Going with the Brit- theme, I decided to make the whole meal out of or inspired by the same book. For the main course I went with a pork belly roast and pan haggerty. Since we had guests over, the amount was just about right…

 

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Pork Belly and Pan Haggerty

1 pork belly with rind
salt, pepper
4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped or pressed

600g firm, waxy potatoes
3 large onions
100g strong cheddar (i used strong Tyrolean mountain cheese. if you like cheese a lot, you might want to use more than that)
1 1/2 tablespoon olive oil
20g butter, melted
salt, pepper

 

Preheat the oven to 190C. Cut lines into the rind of the bork belly, first vertically then horizontally, about 1 cm apart. Pat the belly with kitchen cloth to make sure it’s dry. Put oil in a tray with garlic and put the belly in, rind up. Make sure no oil gets on the rind, if you want it crusty. Put a lot of salt on the rind – this draws out the water and makes a nice crackling. Put the pork belly into the oven, after 30 minutes reduce the heat to 170C and roast for another hour. I put more salt over the crust after about 45 min, to make sure it would be extra crackly.

The pork roast will take about 90 min in total in the oven, whereas the pan haggerty needs about 30. Make sure you can fit both in together, so you can serve both hot and fresh.

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Thinly slice the potatoes, grate the cheese and put it aside. Heat oil in a pan and sweat the onions for about 8 minutes, until they are soft. Put oil in a pan or oven form (I don’t have a pan that fits into the oven, so I just made it in an oven form), then put in a layer of potatoes. Season with salt and pepper, then put a layer of onions and a layer of cheese on top. The recipe suggests brushing the potatoes with melted butter, but I advise to go easy with it so that they won’t get too greasy. Put the layers on top of each other until you end up with a layer of cheese on top of the form.

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If you make it in a pan, put it over medium heat and cook for 5 minutes until the bottom layer is brown. Then transfer it into the oven. If you did it in an oven form, put it into the oven straight away. Bake them in the oven for about 30 minutes until the potatoes are tender. If the cheese isn’t golden brown, increase the heat for a few minutes or turn the grill on. 15 minutes before everything was done, I added peppers in the tray with the pork roast.

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Both dishes turned out super. I will use less or no butter in the potatoes next time, but it wasn’t really a bother. They tasted great and the cheese was nicely melted and crispy on top. The pork was fantastic. The crackling was firm and stayed like this even until we had the leftovers cold.