Spanish · Main · From the menu Sobremesa
Confit suckling pig, heritage potato, apple, thyme
Cochinillo confitado, papa antigua, manzana, tomillo
Suckling pig cured overnight, confited in fat at a low temperature until a knife meets nothing, pressed under weight, and the skin crisped separately. The centrepiece of the Sobremesa menu.
The change worth explaining is the skin. I used to crisp it attached, in a pan, and I gave a time for it that no chef anywhere publishes. Reading properly turned up a better answer: take the skin off before pressing, scrape it clean, and dry it flat between paper and a tray at 125 degrees for six hours. You get glass rather than leather, it is done hours before service, and nothing depends on a minute either way in a busy kitchen.
Ingredients
- 2.5 kg suckling pig shoulder and belly, skin on
- 85 g coarse sea salt, at about 33 g per kilo
- 1 head garlic, halved, 6 sprigs thyme, 2 bay leaves
- 1 tsp black peppercorns
- About 2 kg pork fat or mild olive oil, enough to submerge by 2 cm
- 6 Bramley or other cooking apples
- 70 g butter and 2 tbsp light brown sugar
- 800 g papas antiguas
- Sea salt
Method
- The day before, rub the meat all over with the salt and refrigerate overnight. Every chef who cures then rinses it off, so rinse it well under cold water and dry it thoroughly.
- Take the skin off in one piece and set it aside. Scrape the underside clean of fat.
- Sit the meat in a deep dish with the garlic, thyme, bay and peppercorns, and cover it completely with melted fat or oil, by about two centimetres.
- Cook at 130 to 140 °C. Start testing at four hours and expect up to seven for a piece this size. It is done when a knife or skewer pierces it with no resistance at all. Nobody publishes a core temperature for this stage and nobody publishes a time for a piece this heavy, so go by the knife.
- Cool it for thirty minutes in its own fat, then lift it out and take out every bone and piece of cartilage.
- Lay it flat between two trays, put 4 to 5 kg of weight on top, and refrigerate overnight. Strain and keep the fat: it is better than what you started with.
- For the crackling, lay the reserved skin flat between two sheets of parchment with a tray on top and cook at 125 °C for six hours, until dark gold and rigid. Break it into shards.
- Peel and chop the apples and cook them with the butter and sugar at 180 °C for 25 to 35 minutes until collapsing, then blend and pass through a sieve.
- Boil the potatoes and crush them coarsely with some of the reserved pork fat.
- Cut the pressed pig into six portions. Colour them fat side down in a dry, very hot pan, then finish at 180 °C for 15 minutes and probe to 65 °C.
- Serve on the apple purée and crushed potato, with the crackling shards and sea salt over.
Serve it with. Something acidic to cut it. A cold, sharp cider, or a red with no oak.