roast crispy pork.

as tiffy goes on her veggie adventure, i shall show you a bit of the porky adventures i've been having. because my dinner companion enjoys meat and is keen to try making some of his favorites ourselves, we've tried to make charsiu and siewyoke and gulu yoke, or roast pork done three ways for you anglophiles.

(i say it like im not one, heh heh.)

these are the pictures from our recent crispy roast pork experiment. there were so many schools of thought on how to roast the pork, in particular these three styles:

1. high heat to crisp the skin before low to cook the pork through

2. low heat to cook the meat through, before grilling/frying to crisp the skin

3. stove-top to sear the meat and skin through, before roasting to cook it thoroughly.

this girl cannot deal with so many choices. ultimately, i did it my style.

here's how i did it. first up, i scored the skin, and rubbed in wine, five-spice powder, sugar, salt and cinnamon into the top. after placing it on a pan, i left it uncovered in the refrigerator overnight (nearly 24hours) to dry it out so it'd crisp over night. also, i sliced garlic thinly to lay on the skin in the pretty pattern you see below, because he can't take the strong taste of garlic and i would have to pluck the garlic off before cooking.

i did not time the cooking but i used 240C for 20 minutes and then roasted at 180C for the remaining time until it was cooked. i checked it regularly with a meat thermometer and by sticking a knife in there until the juices that ran out were no longer bloody. after that, i switched on the grill to crisp the skin up further. here's how it looked when it came out of the oven.

the pork was pink, pink, pink and oh so moist. the skin was crispy, but soon after became soggy, as expected. in any case, it was very good. we had it with rice, and a sort of east-meets-west fusion with some bramley apple sauce on the side.

that's part one of this three-part series on pork!
last thing to say: some recipes recommend rubbing a spice mixture up and down the sides and bottoms of the meat and not on the skin which i did. it's really up to you, but i forgot to mention as well that coated the bottom with five-spice powder before roasting.