The Perfect Pork Crackling

I have done this recipe twice before and have failed terribly. Great Roast, no Crackling. So here's my latest attempt and it was a success!

This was I figured out. The skin needs to be dry! I always did the roast with the meat and because I marrinated the whole thing, the juice always got into the skin and made it difficult to crackle. So here's tips I followed:

+ Drying out the skin as much as possible will make for crunchier crackling. Place the pork, uncovered, on a wire rack in a tray in the fridge overnight. Pat dry with absorbent paper before roasting.

+ Scoring the skin at 1.5cm intervals exposes more surface area to heat so it will crisp up faster. Use a very sharp knife or utility knife to score the skin (note this is harder than you would beleive with a kitchen knife so cheat and get the butchers to do it for you).
+ Rub the skin with oil and salt to help the skin crisp up (a lot of salt helps reduce the moiture too).
+ Remove the skin from the rest of the roast and do it separately so that the juices don't get into the crackling.

+ Make sure your oven is nice and hot. Preheat it to 220°C to 250°C  for 20 minutes. This will crisp up the skin, then reduce the heat to 180°C for the remaining cooking time.

Now the roast: I actually winged it with this recipe. I mixed the juice of one orange, two tablespoons of Harissa, chopped up coriander and two bird's eye chillis, sesame oil, salt and pepper. (Previously I have used cumin seed and cinammon too and chopped up parsley and garlic and slot it into the scored slits and anywhere at all they would stay on the meat before drizzling the marinade over the leg).

I used 40-45min per kg of pork at 180°C First 30 minutes on 220°C to 250°C and then the rest of the time on 180°C. Here's the other trick to make it that much more yummy, for the last half an hour of cooking, I drizzled two tablespoons of honey all over the roast to glaze it, Didn't put it in too early because honey burns easily. It still did burn though as you can see from below, but it was so aromatic that it was worth its while.

And for Gravy, I used the pan juices, put into a saucepan and whisked flour into the juices when it simmers. The Harissa in this makes for a lovely spicy gravy which my friends loved immensely with yorkshire pudding.

Hope you try it out too and let me know if you have an awesome Pork roast success of your own to share.

Lucky

It has been a lucky weekend. On the way driving to the Cinema to watch Ted and we mentioned having the whole cinema to ourselves and what a treat it would be. We got there and look at this! Just us plopped right in the middle of it all. Except that as soon as the ads were finishing, more people came in so the treat was very short lived.

We also went to a Karaoke sesh, one where they rate your performance and Mr.HEA and I scored a perfect 100 for belting out Jason Mraz & Colbie Caillat's Lucky . Yay!

But that wasn't where the luck ended for being married to my best friend. I took off my wedder and slipped it into my jacket pocket whilst gardening with Mr.HEA and whilst bending over, it fell out into the mulch. I spent over an hour combing the laid in mulch and was very close to tears when my Superman husband with his x-ray vision finds it after I had given up. Hurrah!

Also tried my luck at making the perfect pork crackling and third time lucky, here's the evidence. Makes for awesome beer food take my word for it.

Last but not least, we had been very frustrated with our bank and was livid with a phone call they made to us on Friday night. So much so we almost broke up with them and trust me, we ran through all the paperwork to switch over the weekend. But just as we were preparing it all to go into the envelope to mail off, I asked Mr.HEA a question about whether we would be slapped with penalty rates for exiting the loan and upon looking it up, we caught on that we would have been slapped with a $5k penalty rate/ clawback, whatever you would call it. Aiks! Close Shave.

Hugging Mr.HEA last night, reassuring him that we had saved ourselves albeit having spent all the last month investigating this refinance option, I really thanked God that we were able to listen to each other through frustrating times and that we have been able to think through these adult decisions together as we find our feet through married life.

If you still aren't convinced it's lucky being married to your best friend, then what is? :)

French breakfast anyone? Montparnasse in Randwick the Spot

Waking up to a nice brunch where you read the paper in the sunshine, have your coffee and food brought to you and great conversations and laughs catching up with old friends are always a treat, so this Sunday if you are up for it, head on down to The Montparnasse cafe in Randwick if you'd like a homemade french baguette.

We went there too early and so the baguette dough was still rising and wasn't quite ready for us. but the coffee and our breakfasts didn't disappoint.

