Belly of pork roasted with mandarin slices recipe. Halogen and conventional oven recipe.
Posted by Fiona Nevile in Pork Ham Bacon Sausages | 6 comments
Belly of pork baked with mandarin slices with root vegetables
I think that this could be called my Mandarin period. I’ve fallen in love with this fruit. The round glass bowl on the kitchen table is filled with mandarins and lemons and I’m addicted. Bizarrely the Min Pins have discovered this tart and delicious gem too. A segment is prized and even the skin is a trophy to be fought over and dragged into baskets to sweeten their sleep.
I happened to get a whole belly of pork for a giveaway price. The deeply scored skin meant that bacon would be not such a good idea so four small belly joints were ferreted away in the freezer. At this price mid week roasts were an option and also the freedom to experiment.
I used to like duck in orange sauce, back in the 1970s and reckoned that a fatty joint such as belly of pork might be good combined with mandarins. It’s important that this joint is cooked long and slow, we cook ours in a nest of foil that is arranged so that only the skin is showing. In the past we’ve successfully teamed belly of pork with green tomatoes (my favourite), apples and plums.
The pork and mandarin combination was superb – as good as the green tomatoes. We tried a little of the mandarin flesh with the meat and a slice each was just enough not to drown the sweetness of the pork. It also made its own gravy which could easily be turned into a rather chic sauce with a little white wine and cornflour.
I cooked this in Andrew, our halogen oven. The joint was put on the lowest rack with the extension collar on. If you are using a conventional oven roast the pork in the centre of the oven at 160c/140c fan for the same time.
Belly of pork roasted with mandarin slices
Ingredients:
500g belly of pork joint
1 chunky mandarin unpeeled and sliced
Method:
Make a small nest out of foil to hold the pork, place the mandarin slices on the foil and the pork, skin side up on top of them. Make sure that all the pork flash is covered tightly by the foil – leaving only the skin exposed.
Place the foil nest on an ovenproof dish and put it in the preheated oven at 160c (for halogen and conventional ovens) 140c for fan ovens.
Bake for 4 hours and let the joint rest in a warm place for 20 minutes before serving.
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what about basting while it is roasting ? and not burning the sugar . .keep temps low and long ? broil at the end ?
Sounds good, what brad oven haven you got? will the timings matter much? I have a jml one
Awesome…
Thanks for sharing this yummy recipe.
Patricia, try google, Wikipedia has a good picture. You can get it rolled too.
You make think me a “dolt” but I don’t know what a belly of a pork joint would translate to here in the US.
I’m thinking a belly joint might be a ham which is large and normally has a bone in it – although you might mean the meat surrounding the ribs, your picture might be what we would call a pork roast, which is long and looks rolled… I might try it this weekend if there are any clementines (what we call manderines)in the local market.. I’ll let you know…
Strange they like citrus flavours, isn’t it? We’re eating these wonderful Tunisian oranges for breakfast at the moment and Circe the labrador sits at my heels slobbering as I segment them, hoping for a bit of juicy skin. She draws the line at the peel, though. The recipe sounds fab. Must try it soon.