- Organic belly of pork.
- Rhubarb
- Zest of an organic orange.
- Bit of organic coconut or olive oil.
- Salt.
- Preheat the oven to 150°C/300°F/Gas mark 2.
- Wash and cut the rhubarb up into slices about ½”/1.5cm thick.
- Put the oil into an oven proof dish and spread it about with a bit of rhubarb – using enough oil to give a light film over the dish.
- Spread the rhubarb out over the dish.
- Place the belly pork over the rhubarb
- Sprinkle all with a little salt.
- Cover with foil or a tightly fitting lid.
- Put in the oven for 1½ hours upwards. The oven could be cooler if you know the meat will be cooking for, say, 3 hours.
- About 20 mins before eating, take out the dish, uncover it and turn up the oven to 220°C/425°F/Gas mark 7. Put the meat back in to brown. The rhubarb will probably be a watery mess, so this will dry out a bit too. If the rhubarb is already dry, then either add a bit of water or take out the rhubarb you can get to and keep warm.
- When the meat is brown – this will take about 20 minutes, remove from oven and take meat off the rhubarb. Mash the rhubarb up and check the seasoning. Add the orange zest.
- Spread the rhubarb out on a serving dish and arrange the pork on top.
Usually slow roast belly of pork goes the other way round – brown it first then slow roast. In fact the browning stage is optional – the meat is cooked and edible when slow roasted. It is a matter of how much time is to hand. If, like me, cooking time is squeezed in, and dinner time means I’m ravenous, then I do not bother browning the meat, but just eat it looking a bit white and pasty. If the rhubarb was really watery, I would boil that down whilst my veggies were cooking.
I have not given quantities. A rough guide is about 250g/8 oz meat per person to same amount of rhubarb if cooking for 1 or 2, but the rhubarb amount drops for more people.
I do not sweeten the rhubarb since the tart taste goes well with pork. I have also cooked lumps of chicken in this way.