

All week long I've been feasting on ripe plums, which are in high season in South Africa. Plums are among my favourite fruits, so I was ridiculously pleased to find a gleaming pile of prune plums in my local supermarket. They reminded me of this pork-neck dish, which I haven't made in a while, and I galloped home with pockets bulging, all eager to sling the roast in the oven and hover excitedly over a saucepan of simmering prunes.  I was dismayed, then infuriated, when I couldn't find my recipe on this blog - it had vanished into the void where lost blogposts go, and I'd long since thrown away my scribbled testing notes.

Luscious, dense-textured prune plums.

To my relief, I eventually found a copy of my recipe at Food24, together with some of the toe-curlingly amateurish photographs I made do with in my earlier days as a food-snapper.

 (I find it funny, in hindsight, that I'd branded one of the images with a copyright symbol and the name of my blog - as if anyone would want to nick a picture of such spectacular fuzziness. I've cropped that out to spare myself any further embarrassment,  and I suggest you do the same if you're in the habit of scrawling your name all over your images. Even top-notch professional photographers who have a great deal to lose if their online works are stolen have stopped doing this and  - let's face it - anyone who knows how to crop an image will hardly be deterred by that distracting little line of text in the bottom right-hand corner of your food snap.)

Anyway, here's the original post and recipe, with the toe-curling pictures. I hope they don't put you off making this unusual dish - it's delicious hot or cold, and makes the very best of that most succulent of cuts, pork neck. I have tweaked this recipe a little, the chief changes being shortening the cooking time of the pork and slightly reducing the oven temperature.

At the end of this post you'll find more of my seasonal plum recipes.

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Have you ever tasted a fresh prune? That is, a prune plum before it’s dehydrated and turned into a soft and wrinkly ink-black sac? My local veggie shop is full of these little jewels, which are sweet, with a dense yellow flesh and a slight muskiness. I bought a big box of them, hoping they’d be devoured by the kids, but this variety of plum doesn’t have the eating appeal of the peach-sized, ruby-juice-running-down-your-chin, late-season plums on the market now.

At the same time, I was pondering how to cook yet another lovely pork neck. Remembering that prunes and pork are a wonderful combination, I turned the prune plums into a sharp-sweet relish flavoured with preserved stem ginger, and then I slow-roasted the neck in a spicy oriental glaze. A delicious combination, equally good hot or cold.

You can use pork fillet for this recipe, but you will need significantly to reduce the cooking time because pork fillet will dry out if it's cooked for too long. Similarly, ordinary plums will do for this recipe, although they won’t hold their shape the way muscular prune plums do, so you might want to reduce the amount of liquid and, again, shorten the cooking time.

You will need to make the prune relish an hour or so ahead of roasting the pork.

Glazed Roast Pork Neck with a Gingery Fresh-Prune Relish

For the prune-plum relish:
2 cups (500 ml) prune plums, washed
½ cup (125 ml) dark sugar (muscovado or treacle sugar)
½ cup (125 ml) white-wine vinegar
½ cup (125 ml) water
one 2cm x 2cm piece of preserved stem ginger, finely diced or squashed (I pushed it through my garlic crusher!)
1 Tbsp (15 ml) ginger syrup, from the jar of preserved ginger
1 tsp (5 ml) powdered ginger

For the pork and glaze:
1 whole pork neck, trimmed of excess fat
a little olive oil
½ cup (125 ml) of the cooked prune-plum relish and syrup (see above)
4 Tbsp (60 ml) rice wine vinegar (ordinary white-wine vinegar will do)
2 Tbsp (30 ml) honey
1 Tbsp (15 ml) Kikkoman soy sauce
½ cup (125 ml) mirin (or you can use sweetish white wine)
3 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
a thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger, finely grated
 freshly milled black pepper

First make the relish. Halve the prunes and remove the stones. Set aside. Put the sugar, vinegar, water, stem ginger, ginger syrup and powdered ginger in a saucepan, set over a medium heat and bring gently to the boil, stirring now and then. Tip in the halved, pitted plums  and simmer uncovered for about 20 minutes, skimming off any foam as it rises. Watch the pan carefully, because a sugary syrup like this burns quickly. When the juice has reduced to about half a cup of thickish syrup, turn off the heat and set the pan aside to cool.

