Leg of pork marinated in wine
How to make pork taste like wild boar. We’ve taken this recipe from Peter’s battered and much-loved copy of Elizabeth David’s ‘French Provincial Cooking’. It’s not something to attempt if you’re pushed for time, the meat needs to be marinated for four days.
This is a method of making domestic pig taste like wild boar. For those who happen to like this taste, it’s remarkably successful. I don’t say it is a dish which one would want to eat very often but it’s interesting to try once in a way, and also useful for those who have their own pigs and would like to vary the cooking of their pork from time to time.
For 10 (approx)
Half leg of fresh pork, weighing 2½ kilos (5-6 lbs)
½ pint red wine
4 tablespoons vinegar
2 carrots
1 onion
2 shallots
2 cloves of garlic
3 bay leaves
6 parsley stalks
several sprigs each of wild thyme and marjoram
12 whole peppercorns
6 juniper berries
2 teaspoons salt
Slice the carrots, onions and shallots, put all the ingredients into a saucepan, bring to the boil, simmer for 5 minutes. Leave to cool.
Have the skin removed from the meat, which can be either boned or not, as you please; it is, of course, easier to deal with if it is boned, for a half leg is always an awkward piece to carve.
Also score the fat lightly across the top, so that the marinade has more chance to sink in. Put the meat in a deep china bowl and pour the cooled marinade over it.
Leave to steep for 4 days, turning it once a day in the liquid.
Make a pint or two of well-seasoned stock from the skin of the pork, plus the bones if the meat had been boned, or some veal bones if it has not, vegetables and herbs. Strain, cool, and remove the fat. To cook the meat you will need 2 tablespoons of olive oil or pork lard, 2 tablespoons of flour, the stock, and the strained marinade.
Take the meat out of the marinade, remove any pieces of vegetables or herbs which may be adhering to it, wipe it dry, and let it brown on both sides in a heavy braising pan in which the oil or lard has been heated. Take it out of the pan. Bring the marinade, with all its vegetables, to the boil in a separate saucepan. Stir the flour into the fat in the pan; gradually add the marinade through a strainer; stir until it is smooth; add sufficient of the prepared stock to make the sauce about the consistency of a thin béchamel. Put back the meat. Cover the pan. Transfer to a low oven, gas mark 3, 330˚F, and cook for 2½ – 3 hours, by which time the pork should be quite tender and coming away from the bone. Transfer it to a hot serving dish. Leave the sauce to settle for a few minutes, then pour off as much of the excess fat as possible. Pour the rest of the sauce into a small saucepan, let it come to the boil, and reduce a little.
Taste for seasoning. Serve it separately in a sauce boat.
The accompanying vegetable can be a very creamy purée of chestnuts, lentils, or celeriac and potatoes, into which is incorporated a little sauce from the meat. Red-currant jelly can also be served with it. There should be enough for about ten people, but the dish is also excellent cold.
At one time such dishes as this were made in imitation of wild boar, while haunches of mutton would be treated in similar ways to imitate venison. Probably the method was evolved as much to preserve meat when there were no refrigerators as to gratify a desire for game out of season.
it sounds great! 😀