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Posts Tagged ‘cabbage’

Traditional Irish dinner?

Posted in All things food, Home, tagged , , on July 30, 2018| 12 Comments »

We offer guests the option of joining us for dinner when they come stay.  If they decide to take up this offer I ask about food likes and dislikes.

The most usual answer to that question would be that they don’t eat ‘offal’.  Now we do, but I don’t think I would ever randomly serve it up to guests.

Then there are the people who don’t eat fish. Those who only eat ‘white’ meat …. pork seemingly comes under that classification!!! (What kind of pork are they used to???)

We’ve had some interesting challenges in the food department.  There’s been the nut, dairy and egg free challenge.  The latest was dairy, sugar, salt and red meat free diet… that was somewhat of a challenge but we managed it.

More and more people are saying that they’d like something ‘traditional’.  Now here’s a question for you…

  • If you are Irish what do you classify as a ‘traditional’ Irish dinner?
  • If you are not Irish, but travelling to Ireland, what would your expectation of a traditional Irish dinner be?

I think it is fair to say that Alfie and I really don’t do much that is ‘traditional’ Irish food. We have on occasion done ham (usually finished on the bbq!) with the potatoes and vegetables.  I’ve also done stuffed pork steak with vegetables as a ‘traditional’ option.

As Irish as it gets here

Summertime traditional?  I don’t know.  My childhood memories would be of salad plates with lettuce, ham, tomato and probably a hard-boiled egg.

Give us your answers….

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Perfect Roast Pork Belly

Posted in All things food, Recipes, tagged , , , , on July 4, 2012| 8 Comments »

Tis a much maligned piece of meat, pork belly!  However, cooked properly it is the most delicious meat.

Pork belly with cabbage

Perfect Irish Pork Belly

Of course, you need to start with a good piece of meat to get the perfect roast too!  So do put some thought into sourcing your joint first.

As we keep saying here…. you need to know what the animal is fed!  It does effect the final outcome!  If the pig is fed ‘bad stuff’, the meat will not be good.  Simple!

We don’t often get to keep pork belly for ourselves… but there was a small piece in the freezer at the weekend…. just perfect for two.  I grabbed it quickly before a customer came and took it away! 🙂

Ingredients:

  • 1 kg. free-range pork belly
  • Salt

Method:

Heat oven to 150 deg. C

Score the skin well.  Dry with kitchen paper getting down into the score marks too.  Sprinkle liberally with salt….. don’t be afraid…. you cannot overdue the salt at this stage.

Place meat on shallow oven tray lined with foil.

Roast at 150 deg. C for 2 hours.

Raise the temperature up to as high as your oven can go!  Mine goes to 240 deg. C and finish off pork for half an hour.

You will end up with delicious succulent meat and the crispiest, to die for, crackling!

Irish Pork Belly with roast potatoes.

We served ours with roast potatoes – cooked in with the meat.  And the first of our cabbage from the garden, just sauteed in some butter!

Enjoy!

 

 

 

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