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Spiced Chinese pork casserole

Chinese pork casseroleYou’ll need a slow cooker (sometimes called a crock pot) for this one. If you live in a university town, keep an eye on Facebook and Craigslist at the end of term; here in Cambridge, a lot of slow cookers, rice cookers and other equipment advertisements pop up at decent prices when overseas students return home. Mine came from a Singaporean student, and hadn’t even been used – the safety stickers were still glued to the bowl. Not bad for £10.

Slow cooking’s unbelievably easy – you just toss the ingredients in, turn the machine on and leave it for six to eight hours (an opportunity which I took to go shopping). The machine keeps the temperature low, at between 80° C and 90° C, and the food cooks for a correspondingly long time. You’ll find that meats cooked like this absorb a phenomenal amount of flavour from the ingredients they are cooked with, and these Chinese seasonings are excellent here, infusing the pork pieces with a dark, spiced softness.

To serve three to four people, you’ll need:

500g diced pork leg
2 star anise flowers
3 cloves
1 cinnamon stick
4 spring onions, tied in a knot
1 red chilli
4 cloves of garlic, sliced
1 piece of ginger the size of your thumb, sliced
50 ml Chinese rice wine
50 ml light soya sauce
50 ml teriyaki sauce
1 heaped tablespoon brown sugar
3 teaspoons sesame oil
Water

This is hopelessly easy – just mix all the ingredients except the water well and place in the bowl of the slow cooker. Try to find relatively fatty pork – this will give the meat a moister finish. Add water to cover the meat, put on the lid and cook for one hour on high, then five hours on low. (Don’t allow the dish to cook for more than eight hours, at which point the meat will start to lose flavour.)

When you are ready to serve, remove the spring onions from the sauce (they will be unattractive and slimy, but they will have given up all their flavour to the rest of the dish) and dish up the casserole over rice. Garnish with fresh, diced spring onion and pour a teaspoon of sesame oil over each portion.

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Sage, onion and apple stuffing balls

Sage, onion and apple stuffing ballsThis was one of my Grandma’s recipes. She was not an awfully good cook (you can still make my mother pale by saying ‘trifle’ or ‘Grandma’s mushroom thing’ to her); she refused to turn the oven up to any sort of temperature which might make its insides dirty; she taught me to make an omelette out of nothing but eggs, butter, parsley and about half a bottle of Worcestershire sauce; and she used the kind of cottage cheese that comes with bits of pineapple in to make her lasagne. I miss her.

This recipe was one of her good ones, and we often make these very simple stuffing balls to accompany roast meats. To make about sixteen little balls, you’ll need:

1 packet sage and onion stuffing mix
1 large onion
5 leaves fresh sage
1 eating apple
500g good sausagemeat
3 tablespoons butter
Salt and pepper

Make up the stuffing mix according to the packet instructions, adding one tablespoon of butter with the boiling water. I much prefer good old Paxo to the wholemeal, organic, lumpy brown premium brands, but feel free to go with your favourite. Chop the onion and cored apple into dice about the size of a woman’s little fingernail. Chop the sage finely.

Stuffing ballsPut the sausagemeat (if good sausagemeat isn’t available near you, buy some good sausages and pop the meat out of the skins), stuffing mix, chopped sage, apple and onion in a mixing bowl, and use your hands to squash and mix all the ingredients together with some salt and pepper. Divide the mixture into small balls and arrange in a non-stick baking tray. Dot the stuffing balls with the remaining butter. Cook for 40 minutes at 180° C (350° F) and serve alongside your Sunday roast.

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Hearty Chinese meatball soup

This is one of those recipes which feels really, really good for you. A clear chicken stock, flavoured with ginger, rice wine, spring onions and garlic, forms the base for this lovely soup. Meatballs still crisp from frying float in it, deliciously light in texture with their little cubes of water chestnut. Fresh, barely cooked slivers of baby vegetables give the whole dish a lovely sweetness.

