The recipes that I clutched in my hand as I entered the kitchen were for a roast loin of pork, a boring brown soda bread, a chocolate cake and puff pastry (to be made today for use tomorrow). I also carried with me the recipe for something that I have decided that it is high time that I learn how to do - candied peel. This is however a three day process and so I will not be mentioning it again until tomorrow: the first stage is, after all, to soak the peel overnight. A real challenge.
The roast loin of pork was the first thing on my list and was not - if I am honest - the world's greatest challenge: you take a loin of pork and roast it. What it has done however is help me in a very important way: for the last few weeks a knife described only as a 'chopping knife' on its box when I bought it, has been sitting in my knife case. So far its only regular outings have been to chop mushrooms because the chef's knife is far more use for general cutting; now however, I have re-designated it my boning knife, given that I don't have a real one. A boning knife is a medium sized, very sharp knife designed to be used to cut up raw meat and remove the bones from it and my chopping knife does this very well: it is exactly the right size and weight to be able to easily cut into meant and to be used precisely for the removal of bones. Perfect. I reached this conclusion because I was presented with my loin of pork with the bone still attached and was told that I should 'loosen' the meat before cooking in order to facilitate the job of carving it later on; my knife performed well and is now on permanent meat duty. Lucky it.
The only other job as far as the pork went was to make the crackling. This is harder than it looks because old-breed pigs have very thick skin and you have to really push to get the knife to score it deeply enough - and my knifes are sharper than most. Once you have scored the rind you rub large quantities of maldon sea salt into it and stick it in the oven for the best part of two hours - when using older breeds of pork it is always best to cook them fully because they will be slightly tough if pink, but the extra juiciness of the meat means that they won't dry out nearly as fast as modern breeds and the flavour will be far superior.
The biggest job of the day was by far the chocolate cake - a real labour of love is all that it can be described as. In return for your efforts you are presented with a cake that unlike so many chocolate cakes is not disappointing, not dry and not tasteless: it is definitely worth it. Part of the reason for the extra goodness is down to the addition of extra, secret ingredients like ground almonds (which I promise, really do make the cake moister) and whipped egg-whites. And chocolate: there was absolutely NO cocoa powder in this recipe - only proper chocolate and it was all the better for it.
I iced the cake and decorated it with redcurrants before finishing for the morning. And that was it - nothing to it. Sorry about that.
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