To roast the pork, heat the oven to 200°C. Put the pork neck  in a small roasting tray, brush with a little olive oil and season well with milled black pepper (but no salt). Roast the pork for 30 minutes at 200° C, or until it is beginning to brown at the edges.

In the meantime, make the glaze. Take a half a cup (125 ml) of the plum relish you’ve just made and place it in a food processor or liquidiser, along with all the remaining glaze ingredients. Whizz to a paste (not too fine: a few little flecks of prune are nice). Add more pepper, if necessary, but don’t add any more salt: the soy sauce is salty enough on its own.

Remove the pork neck from the oven and drain off any excess fat by tilting the roasting dish over the sink. Turn the oven down to 170° C. Pour the glaze over the pork, and cover the dish with foil or a tight-fitting lid. Roast the neck for a further 45 minutes, turning it over once during that time.

Now take the foil or lid off the dish, turn the heat up to 190 °C, and roast for another 35-45 minutes, basting frequently, or until the pork is cooked right through and the glaze is dark and glossy. Remove from the oven and allow to rest, lightly covered with a piece of foil, for 20 minutes.

Cut into thin slices and serve with the prune-plum relish.  This is good hot with a slightly bitter green salad and boiled new potatoes.  If you're serving it cold, take it to the table with the relish and some warm, crusty bread.

 Serves 6-8.



More of my Scrumptious plum recipes:

Cheesecake with a Fresh Plum Topping

Fresh plum jelly with a Lemon Panna Cotta Topping

Fresh-Plum and Almond Cake

Spiced Plums with Tamarind

Christmassy Plum and Tamarind Sauce

Festive Phyllo Crackers with a Spicy Plum and Almond Filling

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How to impress a brilliant cook: Casserole of Slow-Cooked Pork Neck with Potatoes, Lemon, Thyme and Garlic

Picture this: in a moment of drunken foolishness, you invited a brilliant cook, or a famous chef, or the best caterer on earth, to dinner. Now you're gazing bleakly into your fridge, scratching your head and wondering how you're going to whip up a jus, a froth, and a parfait of double-glazed liver of Galapagos Partridge Napped with Sea-Urchin Reduction, using only potatoes, an elderly carrot, and a few fossils of Cheddar.

This wasn't exactly my situation last Wednesday, but it came close. My old friend Bertrand, who occasionally drops in for dinner when he's in Johannesburg for a night, en route to Burundi, is a brilliant cook with a very fine palate (he's French, duh). It's not that Bert's fussy or snobby - not in the least - but he is a foodie of note, and he's someone who takes the greatest care, and makes a huge effort (thanks for those fresh crayfish, Bert!) whenever he invites me and my ilk to dinner at his home in Cape Town.

So what to make? How would I warm the cockles of Bertrand's heart? Well, experience has taught me that the way to the heart of a real cook is to choose a dead-simple, heart-warming, honest country dish, to cook it slowly and lovingly, and to use the very best ingredients.

I have always followed the wonderful advice given by Fay Maschler and Elizabeth Jane Howard in their book Cooking for Occasions. Ruminating about the worry of having a famous chef or cook to dinner, they write, in their chapter 'Having a Roux Brother to Dinner':

'Imagining, having, say, a Roux brother to dinner fleshes out the worry of inviting someone to your house whose knowledge and skills in connection with food you assume to be vastly superior to your own. What you must keep in mind when faced with this scenario is that professional cooks and chefs value well-sourced, wholesome ingredients treated simply and respectfully. In their own life they come across too much teased and tormented "luxury" food... and they like nothing better than a dish such as plainly roasted chicken served with its buttery juices and a watercress salad and a homely pudding such as a carefully made creamy rice pudding. They are thrilled to have the tables turned and are usually ready to love everything you put in front of them, exclaiming over perfectly ordinary assemblies as if it had never occurred to them to prepare them.'