If you made the chicken rice on this site, you may have kept some of the leftover broth in the freezer. If your freezer is innocent of chicken broth, you can make some from scratch using:

3 pints water
1 lb chicken wings (usually very cheap from the butcher)
1 inch piece of ginger, whacked with the flat of a knife to squash it a bit
5 cloves of garlic, crushed slightly with the flat of a knife
5 spring onions, tied together in a knot
2 tablespoons light soya sauce
1 wine glass of Chinese rice wine
1 chicken stock cube

Just bring all the ingredients to the boil in a large pan, reduce to a simmer and cook, skimming any froth of the top occasionally, for 30 minutes. Strain the solid ingredients out and discard. The broth can now be used or frozen. (These amounts will make enough for you to use half now for this soup, and freeze half to use later.)

To make the meatballs and finish the soup you’ll need:

1 lb pork mince
1 egg
5 spring onions
5 cloves of garlic
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger
2 tablespoons dark soya sauce
1 tablespoon light soya sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 red chilli
Seasoned flour
1 small can water chestnuts
1 small handful each of baby carrots, mange tout peas and baby sweetcorn

Cut the spring onions, garlic, ginger, chilli and water chestnuts into small dice and combine with the pork, soya sauces, sesame oil and egg in a large bowl. Use your hands to form the mixture into meatballs about an inch across, and roll them in the seasoned flour.

Slice the vegetables into matchsticks. Saute the meatballs in a small amount of vegetable oil while you bring 1½ pints of the broth to a gentle simmer. When the meatballs are cooked and the broth is bubbling gently, drop the vegetables into the broth and immediately turn the heat off. Fill bowls with the vegetable-filled broth and place meatballs in each bowl. Garnish with sliced spring onion and eat immediately.

These meatballs are also fantastic just served with rice and a little soya sauce with raw chillies diced into it to dip.

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Char siu pastry

Here’s another dim sum recipe; in Cantonese this savoury pastry, a bit like a little pie, is called Char Siu Sau. It’s a parcel of crisp, flaky puff-pastry wrapped around succulent barbecued pork in a sweetly spicy sauce.

Char siu, the barbecued pork in question, has featured on this blog before, and is very easy to make – see the recipe here. The pastry I use to make these is a Malaysian-Chinese flaky pastry, made incredibly short and delicate with a lot of fat and some lemon juice. This is an altogether fatty recipe which is best made for a party (and believe me, if you serve them at a party they’ll vanish in no time at all).

To make about thirty little pastries (they freeze very well before the final baking stage, so you can assemble them and then freeze a few for a treat later on) you’ll need:

Filling
2 fillets of char siu
2 tablespoons lard
8 fat cloves garlic, chopped finely
2 medium onions, cut into small dice
4 tablespoons soft light brown sugar
2 teaspoons sesame oil
2 tablespoons kecap manis (sweet dark soya sauce – use 2 tablespoons of dark soya sauce and a teaspoon of soft light brown sugar if you can’t find any)
2 tablespoons light soya sauce
4 fl oz water
2 tablespoons plain flour
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Pastry
1 lb flour
4 oz butter
8 oz lard
1 egg, and another to glaze
2 tablespoons sugar
Juice of ½ a lemon
6 fl oz water

Begin by cooking the filling. Chop the two fillets of pork into small dice. Dice the onions finely and chop the garlic. Mix the vegetable oil and flour in a cup. Saute the garlic in the lard until it begins to give up its scent (about 2 minutes) and then add the onions, moving them around the pan until they turn translucent (another 2 minutes or so). Add the sugar, sauces, water and sesame oil to the pan, and bring up to a gentle simmer. Add the diced pork and stir until everything is well coated with the sauce. Add the oil and flour mixture, and stir until everything is thickened (about a minute).

Remove everything to a large bowl and chill in the fridge. (Your little pastry packets will be easier to fill with a thick, cold mixture.)

For really successful pastry, there are a few rules: keep the ingredients as cold as possible, rest the pastry for at least half an hour, and handle it as little as you can manage. To make the pastry, mix a beaten egg with the water, sugar and lemon juice, and chill until nicely cold. Rub the butter, straight from the fridge, into the flour until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs, then use a knife to chop the chilled lard into small dice, about the size of the top joint of a woman’s little finger. Stir the lard into the butter and flour mixture. Add the liquid ingredients to the bowl and use a knife or spatula (cooler than your hands) to bring everything together into a dough. Wrap with cling flim and rest in the fridge for at least half an hour.

