Honey Braised pork belly with parsnip and spud mash with apple calvados sauce. If ingredients are hard to find, you re-create the recipe with similar flavors but accessible ingredients you'll find. 

Serves 10 people

Ingredients:

• 4kg side of pork belly
• 2 tsp fennel seeds
• 4 tbsp honey
• 1kg parsnips
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1 tsp fresh sage
• 1 cup double cream
• 2 cloves crushed garlic
• 2 tsp freshly cracked black pepper
• 1 kg baby potatoes
• 1 kg cooking apples cubed
• 100ml calvados
• Gravy (see recipe)

Method:

1. Rub the pork belly with salt and  pepper, massage the honey into the skin and sprinkle the fennel seeds onto this-place in a very hot oven.
2. Roast for about half an hour until the skin of the pork has started to puff up and you can see it turning into crackling. Turn the heat down to 180°C and roast for another hour. Take out of the oven and baste with the fat in the bottom of the tray.
3. Meanwhile peel and chop the parsnips and place in boiling water. Cook until tender.
4. Take the whole new potatoes (unskinned) and cook. 
5. In a saucepan melt the butter and fry the cracked black pepper and sage and garlic in it until the butter starts to brown.
6. Deglaze with the cream and reduce by a quarter.
7. Place the cooked parsnips and spuds into a bowl and begin to mash keeping the skins of the spuds in the mash.
8. Add the cream and mix thoroughly. Keep warm

For the Calvados sauce

Make the gravy by:

1. Keeping all the juices and fat from the pork.
2. Place on the heat and begin to fry the cubed apple. De-glaze with calvados.
3. To this add 1 cup of water which has had a stock cube dissolved in it.
4. In a separate cup dissolve 1 tsp of corn flour in about 100ml of milk. Whisk this into the boiling gravy liquid until desired thickness is achieved. 
5. Stir in 2 tbsp of butter test for seasoning.

Tips/Pointers

If using a ‘dutch oven’ to cook the pork, make sure when you start out you have plenty of charcoal on the top of it so it cooks the crackling properly. You can then reduce the amount of charcoal, and therefore intensity of heat after about an hour to ensure meat cooks through thoroughly without burning.

Recipe from Safari Cuisine, a book by Andres Bifani