And that's a useful piece of advice. Bert really liked this (whew) and so did my other foodie friend Mike Karamanof (another whew!), who dropped in just as I whipped the dish out of the oven.

This is my version of an Italian dish of wild boar with potatoes that I saw being prepared on Rick Stein's TV series Mediterranean Escapes; the dish was traditionally cooked by soldiers, said Stein, between two shields. It's dead simple, with few ingredients, and no extra liquid: very similar, in fact, to a Lancashire Hotpot.

This dish serves 10-12, but is easily halved.

Slow-Cooked Pork Neck with Potatoes, Thyme, Lemon and Garlic

2/3 cup (160 ml) good olive oil
10 big potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-cm slices
2 big onions, peeled, halved vertically and thinly sliced
2 pork necks (2.4 kg, about 1.2 kg each), trimmed of excess fat and cut vertically into 10-mm 'steaks'.
8 cloves fresh garlic, peeled and finely sliced
6 sprigs of fresh thyme (sage is also good, but use only two sprigs)
1 cup (250 ml) chopped flat-leaf parsley
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
salt and freshly ground black pepper
a knob of butter

Preheat the oven to 130°C. Pour a little olive oil into the bottom of a big cast-iron pot or casserole dish. Add a single layer of sliced potatoes and one-third of the sliced onions. Season with a little salt and pepper. Now put 4-5 slices of pork on top and sprinkle with some sliced garlic, thyme, parsley, and lemon rind. Squeeze over a little lemon juice and olive oil and season well with salt and pepper. Top with another layer of potato slices, and continue layering in the same pattern, finishing with a solid layer of overlapping potato slices.

Cut a circle of tin foil to the same size as the dish, butter it generously, and place it, butter side down, directly on the top layer of potatoes. Place a heavy plate or dish on top of the foil, so that the contents of the casserole are are weighed down. Place the dish in the oven and cook at 130°C for three to four hours, or until the pork is meltingly tender and you can pull it apart with a fork. Do not stir or mix the dish.

Remove the plate and tin foil. Brush the top layer of potato with a little more olive oil and butter, squeeze over some lemon juice and season well with salt and pepper. Turn the oven up to 180°C and cook for 3/4 hour, or until the potato topping is golden and crispy.

Serve with Slow-Baked Cherry Tomatoes, a fresh rocket salad, and some sharp mustard.

Serves 10-12 Print Friendly

Two-meals-in-one-go: Roast Orange Chicken Breasts with an Apricot and Nut Stuffing, and Glazed Pork Fillet

My mom used to make a baked orange chicken dish like this when I was in my teens, and I had a nostalgic rush of blood to the tastebuds when I made it again. I've reworked the recipe and added stuffing to make it more interesting (and, besides, my husband likes a bit of stuffing).

This recipe uses a lot of chicken breasts, with the aim of having leftovers for lunch boxes the next day. It's a bit fiddly to prepare the stuffing - leave it out, if you're in a hurry.

Freshly squeezed orange juice is essential - please don't use anything else - and take care not to overcook the chicken breasts. They should be juicy and tender when they come out of the oven.

If you'd like a thicker sauce, reduce the sauce mixture by boiling it for a few minutes on the stove before you pour it around the chicken pieces. I prefer a thinner juice ( please don't make me say 'zhjooo' ['jus'] which has to be one of the most irritating words I have ever heard come from the lips of a waiter or a food critic).

There was plenty of lovely orangey, chickeny zhjooo juice left over, and I used this as a base for making Trish Deseine's lovely Glazed Pork Fillet. This clever recipe - which I saw Trish demonstrating on TV as I was cooking the chicken - poaches a whole pork fillet in a bath of fresh orange juice, soy sauce, fish sauce and ginger; as the sauce reduces, it coats the fillet in a dark sticky caramelised glaze. I managed to snaffle two meltingly tender slices before the family ploughed in, and then the bloody cat pinched the rest off the counter.

