Pork Roast Lunch with Fennel

Crispy on the outside, tender in the inside...

I had been dying do a roast for ages but never seem to get around to it. Quite the carnivore, I like the taste of roast meat when nicely done. By "when nicely done", I mean neither too greasy nor salty. I prefer a light hand with the marinade, especially for meats with a lighter taste like pork or some poultry - something to enhance the taste but doesn't distract.

Sunday pub lunches featured regularly on my weekends in the UK. Picture this: a generous portion of roast beef, cooked to perfection - crisp-skinned and a tender rose-pink centre - accompanied by roast vegetables and an obligatory pint of bitter beer. Yums! Yums! Yums!

In a pub serious about its food, we can often find roast leg of lamb, rare roast beef or slow roast pork belly. I didn't like drowning my meat in gravy though, and consequently found Yorkshire puddings a waste of time. What I loved was the meat...

When I spotted a very nice-looking piece of pork loin in the supermarket, I knew that the time had come for me to roast some meat.

I prepared a very light marinade of rosemary, garlic, salt and a sliver of butter would enhance the clean taste of pork. For the roast vegetables, I added onions and apples, which would sweeten when cooked, to fennel which has a mild anise taste. This sweetness goes well with pork.

Roast Pork Loin with fennel - serves 2

Ingredients

Pork loin, 0.5kg with the top scoured in a criss-cross pattern

2 cloves of garlic - minced

1 heaped teaspoon of rosemary - use only the leaves, or dried rosemary

Butter - 2 thin slivers of butter

Salt and pepper to taste

1 head of fennel, thinly sliced

1 large white onoin, thinly sliced

1 apple, peeled and thinly sliced

Preparation time: 20 mins

Cooking time: 1 hour

Level of difficulty: Easy peasy

Heat the oven to 170degC. Using a fork, mash the rosemary, garlic, salt, pepper and a sliver of butter together until mixed. Rub this mixture onto the pork loin, ensure that the scour marks are worked into. Place it in the middle of a roasting dish. Sprinkle the top part with some salt to help obtain a crispy skin.

Roast for 30 mins (may be extended to up to an hour for a bigger piece of meat). Add the vegetables around the pork loin, breaking the second sliver of butter and sprinkling salt onto the vegetables. Continue roasting for a further 30 mins. During this time, you may want to turn the vegetables to ensure even cooking.

Remove roasting dish from the oven. Place the pork loin on a clean plate and let it rest for 5-10 mins before cutting in thick slices. Serve with vegatables with the remaining juices. Add mustard, if desired.

Now the only thing missing was a huge pint of bitter!