Slow Roasted Marmalade Pork

The meal last night was a great success. It's always a bit of a risk trying a new meal at a dinner party, but I can honestly say this was relatively simple and was met with so much enthusiasm. My friend Rachel said it was a winner recipe and along with her recipe for whole roasted new potatoes, most of the work was done before my friends arrived. The pork was really tender, very moist and with the last minute additions of the herbs, chilli and lemon, had really lovely flavours. Thank you Rachel I'll definitely do this again. I halved the Jamie Oliver recipe as the piece of Pork he suggests is huge. Any leftovers would be great in a sandwich the next day, I think we might have a wee bit left for one lucky person. That should probably be me.

Ingredients

Serves 8

approx 3kg neck-end shoulder of pork (boneless)

olive oil

100g of good quality fine shred orange marmalade

half a teaspoon of black pepper

1 red chilli

small bunch of mint, leaves only

small bunch of flat leaf parsley

1 lemon

sea salt

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C. Place the pork in a large roasting tray. Using a small, sharp knife score deep incisions into the skin at 2 cm intervals, in a criss cross fashion. Drizzle over olive oil, season with salt and pepper, then rub the seasoning into the meat. Roast for about 2 hours and 30 min, or until the crackling is crispy and the meat is really tender. (I don't think you can overcook this)

Once the pork is ready, remove it from the oven, drain away the fat (or save for lovely roast potatoes at a later date). At this point remove the crackling and put it on separate baking tin in oven so it continues to crisp up. Tip the marmalade into a bowl and mix with the black pepper. Spoon this all over the pork and put back into the oven for another 30 min. You should get some lovely sticky juices with this.

Take the pork and the crackling out of the oven and leave to rest covered with foil for 30 min. Meanwhile finely slice the red chilli, roughly chop the mint and parsley leaves.

When ready to serve, shred the meat and crackling using a sharp knife and a fork. Drizzle some of the sticky cooking juices on the meat, scatter over the chill and herbs then grate over the zest of the lemon. Serve on a large platter.

The new potatoes were roasted whole, drizzled with olive oil and salted, for 40 min, then when golden brown, broken up with a potato masher. I added some chopped rosemary (forgot the garlic) and put back in the oven for 15 more minutes. These could be cooked in the same oven as the pork and turned up to 200C while the pork is resting. I guess you could even cook them around the meat, leaving some of the meat juices to coat the potatoes. Even less washing up.

Served with a green salad too.

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