Roast Orange Chicken Breasts with an Apricot and Nut Stuffing

10 free-range chicken breasts, on the bone, and skin on (thighs would be good too)
a few sprigs of fresh thyme

For the stuffing:
a little olive oil
1 large onion, peeled and very finely chopped
a fat clove of garlic, peeled and crushed
4 slices brown bread
4-5 fresh sage leaves
2 T (30 ml) fresh thyme leaves
a handful of nuts (about 1/2 cup; 125 ml) roughly chopped (I used pistachio nuts, but pecans or walnuts would be nice)
6 soft dried apricots, finely diced
one large egg
salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

For the sauce:
the finely grated zest of one orange
300 ml freshly squeezed orange juice
5 T (75 ml) chicken stock or white wine
2 T (30 ml) honey
2 T (30 ml) good soy sauce (such as Kikkoman)
a small knob (about 2cm x 2cm) fresh ginger, grated
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 tsp (5 ml) ground ginger
1 tsp (5 ml) ground coriander
salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Loosen the skin on the top of the breasts by slipping your hand underneath the skin and easing it away from the flesh to make pockets.

To make the stuffing, heat a frying pan and add the the olive oil. Turn in the chopped onion and cook over a medium heat until softened and beginning to turn golden. Stir in the garlic and fry for another minute or so (but don't let the garlic brown). In the meantime, put the bread slices into the jug of a food processor fitted with a metal blade. Process until fine. Now add the sage leaves and pulse until the leaves are finely chopped. Tip the breadcrumbs and sage into the cooked onion mixture and stir well. Remove the frying pan from the heat, allow to cool for five minutes, then add all the remaining stuffing ingredients. Use a fork or your fingers to combine.

Divide the mixture into ten portions.

Lift the skin away from the top of each breast, and spread a portion of stuffing into the pockets. Smooth the skin over the stuffing and press down well so that the stuffing is evenly distributed. Place the chicken breasts into an ovenproof dish or roasting pan and season with salt and pepper. (Go easy on the salt, as the soy sauce is salty enough on its own).

To make the sauce, whisk together all the ingredients. (You might need to warm the honey so it dissolves easily). Spoon a little of the sauce over each chicken breast, reserving the rest. Tuck a few sprigs of thyme between the chicken breasts, place in the oven and roast at 200°C for 25 minutes, or until the skin is beginning to crisp and become golden brown. Drain off any excess fat by tilting the dish over the sink.

Now pour the rest of the sauce around the chicken pieces and put the dish back in the oven. Reduce the heat to 180°C and bake for another 30-40 minutes, depending on the size and thickeness of the breasts, or until the chicken is cooked through but still tender. (Check by cutting through the thickest part of one breast; if there is not a trace of pinkness in the juices, the chicken is done.)

Serve with Basmati rice, and spoon a little orange sauce over each piece of chicken.

Serves 6, with plenty of leftovers for sandwiches.

Pork Fillet in an Orange Glaze

To make Trish Desaine's recipe, I strained the remaining juices from the roasting pan, to remove the fat that had hardened in the fridge overnight, and added a little more fresh orange juice, garlic and ginger, another 2 T (30 ml) honey, and a glug of fish sauce. I poached the pork fillet (a pork neck would be just as good) gently for the first 20 minutes, flipping it often, and then then turned up the heat to a fierce boil for the last ten or so minutes.

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Roast Pork Neck with Leeks, Carrots and Apples

Roast Pork Neck with Leeks, Carrots and Apples

Pork neck is an inexpensive yet most tender cut, with a delicate, sweet taste that lends itself to all sorts of flavour combinations. I don't know why you can't buy pork neck (or pork belly, for that matter) in your average South African supermarket: I suppose because the words 'pork' and 'neck' put together just sound tough and brutish, like 'knuckle gristle' or 'elbow grind'.

If you have a good butcher - I buy my pork from the incomparable Seemann's, in Strydom Park, Johannesburg - ask him for this cut. It's excellent in stews and casseroles, and lovely roasted in the oven with garlic, olive oil and fresh herbs. It also lends itself well to dark, spicy Oriental glazes: try coating a piece of pork neck in a mixture of soy sauce , honey, rice wine and orange juice wine flavoured with ginger, garlic and five-spice powder, and baking it at a low temperature for three or four hours until it's so tender you can shred it with a fork.

