Get full on a fiver

Whether it’s a dish for your mates, your partner or somebody you'd like to be your partner, it doesn't have to cost more than a fiver. Daniel Smith shows us how to cook like a chef on a student budget.

Ingredients

A brilliant dish isn’t an expensive dish. Quite the opposite; most dishes you pay a lots for in an expensive restaurant cost as little as possible – Gordon (Rambo) Ramsay didn’t become a millionaire by throwing money at his food.You don’t need top of the range kit or loads of ingredients.

Chinese crispy pork belly

Take crispy pork belly like you get from the Chinese. Then think about gorgeous caramelized onion and soft luxurious potatoes cooked slowly in chicken and pork stock. Now sharpen the whole idea with a drizzling of shallot dressing.

You will need something round and oven proof that’s about 10 inches wide, a pot and, preferably, a pestle and mortar – the ceramic bowl and bashing device sometimes found in a lab or the fake TV kitchen of a certain fat tongued mockney chef.

(Serves two)

A slice of pork belly about 3 by 10 inch, about £3.00. The better the meat you can find the better your dish will be.

British Pork is awesome. The best can be found down the Central Market, but (if you really have to) the big T does sell it rolled with some nasty stuffing for about £2.60ish. Make sure the skin’s scored otherwise it won’t go crispy.

• Five baking potatoes, peeled

• Three normal plain as the day brown onions – known as Spanish onion

• A chicken stock cube, made up as per instructions (about a 1 pintish)

• About half a bulb of garlic, 6 or 7 cloves, (peeled), don’t worry it doesn’t end up stinking of garlic

• A teaspoon of fennel seeds, you can get these from most Indian shops (a couple in Cathays) 50p to £1 for more than you know what to do with.

• A long shallot, some flat parsley, a dash of nice vinegar and some olive oil

1. First heat your oven as hot as it will go.
2. Rub the skin of your pork with a bit of salt and leave whilst your oven’s heating up. This’ll draw some moisture from it, which will help it go crispy – works for chicken to.
3. Slice the onions. First slice the pointy bit off the end, the bit that would point upwards if it were growing. Place it on this flat edge and slice through the root down. Peel the skin off and take a wedge out where the root is. If you look there are natural lines running down the onion, slice along these.
4. Once you’ve stopped crying, heat a sauce pan that you reckon might accommodate all your onion over a medium heat (about 2/3 of the way around the dial). Probably your biggest sauce-pan.
5. Heat it so that a knob of butter (utterly butterly or something like that should work too) foams when you drop it in. If it doesn’t, take it out and heat it a little more. If it starts to turn brown, very quickly take it off the heat and chuck your onions in.
6. Sprinkle in a good pinch of salt, – to draw the moisture out of your onions. Make sure you’re stirring so that it doesn’t catch on the bottom.
7. Once you can see some moisture coming out and bubbling off you can turn it down ever so slightly and get to some pounding. Keep coming back to stir and give a good sniff every now and again. If it catches and goes brown (not black) all the better, just drop in a spoonful of water and stir, scraping all the lovely oniony goodness off the base. The onion should sweat in their own juices.
8. In your pestle and mortar, or using a saucepan or a clean hammer or anything hard you can find, grind the fennel seeds down. Then put them in another bowl and mash up your garlic with a bit of salt (the moisture-drawing thing again) and a drop of olive oil. Chuck a bit in with your onions when they’re cooked and add half of the fennel seeds to the rest.
9. Brush any excess salt off your pork skin and rub your fennel and garlic mix all over it. Put this in a roasting tray and roast it in the oven until the skin starts to blister (about 20 mins, but check it before this). Make sure your oven’s as hot as a hot day in hell so that you can start your pig skin crackling.
10. Whilst the pork’s in the oven. Slice your potatoes as thinly as you can, the thinner the better, and finish cooking your onions to lovely sweet and soft oniony goodness. The softer and sweeter the better.
11. Lay one layer of potatoes in the base of the dish, season with salt and fennel seeds. Add a spoonful of onions and spread around. Pour in some stock, Potatoes, seasoning, onion, stock…...on and on until you run out of potatoes and onion. Make sure you end with potatoes and that they’re covered with stock.
12. Once the pig skin is blistered but not coloured (it might go a bit brown at the corners) take it out of the oven and reduce the heat to about 160 °C (ish). Leave the door open to let it cool for a few minutes. Then pop the pork on the potatoes and put the whole thing in the oven for about 2 hours.
13. Chop up your shallot, add a pinch of salt and some vinegar (in a little bowl or a cup). Chop your parsley and stir together with some olive oil
14. Kick back, relax. Open a bottle of wine, put your feet up, get down to the matter in hand of chatting with your guest…..whatever.
15. You’ll know it’s done because the pork skin will look like the best crackling in the world and the potatoes will be golden on top, with a thick oniony sauce. Put a large spoonful of potato on a plate, lay slices of pork on top and spoon over your shallot dressing. Nice served with green salad.