Pork-Belly Strudel with Cox Apples, Cobnuts and Savoy Cabbage

Photo courtesy of Photography by Sadiq

Once again I'm hooked on The Great British Bake Off, wherein a few weeks ago there was an episode on pastry and the technical challenge was to make apple strudel. I'd forgotten how difficult this was to make, even Mary Berry one of the judges confessed to buying pre-made filo pastry instead. However, I was so inspired by the challenge I decided to freshen up on my strudel baking. It took me nearly 2 weeks to perfect my pastry but after a lot of tweaking I think I've devised the perfect recipe and technique. You can, of course, use pre-made filo however. Or if ambitious, I suggest you to watch YouTube videos on how to roll strudel pastries.

For the filling I've used produce that is predominantly best during autumn such as cox apples, savoy cabbage and fresh cobnuts. These ingredients also go very well with my personal favorite pork-belly.
So act out your best Swedish chef impersonation and lycklig (Swedish for happy) baking.

Pastry:
350g strong flour
55g salted butter
1 teaspoon caster sugar
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
150ml cold water
1 egg
1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon bread crumbs
100g melted butter

Filling:
500g pork belly
200ml apple juice
1 tablespoon sea salt
1 teaspoon cracked black pepper
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

4 cox apples
25g butter
1 tablespoon caster sugar

1 savoy cabbage
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon sea salt
20 fresh cobnuts

METHOD:
Place pork in baking tray and pour over apple juice and olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Wrap tray with foil and place in oven set at 160ºC for 1 hour 20 minutes. Once cooked, leave to cool then shred the meat.

In a electric mixer with dough hook place flour, cubed butter, sugar and salt, beat together until butter has fully incorporated with flour. Add vinegar, water, egg and beat together for about 20 minutes. Brush a large piece of cling film with olive oil and scrap out pastry dough onto cling film and wrap. Leave pastry to rest for 1 hour.

Peel apples and remove core then slice into 1cm thick pieces, line a baking try with parchment paper and lay out apples. Break butter up into smaller bits place around apples, sprinkle with sugar and place in 160ºC oven with pork for 20 minutes.

Slice cabbage in half and cut out the core, then cut cabbage into 2cm slices. Put a large pot over a high heat and add olive oil, when oil is hot add cabbage and salt, cook for about 7-10 minutes until cabbage has fully wilted. Place a strainer over the sink and pour in the cabbage to remove any excess liquid.

Brush or spray a large clean bench or table with oil, then line the entire surface with parchment paper. Sprinkle working surface and rolling pin with a little flour, unwrap pastry and place in the middle of bench and dust the top with extra flour. Start rolling pastry out as flat as possible working your way round the bench to get an even and flat pastry, make sure there are no tears in the pastry. Dust with a little extra flour as you go, once you've stretched the dough as much as you can by rolling, leave pastry to rest for 10 minutes. Flour your hands and gently slide the knuckle side of your hands under pastry. By spreading your fingers and knuckles ever so gently, stretch the pastry and avoid getting any rips. I try to stretch pastry over the working bench edges, the weight of the pastry hanging over the counter helps to stretch the dough. Once the majority of the pastry is translucent brush gently with half of the melted butter and scatter over bread crumbs. Leave pastry to rest for a further 10 minutes. After resting, trim the thicker edges and make a rectangle shape out of the pastry. Then give pastry one last stretch and trim once more.

Lay cabbage down one end of the pastry and top with apples, shredded pork and shelled cobnuts then season with salt and pepper. Brush the pastry edges with extra butter. Starting at the end of the pastry with filling, gently lift parchment paper and roll pastry down the bench creating a cylinder cigar shape. Holding both ends of the parchment paper, carefully lift the strudel onto a baking tray, trim the parchment paper and tuck the ends under strudel. Brush strudel with butter and place in oven set at 180ºC for 40 minutes. After baking for 20 minutes brush with more butter. Once cooked pastry should be crisp and no soggy bottoms, leave to rest for 15 minutes before slicing into 6-8 pieces.