When you are ready to assemble the pastries, roll half the ball of dough out into a rectangle about half a centimetre thick, fold it into three (as if you were folding a piece of A4 paper to put in an envelope), turn it through 90 degrees so the long edge is facing you, and roll it out again. Fold, roll and turn another four times. You’ll end up with a slab of pastry which has been folded and rolled into many, many thin, flaky layers (you can see the layers in the raw pastry, already visible partway through rolling, here on the left).

Preheat the oven to 230° C.

Use pastry cutters to make circles, or a knife to make squares, and place a dollop of the cold char siu mixture in the centre of each. Use a beaten egg to seal the edges, crimp with a fork and make a little hole with your fork in the top side of each pastry (important, this – it will allow steam to escape and prevent your pastries from gaping open when they cook). Brush each one with some of that beaten egg, and put on a non-stick baking sheet in the oven for 10 minutes. When the 10 minutes are up, reduce the heat to 200° C and bake for a further 20 minutes. Cool the pastries a little before you eat – the insides will be unbelievably hot, as well as unbelievably delicious.

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Pulled pork

This is a wonderful American way with pork. Barbecue purists (a curiously wonderful breed made up entirely of American men – I have never met a woman or a non-American who takes the barbecue quite as seriously as these guys do) should haul out their smokers for this recipe. One team at the American Royal Barbecue championship last year had a smoker made from the body of a Cessna aeroplane.

I used my oven and added a tablespoon of liquid smoke at the end.

The smoke flavour in this recipe is a great addition (UK cooks can buy liquid smoke online – I haven’t found a brand I’ve not enjoyed, but Colgin makes a particularly good version). All the same, if you don’t have access to a small adapted aircraft or liquid smoke, you shouldn’t worry. Your pork will still have a wonderful, barbecue sauce flavour.

In the US you’d use pork butt (actually shoulder) for this recipe. In other countries like the UK we butcher pigs rather differently, so just find a nice, fatty, boned piece of shoulder if you can’t get your hands on the exact cut. The fat is important; the joint cooks for a long time and its fat will baste it from within and keep the meat delectably moist.

To serve about six people you’ll need:

One boneless pork butt or boneless shoulder (about 3 lb)
4 tablespoons soft light brown sugar
2 tablespoons coarse salt
2 tablespoons paprika
2 tablespoons cinnamon powder
1 tablespoon mustard powder
10 turns of the peppermill
1 tablespoon chilli powder (I used chipotle chilli powder for the smoky taste, but you can use your favourite)
1 teaspoon coriander powder
1 teaspoon onion salt
12 fl oz (1 ½ cups) apple juice
6 fl oz (¾ cup) water

Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl, and rub them thoroughly all over the pork in the same bowl. If your cut of meat has been boned and rolled, you can push some of the rub into the space where the bone used to be as well, seasoning the meat inside and out. Leave the meat in the bowl and leave, covered, in the fridge overnight.

About six hours before you want to eat, preheat the oven or smoker to 150° C (300° F). Place the pork joint, skin side up, on a rack in a roasting tin. Pour the apple juice and water into the bottom of the tin. (The liquid should not be touching the meat.) Cover the roasting tin tightly with a few layers of tin foil and place in the oven for five hours. Don’t poke at the pork while it’s cooking; it should be left to steam gently in its tinfoil hat.

When the five hours are up, remove the tinfoil. If the liquid in the pan looks like it might dry up, add a wine glass of water. Turn the heat up to 200° C (400° F) and cook the joint uncovered for half an hour. Remove the meat to a large bowl, keeping the juices in the bottom of the roasting tin.

Use two forks to shred the pork. It’ll come to pieces very easily after the long cooking time, and should be moist and delicate with a slight crisp to the outsides. Place the shredded pork in a large frying pan with all its juices and the liquid from the roasting tin. Add another tablespoon of soft light brown sugar, an extra teaspoon of chilli powder if you want some extra kick, and a tablespoon of liquid smoke if you can find some (I like applewood liquid smoke for this recipe). Cook over a medium heat until the liquid in the pan begins to become syrupy.

Serve the pork with its sauce in toasted burger buns. The pork will keep in the fridge for a couple of days. Sweetcorn, coleslaw and other traditional barbecue accompaniments make a great side dish. Try not to get too much down your front.

