Nigel Slater’s recipes for pork with ginger, and baked butternut with bacon
Nigel Slater’s recipes for pork with ginger, and baked butternut with bacon
Share:
Smoky, sweet and fragrant pork dishes to warm up winter. A winter’s evening and the kitchen is at its most hospitable. A glowing light from the glass door of the oven, the smell of something slow-cooked, softly spiced and deeply aromatic floats on the air, calling us to the table. A smell that seems both mysterious and strangely familiar. I can’t think of a place I would rather be.
![[Nigel Slater]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2017/10/09/Nigel_Slater,-L.png?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
For an hour or so, the kitchen has smelled of sweet onions, ginger and aniseed. The latter is something I keep in glass jars in the cupboard, both a powdered version and in whole, dried seed pods. Brown stars of anise are perhaps the most beautiful of all spices. Twist the lid, close your eyes, breathe in and you are instantly in Chinatown, in the basement of a grocer’s shop among huge packs of dried rust-red chillies, rough buds of dried Sichuan pepper and tiny dried shrimps.
![[Sweet note: baked butternut with bacon and maple syrup.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/10949d501de79ca7bc8d31c4a09371d7720f3b2c/715_565_4374_5465/master/4374.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
The star-shaped heads are for slow cooking, the hard, brown seeds releasing their flavour gradually. They need moisture – a deep broth of bones and onions in which to simmer – and enjoy rubbing shoulders with a cinnamon stick or some thin coins of ginger. They are at their most comfortable when in the presence of a thick cut of pork, baking in the casserole in stock with perhaps garlic, dry sherry and soy.
This time, the stars came out for a hearty casserole. A slow-cooked mixture of thick steaks of pork, seasoned with not just anise but ginger and soy and thick snippets of smoked pancetta, a deeply savoury supper with an aniseed and sherry scented broth.
