Oozy sponge and belly in my belly.

I was at Mum’s farm on the weekend and in between taking bets on how much rain we were getting (and boy did it just keep on coming!), doing a puzzle, playing trivia and enjoying the serenity, I cooked.

Classic Victoria Sponge with all the Trimmings

Slow-Roasted Pork Belly with the Sweetest Braised Fennel

Dinner Lady Carrots

We had the four J’s – Jen, James, John and Jacqui – arriving on Saturday, bringing prawns straight from the fish markets with them for lunch, so I thought I’d cook up Jamie’s sponge for a mid-afternoon snack.

I’ll get my whinge out of the way early and say that Jamie’s doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Harsh you say? Perhaps. But this so called sponge was not spongey. Don’t get me wrong, the end product was an absolute arvo tea delight, but the cake was not a sponge. I was more like a butter cake. There. Rant over.

So, I made the “sponge” or rather two of them – standard butter, sugar, eggs, flour and lemon zest, in the oven for 20 minutes – and left them to cool. For the strawberry filling, I gently heated some strawberry jam til it thinned a little then stirred through chopped fresh strawberries. For the cream filling, I whipped cream with caster sugar, lemon juice (more on that shortly) and the seeds from a vanilla pod. So lemon juice in cream eh? I mean really - Mr Oliver just cannot get enough of the stuff. He loves his lemons. I was convinced the cream would curdle or not thicken when whipped because of the lemon, let alone taste any good, but I did as I was told and in the end both Mum (who it turns out was dying to say how weird she thought the lemon juice in cream step was, but kept it to herself) were pleasantly surprised. It was completely fine and actually cut through the sweetness of the strawberry filling. When I layered the whole thing up, it pretty much started oozing immediately! Classic. Then when I went to cut it to serve it, the top layer virtually slipped right off! Who cares they said! It was a completely indulgent and over the top arvo tea, but it worked. So good.

After a few hours of relaxing indoors, avoiding the rain, I got started on dinner. I rubbed fennel seeds and salt into the scored skin of the pork belly, sat it on a bed of chopped fresh fennel, thyme, garlic and oil and whacked it in a hot oven for 15 minutes to crackle the crackle, then turned it right down for the next 3 hours (adding a bottle of wine to the mix about half way through).

Then I chopped carrots for what seemed like forever. Finely slicing two bags full of carrots takes some time, let me tell you. I love that Jamie calls them Dinner Lady Carrots, coz in all my years at boarding school, I never had carrots quite like this! Baking dish rubbed with butter, then sprinkled with a combo of chopped parsley, garlic & orange zest, S&P, then a layer of carrots and repeat. Drizzle with olive oil, white wine, orange juice and vegetable stock, cover with a sheet of baking paper and bake for half an hour.

I served up the pork belly with the carrots, some roast potatoes and some mixed steamed greens. The pork belly was cooked to perfection. Tender and tasty and crackled on top. The carrots – orange in colour and flavour – earned high praise from the crowds.

A rainy weekend, spent indoors with tasty winter food.

That’s it.

Xx