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There is a pig in my garden

I don’t normally post non-food trivia, but this was much too good to not share – there is a pig in my garden. I have no idea where he came from, but messages have been left at all the farms in the village, so hopefully someone will pick him up soon.

He’s a very splendid, fat, hairy pig. I’m starting to think we should pignap and keep him, although it should be noted that Dr Weasel has started talking in dark tones about bacon.

***Pig update***
George the Pig (for this is his name – he is a Kune Kune pig) is safely installed in his field again. George is friends with a goat who managed to break through their fencing, and being a gregarious sort of pig decided to follow his goat friend; unfortunately, the goat skipped off into the distance leaving George, who has short legs and is rather fat, to wander into my garden and rootle around a bit until somebody noticed.

I was expecting George’s owner to come with some kind of pig harness, or perhaps a shepherd’s crook, but it transpired that all that was needed to get George to follow him home was a banana waved just out of reach of his snout. I hope he was allowed to eat it when they got back.

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Char siu bao – Chinese steamed pork buns

Char sui baoChar siu (see my recipe from last week) on its own is wonderful stuff. Chopped, cooked into a sticky, savoury, meaty mixture and sealed inside a light steamed bun, it becomes something really, really special. It’s a dim sum staple; a filling, moreish little bun of scrumptiousness.

When we’re in Malaysia, my very favourite breakfast is one of these buns. It makes a splendidly fattening change from muesli. Once you have a strip of char siu in the house, the buns are very simple to assemble. They’re also a doddle to reheat – just steam for ten minutes – and they freeze like a dream.

If you made the braised pork with accompanying buns, you’ll recognise the dough recipe here. The method is slightly different, in that you’ll be stuffing your buns before steaming. To make about twenty buns you’ll need:

Filling
1 fillet of char siu (about 10 oz)
2 tablespoons lard
4 fat cloves garlic, chopped finely
1 medium onion, cut into small dice
5 teaspoons caster sugar
2 teaspoons sesame oil
1 teaspoon dark soya sauce
2 teaspoons light soya sauce
4 fl oz water
1 tablespoon plain flour
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Buns
1 pack instant yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons lukewarm water
½ tablespoon salt
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
8 tablespoons sugar
8 fl oz lukewarm water
20 oz white flour

Filling method
Cut the char siu strip into tiny cubes with a knife and fork, and blend the vegetable oil and flour in a cup. Fry the garlic in the lard until it starts to turn colour, add the onions and cook until they are translucent. Pour in the sugar, sesame oil, soya sauces and water and bring up to a simmer. Add the chopped meat, stir until well-coated, then add the oil and flour. Continue to simmer for 30 seconds, then transfer to a bowl and chill.

Buns method
Mix the yeast, 1 teaspoon of sugar, two tablespoons of lukewarm water, half a tablespoon of salt and three tablespoons of vegetable oil in a teacup, and let it stand for five minutes.

Place the flour in a bowl and pour the yeast mixture into a depression in the centre of the flour. Add 8 tablespoons of castor sugar and 8 fl oz lukewarm water to the mixture and stir the flour with your hand until everything is brought together.

At this point the dough will be very sticky. Don’t worry – just knead for ten minutes or so, and it will turn smooth and glossy. Don’t add extra flour to get rid of the stickiness. The action of kneading will make the protein strands in the dough develop, and the stickiness will vanish on its own. You’ll know that your dough is ready when it has become smooth, and does not stick to the bowl. Cover the bowl with cling film and leave in a warm place until the dough has doubled in size.

Knock the dough down again, and take an egg-sized piece in the palm of your left hand. Stretch it and squash it on your palm until you have a disc about the size of your hand. Still holding the disc of dough, put a teaspoon and a half of the chilled filling in the centre of the disc, then gather the edges to the centre and pinch closed. Put the pinched side of the bun on a square of greaseproof paper. Leave the filled buns in a warm place until doubled in size.

Steam the buns over boiling water for ten minutes to cook. Once cooked, the buns can be eaten hot (or cold in a packed lunch) – just steam again to reheat. The cooked buns will freeze well; they’ll also keep in the fridge for a few days.

