SLOW-ROAST HOISIN PORK SHOULDER WITH RADISH & CUCUMBER SALAD
It’s really important to get excellent pork for this, so go to your butcher. Apart from basting the meat for the last hour of cooking, this is pretty hassle-free.
SERVES 6
PREPARATION TIME
20 minutes, plus marinating and chilling
COOKING TIME
6 hours
FOR THE PORK
• 1.9kg boned pork shoulder
• 125ml each soy sauce, runny honey, hoisin sauce and amontillado sherry
• 2tsp five spice
• 3cm fresh root ginger, peeled and finely grated
FOR THE SALAD
• 3tbsp rice vinegar
• 3tsp caster sugar
• Pinch of fine sea salt
• 2cm fresh root ginger, peeled and finely grated
• 1 large garlic clove, very finely chopped or grated
• 1 cucumber, chilled
• 300g radishes (a mixture of colours if possible), quartered, or cut into eighths if they’re big
• 1tsp toasted sesame oil
• 1tsp toasted sesame seeds (a mixture of white and black, if you like)
TO SERVE
Boiled rice, or soft white bread rolls
• Crisp lettuce leaves
1 Remove the skin from the pork – or ask your butcher to do it for you – and discard. Leave the fat on.
2 Mix together all the other ingredients for the pork in a small bowl to make a marinade. Put this in a large plastic food bag, if possible, or a roasting tin, with the pork. Marinate in the fridge for 24-48hr.
3 Bring the pork to room temperature by removing it from
DELICIOUSLY TENDER, PERFECT FOR SHARING
the fridge for at least 1hr before you are going to cook it.
4 Preheat the oven to 140°C (120°C fan) mark 1. Put the pork into a roasting tin in which it will fit snugly (if there is a lot of room around it, the juices and the marinade will just run off and burn) and pour the marinade into a saucepan. Roast the pork for 4½–5hr, or until the meat is soft and melting. Bring the marinade to the boil, then remove from the heat (it’s very important to reheat the marinade to boiling point, so it’s safe for you to use it to baste the part-cooked pork).
5 Now ladle some of the marinade over the pork and return to the oven. Keep adding more of the marinade and basting the pork every 10min for the next hour. Turn it over every time you do this. The pork should end up dark and glossy. If the joint starts to get too dark on the outside, cover with foil.
6 To make the salad, mix the vinegar, sugar, salt, ginger and garlic together. Peel the cucumber in stripes. Halve it along its length and scoop out the seeds, then cut it into 4cm lengths. Bash these with a mallet or a rolling pin.
Put the cucumber into a serving bowl with the dressing and put in the fridge for 20min. When you’re ready to eat, add the radishes and the sesame oil and toss everything together. Scatter the sesame seeds on top.
7 Serve the pork with boiled rice or in soft white bread rolls, with the radish and cucumber salad and crisp lettuce leaves.