Wild Pork Belly Summer Salad

Summer is well and truly here along with some more interesting ingredients to play around with. Borlotti beans, wet purple garlic and wild fennel are all growing in an abundance this months and we should make an effort to incorporate these 3 amazing vegetable's into our diet while in season.
So I've devised a delightful pork belly salad that incorporates the creamy borlotti beans, milder and sweet wet purple garlic and the peppery aniseed flavours of wild fennel. Perfectly balanced with pork and very healthy!

1kg pork belly
1kg fresh borlotti bean pods
4 wet purple garlic bulbs
40g wild fennel
100g red baby chard washed
500ml apple juice
50ml extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon fresh cracked black pepper

METHOD:
First cut a criss-cross pattern on the skin of pork then place in a deep roasting tray. Pour apple juice over pork, drizzle half the olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cover baking tray with foil and place in oven set at 140oC for 2 hours. Cut the head off the garlic exposing the tops of cloves, place in a separate baking tray and drizzle over 100ml of water and the remaining olive oil. Cover tray with foil and place in oven to cook with pork for 40 minutes. Once garlic has cooked leave to stand covered in tray.
Shell the borlotti beans, when the pork has cooked for 2 hours add borlotti beans to the roasting tray and cover once more. Roast pork and beans together for a further hour.
When the pork and beans have cooked remove foil and leave to stand for 20 minutes to cool. In the mean time squeeze the bottoms of garlic bulbs and the soft cloves will pop out, discard the outer skin.
To construct the salad you can either make individual servings or one large platter. Lay the red baby chard down first followed by the beans and several garlic cloves. Using a fork and clean hand shred the pork meat and dress over salad. Lastly garnish with wild fennel and drizzle over the roasting juices. Serve as soon as possible. 

Pulled Pork and Candy Beetroot Salad with Pork-Oli

I can't take credit for the name Pork-Oli that goes to James the lead barista at Kaffeine he's a meat eating carnivore who affectionately dropped that P bomb in the kitchen the other day. But I'll happily use it to describe the dressing on this salad, its essentially a mayonnaise made by reducing the roasting juices from the pork. If I could use some blue language to describe how yummy this dressing is I would but I've decided its best to keep this blog clean-ish.
Also worth noting are candy beetroot which have just had a resurgence and quite cheap if you can find a stockist, quite sweet and smaller than regular beets and have a lovely inner candy cane pattern flesh.
I must also thank Etienne for his fresh batch of pictures, I really love how this picture looks as though the salad has just hovered in from a Sci-Fi kitchen, delicious and hunting.

800g pork belly
250ml apple juice
50ml tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
400g candy beetroot
Sea salt and cracked pepper
1 radicchio

PORK-OLI
200ml roasting juices
2 egg yolks
1 teaspoon whole seed mustard
1 teaspoon cider vinegar
125ml vegetable oil
1 teaspoon water

METHOD:
Using a sharp knife score the skin of pork belly with a chris-cross pattern and place pork in baking tray with a 3cm edge. Pour apple juice over pork then sprinkle 1 tablespoon of salt over the skin and crack some pepper followed by drizzling over 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Cover tray with foil and place in oven to roast at 170oC for 2 hours. Peel beetroot and slice into 2cm wedges and lay out on a baking tray, sprinkle generously with salt and pepper and drizzle over the remaining olive oil. Place beetroot in the oven to roast with the pork for 45 minutes.
After pork has roasted for 2 hours remove foil and brush surface of pork with the juices then carefully pour off 200ml of roasting liquid into a measuring jug. Place pork back in the oven uncovered to roast for a further 30 minutes. Pour roasting juice's into sauce pan and place over a high heat and bring to the boil. Rapidly boil the juices till they reduce by 3/4 and turn into a thick brown syrup then remove from heat. Using a food processor blend together yolks, mustard and vinegar for 1 minutes, while the processor is still on slowly add the reduced pork juices followed by gradually pouring in vegetable oil to create a mayonnaise lastly add water.
Cut radicchio in half and remove the core then slice into quarters and wash the leaves.
Once pork is cooked remove the skin and using 2 forks pull apart the flesh. Lay some of the radicchio over a large platter and scatter over half the beetroot followed by half the pork meat then drizzle over desired amount of pork-oli and repeat the layer, serve as soon as possible.