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Char siu – Chinese barbecued pork

char siuChar siu is a brilliantly versatile thing. Even if you’re not familiar with it by name, you’ve almost certainly tasted it before; it’s the reddish pork that appears in little pieces in every Special Fried Rice in every Chinese restaurant and takeaway in the country, in those wonderful fluffy buns you get as dim sum (my recipe for those buns is here), on its own over rice as a roast meat, and sliced thickly in a million different noodle dishes. It’s a sweetly glazed, aromatically spiced, perfectly delicious piece of meat, and one of my very favourite things to do with pork.

This recipe makes a single fillet of char siu. I’d recommend you at least double it – you’re going to need a whole fillet of the stuff for Monday’s recipe, and you’ll probably want to eat at least some as soon as it comes out of the oven. Char siu freezes well too, so you don’t need to worry about cooking too much.

A note on the glaze and colour. The strips of char siu you’ll see in Chinese shops are usually glazed with maltose, a sugary by-product of the brewing industry. It does achieve a really gorgeous, crackly sheen, but it’s not got a lot of flavour or sweetness, and I find it’s not as tasty as glazing with a honey/soy mixture, thinned with a little vegetable oil to help the sugar catch and caramelise. Shop-bought char siu is normally very red, because a little food colouring is used in the marinade. Feel free to add half a teaspoon to yours if you like – I find I’m happy with the less shocking colour the meat gets from the hoi sin sauce in its marinade.

To make one strip of char siu (enough for three as a roast meat on rice) you’ll need:

1 pork fillet

Marinade
5 tablespoons light soya sauce
3 tablespoons dark soya sauce
5 tablespoons runny honey
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon five spice powder
½ glass Chinese rice wine (sherry will do if you can’t find any)
3 tablespoons Hoisin sauce (I like Lee Kum Kee)
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, crushed
4 fat cloves of garlic, crushed

Glaze
2 tablespoons runny honey
1 tablespoon dark soya sauce
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Mix all the marinade ingredients together and warm through in a saucepan until the sugar has all dissolved. Pour the warm marinade over the pork, and leave for at least eight hours in the fridge.

To cook the char siu, heat the oven to 210° C and place the meat, basted with some of its marinade, on a rack over a roasting tin with a couple of centimetres of water in it. Roast for 20 minutes, then baste again on both sides, turn the meat over and reduce the heat to 180° C. Roast for another ten minutes, then baste and turn again, and roast for a final ten minutes.

Transfer the meat to a plate, empty the tin of water and line it with foil. Place the meat and rack back on the tin, then brush it liberally with the glaze and put it under the grill for about five minutes, until the glaze is glossy and starting to catch at the edges. Turn the meat, glaze again and put back under the grill until the other side is also glossy and starting to caramelise.

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Malaysian braised pork with steamed buns

My Dad, like dads the world over, has a particular love for fatty foods from his childhood. (Here he is on the left of the picture, with my Mum and Dr Weasel.) He’s not allowed them very often, largely because Mummy has very sensible intimations of mortality when looking at chunks of lard. Of course, the fact that he grew up in rural China and Malaysia makes that bit harder to find the things he remembers fondly in the UK. These foods are things like sweetened olives; Kong Piang (a special kind of Foochow biscuit you can only find in two towns in Malaysia); good Bak Kwa (flattened, sweetened, spicy barbecued pork); real satay, cooked ourdoors over fanned charcoal with the bites of meat separated by tiny nuggets of pork fat; and a million things made out of the obnoxious parts of a pig.

Mummy, the family cholesterol-conscience, went to Bordeaux last week to visit my increasingly famous brother and to add to her own high-powered wine-tasting qualifications. I was concerned that Daddy, left on his own unsupervised, would just eat congee (rice porridge) all week straight from the rice cooker, so I cooked one of those childhood-in-paradise dishes and we drove it over as a surprise. This recipe is adapted from Mrs Leong Yee Soo’s The Best of Malaysian Cooking, my favourite Malaysian cookery book. The dish is a family must-eat whenever we visit Malaysia.

