Roast Pork With Rhubarb Sauce

Serves six

After the amazing incident of the escaped wild boars a couple of years ago, I would have liked to cook this with wild boar – as they do in many parts of Spain and France. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get any, but this, bought at the fabulous Ginger Pig in London, was just as good.

The tartness of the very simple rhubarb sauce complements perfectly the slight fattiness of the pork

1.3kg/3lbs loin of pork, skin left on and scored, either by you or a good butcher
2 heaped tablespoons of salt
450g/1lb young rhubarb, sliced lengthwise then cut into 1cm/half inch chunks
2 tablespoons caster sugar
2 tablespoons cranberry sauce

Rub the pork with the salt, place on a trivet in a roasting pan and put into the oven at the highest temperature you can get.

Immediately turn the oven down to 190C/375F and continue roasting, basting occasionally, for an hour and a half – if your joint is larger or smaller, calculate the overall roasting time at 30 minutes per 450g/1lb.

Leave to rest, covered with foil, for at least 15 minutes. Meanwhile, make the sauce . . .

Put the rhubarb and sugar into a saucepan and stir over a gentle heat until the rhubarb starts to give up its juices and the sugar is melted.

Still over a gentle heat, add the cranberry sauce and stir until combined, adding a little water if the sauce seems too thick.

Cut the crackling off the pork and break into pieces.
Trim off any excess fat on the meat.
Slice and serve with the sauce on the side.

MY TIP
Good butchers do this as a matter of course. If yours doesn’t, ask him (or, increasingly, her these days) to cut off the skin, remove some of the fat, then tie the skin back with string. That way you’ll get wonderfully crisp crackling and less fat.

Avoid the type of supermarket joint which is held together by netting as this gets inseperably melted into the crackling. Makes things difficult to carve and bits of the netting get stuck between your teeth!