In this recipe, the pork is slow-cooked (after a preliminary hot-firing for browning purposes) on a bed of carrots, leeks and onions, with apple wedges and fresh sage adding sweetness and punch.

Roast Pork Neck with Leeks, Carrots and Apples

For the roast:
a piece of pork neck (about 1.3 kg), trimmed of large bits of fat
2 Tbsp (30 ml) wholegrain mustard
2 Tbsp (30 ml) olive oil
salt and freshly milled pepper
3 cloves fresh garlic, peeled and sliced
a large sprigs of fresh sage

For the vegetables:
8 big carrots, peeled
8 leeks, white parts only, rinsed
2 onions, peeled
2 Tbsp (30 ml) olive oil
1 Tbsp (15 ml) butter
3 eating apples (I used Golden Delicious)
3 cloves fresh garlic, roughly chopped
1 Tbsp (15ml) fresh thyme (see note below)
2 Tbsp (30ml) fresh sage leaves, sliced
1½ cups (375 ml) chicken, beef or vegetable stock or a combination of stock and dry white wine
salt and milled black pepper

For the gravy:
4 tsp (20ml) flour
2 cups stock, or a combination of stock and white wine
a dash of Kikkoman soy sauce (optional)
salt and milled black pepper

Preheat the oven to 220°C. Place the pork neck in a roasting pan and smear the mustard all over it. Sprinkle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Tuck the garlic slices and sage sprig under the pork and place in the oven, on the top rack. Roast for 35-45 minutes, or until the pork is beginning to turn a golden brown on top. Remove from the oven and drain off any excess fat.

In the meantime, prepare the vegetables. Top and tail the peeled carrots and cut into batons as long and thick as your ring finger. Cut the leeks into 2-cm slices, and quarter the onions. Heat the olive oil and butter in a big pan or wok and add the carrots, leeks and onions. Cook, stirring frequently, over a high heat for five minutes, or until the leeks and onions begin to take on a little colour. Core the apples and cut into wedges, but do not peel. Now add the apple to the pan along with the garlic, the thyme, and the sage.

Cook, tossing frequently, for another three minutes, then season with salt and pepper.

Remove the pork neck from its pan and put it aside. Spread the vegetables and apple in the roasting pan and set the pork neck on top. Pour in the stock and/or white wine. Put the pan back in the oven and reduce the heat to 150° C. Bake, uncovered, for about an hour and a half, or until the vegetables are soft and glazed and the pork is meltingly tender. Check the dish every half hour or so: if the stock has boiled away, add a little more. By the time it's finished cooking, there should be just a few tablespoons of liquid left in the pan.

Remove the pork and set aside to rest for ten minutes. Lift the vegetables from the roasting pan - leaving a few bits of carrot, leek, onion and garlic behind - using a slotted spoon, and keep warm. Put the roasting pan on the hob and turn the heat onto high. Sprinkle the flour into the pan and stir well, scraping to dislodge any golden residue. Cook for two or so minutes, pressing on the remaining veg bits with the back of a spoon. Now pour in a cup of stock or stock/wine combination, and, using a whisk, stir vigorously until the sauce thickens and bubbles alarmingly. Thin the gravy with more stock, water or wine to the desired consistency (I know it's old-fashioned, but I like a thickish gravy). Turn down the heat to very low and and allow to bubble gently for five minutes. If the gravy seems a bit pallid, add a dash of soy sauce.

Carve the pork into thickish slices and serve with the vegetables and gravy.

Serves 6.

Note:
You really do need fresh thyme and sage for this dish. My thyme bush is so poorly that I have taken to buying fresh bunches of thyme and freezing them, still in their packets. When a recipe calls for thyme, I open the packet, and scrunch it in my hands over the pan, so that the little frozen leaves shower out, leaving the stalks behind. And there is no loss of flavour or texture at all. Print Friendly