If you cook this, you don’t strictly need the steamed buns to accompany the meat; having said that, you’ll really be missing out if you don’t make them. This is the same dough you’ll find in char siu buns. It’s the perfect foil to the salty, aromatic pork, and the dough itself is just gorgeous to work with. It’s sugary, so the yeast works hard, and you’ll find it beautifully soft and puffy, like a baby’s cheek. The traditional technique will have you fold the oiled bun in half before steaming, so it opens when finished like a pristine sandwich bun for you to pack with meat and juices. To serve four with some left over for lunch, you’ll need:

Braised pork
2lb fat pork with some skin (I used a piece of shoulder – you can use whatever cut you like.)
3 tablespoons dark soy
4 teaspoons runny honey
1 teaspoon five-spice powder
5 cloves garlic
4 shallots
2 ½ stars of star anise
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons salt
8fl oz water
2 tablespoons lard

Buns
1 pack instant yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons lukewarm water
½ tablespoon salt
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
8 tablespoons sugar
8 fl oz lukewarm water
20 oz white flour

Pork method
Start by rubbing the pork with a tablespoon of soya sauce, a teaspoon of the honey and the five spice powder, and set it aside to marinade for at least half an hour while you prepare the other pork ingredients. Place the garlic, shallots, half a piece of star anise and a tablespoon of sugar in the food processor, and whizz until they’re very finely blended. Heat the lard in a wok and fry the blended ingredients until they’ve turned golden.

Turn the heat down and add the pork to the pan along with any juices. Brown it all over, then add two tablespoons of dark soya sauce, two teaspoons of salt and three teaspoons of honey. Pour over half the water, and cook, covered for ten minutes. After ten minutes remove the lid and simmer gently until the sauce is thick and reduced.

Add the rest of the water, and bring to a brisk boil, stirring constantly to prevent sticking. Turn the heat down to a gentle simmer and cover again. Simmer, covered, for 2 hours until the meat is tender, turning the meat in the sauce occasionally. Add a little water if you feel the sauce is becoming dry.

Buns method
Mix the yeast, 1 teaspoon of sugar, two tablespoons of lukewarm water, half a tablespoon of salt and three tablespoons of vegetable oil in a teacup, and let it stand for five minutes.

Place the flour in a bowl and pour the yeast mixture into a depression in the centre of the flour. Add 8 tablespoons of castor sugar and 8 fl oz lukewarm water to the mixture and stir the flour with your hand until everything is brought together.

At this point the dough will be very sticky. Don’t worry – just knead for ten minutes or so, and it will turn smooth and glossy. Don’t add extra flour to get rid of the stickiness. The action of kneading will make the protein strands in the dough develop, and the stickiness will vanish on its own. You’ll know that your dough is ready when it has become smooth, and does not stick to the bowl. Cover the bowl with cling film and leave in a warm place until the dough has doubled in size.

Knock the dough back down and separate it into pieces the size of an egg. Roll each piece into a ball in your hands and flatten it with a rolling pin, then brush the top with oil and fold the bun in half. Place it on a square of greaseproof paper.

Arrange the folded buns on baking sheets, and cover with a dry teatowel. Leave in a warm place for 20 minutes, until they have risen again. Steam the buns for 7-10 minutes to cook. (You can steam the buns again to reheat.)

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Pork stuffed with an apricot and tarragon butter

Pork fillet is a lovely cut of meat, but it lacks the fat found in other bits of the pig needed to make it really glossy and toothsome when cooked. The easiest and most delicious way to remedy this is to cut channels into the meat and stuff them with a flavoured butter, wrapping the whole fillet in Parma ham to keep things together.

I chose an apricot and tarragon butter here; the two flavours are great together and complement the pork beautifully. I used the Magimix to make the butter, but if you don’t have a food processor, just chop all the solid ingredients finely and blend with the butter in a mortar and pestle. To serve four, you’ll need:

1 pork fillet (tenderloin)
4 oz salted butter
8 semi-dried apricots
1 fresh chilli, deseeded
1 tablespoon coriander seeds
1 large handful fresh tarragon
1 large handful fresh parsley
4 shallots
Juice of half a lemon
2 teaspoons soya sauce
8 slices Parma ham

Put the butter, lemon juice, soya sauce, apricots, herbs, spices and shallots into the bowl of a food processor and whizz until finely blended. Cut channels into the meat by pushing a knife straight into it at 5 cm intervals, and stuff the butter into them, smearing any extra over the surface of the joint. Wrap the joint tightly in Parma ham and secure with string.

Roast the fillet at 200° C for 40 minutes, and rest for five minutes before serving with potatoes and a green vegetable, the pan juices poured over the meat.