BACON KNUCKLE AND PICKLED CABBAGE
If you omit the knuckles and up the bacon quota, the resulting cabbage makes a very good accompaniment to pheasant or pigeon.
Servings
4
Servings
4
Ingredients
Instructions
  1. Slice the cabbage finely with a good big knife. Find a china, glass or plastic container, which will not react with the salt (aluminium is not appropriate). Put in a layer of chopped cabbage, salt and juniper berries, then cabbage again. Continue to fill the container in this fashion then cover with a weighted lid. Leave somewhere warmish for 2 weeks. It will produce lots of water and when you smell it, it will smell quite umpfy. This is all good.
  2. After 2 weeks, release your cabbage from its weights and rinse thoroughly. Get a thick pot, in which you cook down your onions in the duck fat. When they are happy and soft, not brown, take off the heat. Put in a healthy layer of pickled cabbage, sprinkle on the peppercorns and bay leaves, then nestle the pork belly or bacon and knuckles into the cabbage. Cover with more cabbage, pour your bottle of wine over this, lay on it the bacon skin, fat down, and cover tightly with tinfoil and a lid. Pop into a gentle oven and cook for 2–3 hours until the knuckles are soft and giving.
  3. Serve with boiled potatoes.