Clockwise: Crepes, The Bacon omelette, Muesli and the Tour De France Stage breakfast with scrambled eggs.

Have a lovely weekend ahead brunching and lazing around folks!

New Shanghai in Chatswood Chase

For a feel of eating a rustic hawker style Shanghainese fare, we ventured out to Chatswood Chase's New Shanghai.

New Shanghai Xiao Long Bao - Steamed mini pork bun 

Nobody goes for Shanghainese and passes on Xiao Long Bao. Nobody. These ones are awesome. I cheat. I am wimp for a burnt mouth and so I bite a tiny hole under the dumpling and test the temperature of the soup inside first, suck it out if it is cool enough or let it drip onto my hovering spoon before sipping at the delicious stock and then polishing off the dumpling. These ones were the right temperature and a had a good skin that was strong enough to hold the filling, but delicately translucent, yet firm to the bite.

Pan fried pork dumpling
Shallot pancake

These other two are firm Taiwanese/Shanghainese favourites too and we delighted in the crispiness of the fried parts and the well seasoned flavours.

Drunken chicken - Chicken soaked in Chinese wine with herb & spice
Deep fried pastry filled with shallot & ham, & coated with sesame

These dishes are stranger to stomach. A cold chicken dish, marinated in wine and Chinese herbs. I loved it, but it wasn't quite a crowd pleaser if you're squirmish to cold chicken. The pastry dish was odd too for our palate as the ham filling was almost like a sandwich filling, but the fried pastry was an asian texture. Married together, our Asian instincts tell us this could be a fusion dish for Anglo-saxon palates.

Si Chuan style sauce stir fried with pork mince served with dry-noodle
Stir fried Chinese rice cake with Shepherd's purse & shredded pork

Cha Jiang Mian is the first noodle dish on the top. It wasn't spicy at all, and some what bland, attributable to the fact that it is very difficult to evenly toss the udon-like noodle in the oily sauce and even more difficult to ensure you scoop enough of the pork mince sauce into each bite of noodle.
At least the Rice Cake dish was a better distribution of flavour, but it was a delicate dish with subtle flavours, reminding me that the Eastern Chinese provinces are far less generous with spices as the Southern counterparts where we hail from.

I have never been to Shanghai before and so whilst this place was believable in its authencity, I really am no authority on this subject. What we all agreed on however was that the place was really good value for spend and the food, whilst lacking in presentation, was good for its taste. Do go if you are ever in the vicinity.

Eyeliners

I had been searching for a replacement liquid eyeliner since my Japanese one has been running out slowly but surely (I've been using it since mid-2010 though!). I purchased one from Sasa when I went back. Now she did tell me that this wasn't the no.1 product she would push, but she had sold out of the other Asian favourite so dyamn, I went with the Eyeliner injection instead.


I told her I had a really hard task for my eyeliners and that is, it must be smudgeproof and long lasting. I find it annoying to reapply/refresh my eye makeup throughout the day. Firstly, the eyeliner is difficult to apply anyways when you have Mascara on. And my eyes secrete so much oil throughout the day that I almost always end up having panda eyes by the evenings.

She recommended this:

It was promising, being a really thin tip and all, but somewhere whilst transporting the product in my travels, the cover flew open in my makeup pouch (The injection mechanism makes the cover fly open at the touch of a fly) and the liner dried up before I ever got to use it. So DISAPPOINTING!

So I trooped to Priceline one Thursday and put loads of sample streaks of different liquid eyeliners on the back of my hand and then proceeded to rub them out. Guess which one stayed on? The Revlon Colorstay! It just wouldn't budge even though my hand had become quite red from the rubbing.

Funnily though, the salesperson observing me advised me to try the Maybelline EyeStudio Master Precise Ink Pen Eyeliner because it was finer and a thinner tip, which she suggests is easier to manouver and better for smaller Asian eyes. There weren't any testers though, but there was a sale that made it $7 cheaper than the Revlon purchase. So I readily went along with it.

The verdict? I am very happy with it. A couple of tips from my trials though, draw with shorter strokes to avoid mistakes, and allow time for it to dry as it would smudge quite easily right after application. Once you are used to it, the fine tip is very easy to control and the liner stays on all day and doesn't smudge.

I might one day still try out Revlon, but for now, I have found a trusted friend in Maybelline.