Roast Pork

Ingredients:

2 x 800g of belly pork with the skin
1 tsp white pepper
2 tbsp sea salt
2 tsp five-spiced powder
2 pieces of red fermented bean curd (nam yue) - mashed
2 tsp sugar
2 tbsp Shao Hsing wine
Oil


Method:

• Clean the pork and then pour hot water over the skin. Wipe dry. The skin needs to be very dry before putting into the oven, so clean the pork several hours before cooking so that it could be dried properly.
• Combine white pepper, five-spiced powder, ‘nam yue’, sugar and wine in a bowl.
• Turn the pork flesh-side up on a rack and rub the spice mixture all over the meat (only marinate on the flesh-side). Turn the pork skin-side up and set it aside tor several hours or overnight in the refrigerator.
• Preheat the oven to 230 degrees C for 20 minutes.
• Place the pork, skin-side up on a rack over a roasting pan. Drizzle oil all over the skin and sprinkle salt all over the top.
• Roast the pork for 20 minutes. Then take the pork out and use a sharp instrument to prick the whole surface of the skin. Reduce the oven temperature to 200 degrees C and roast it for a further 45 – 50 minutes.
• Remove pork from the oven and let the roast rest for 15 minutes before cutting into pieces.