Pork belly with spring vegetables and lemon ricotta
- Prepare
- overnight
- Cook
- over 2 hours
- Serve
- Serves 4
- Dietary
- Egg-freeGluten-freeNut-free
Crispy pork belly and a beautifully simple array of seasonal veg, are spring on a plate, all tied together with a light lemon ricotta.
Ingredients
For the ricotta
For the pork belly
- 3 garlic cloves, peeled
- 1 lemon, zest and juice
- 3 tbsp fennel seeds
- 1kg/2lb 4oz pork belly, skin scored
- salt
- 1–2 tbsp olive oil
For the vinaigrette
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 1–2 tbsp muscatel vinegar
- ½ lemon juice only
- 1 tsp Dijon mustard
- 1 garlic clove, finely chopped
To serve
- 6 asparagus spears, trimmed
- 50g/1¾oz broad beans
- 50g/1¾oz fresh peas
- 3 thick spring onions, sliced
- 2 young carrots, scrubbed and sliced
- 3 Jersey Royal new potatoes, quartered
Method
To make the ricotta, mix all of the ingredients together, season well with salt and allow to drain overnight. If the ricotta is dry already, you won’t need to hang, you can use it straight away.
To make the pork belly, preheat the oven to 220C/200C Fan/Gas 7. Pound the garlic, lemon zest and fennel seeds together in a pestle and mortar and rub into the pork well.
Sit the pork on a wire rack in a roasting tray and add some water to the tray. Season the pork well with salt and roast for 30 minutes.
Turn the oven down to 190C/170C Fan/Gas 5 and cook for another 2 hours, squeezing the lemon juice over the skin halfway through.
Turn the oven back up to 220C/200C Fan/Gas 7 again and blister for the last 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.
To make the vinaigrette, mix all of the ingredients together.
To serve, cut the pork belly into small cubes. Reheat the vegetables in some boiling salted water and toss in most of the vinaigrette.
Spoon the vegetables onto a serving plate, top with small pieces of the ricotta and add the pork belly. Dress with any resting juices and the remaining vinaigrette.
