Joe Bennett: Try not to drool over this delicious recipe

Columnist Joe Bennett is sharing a favourite recipe. Photo / 123rf

Have I given you a recipe before? The question’s rhetorical, and the answer is: ‘I don’t think so.’

And the reason is that I haven’t had one to give. But now I have. It’s the only recipe I have ever invented and I doubt I’ll manage another. I hit on it by chance, modified it, repeated it, perfected it and named it. It is neither fancy nor difficult to make. But it turns my knees to jelly, and I’d like it to turn yours too. It’s Pork Bennett.

No, I don’t consider the name immodest. The dish is mine and I am proud of it, and why should I pretend otherwise? Did Boris Stroganoff disavow his beef? Did Caesar disavow his salad? So Pork Bennett it is, please, with capital letters. Feel free to use it, fall in love with it and pass it on, knees for the jellying of. There is too little pleasure in this world.

If you’re using your own pig, kill it. How, I’ve no idea. I use a butcher. But whatever you do, don’t feel guilty. We’re an omnivorous species and have been eating pigs since the dawn of time. Pigs, as it happens, are also an omnivorous species and cheerfully eat people. The only difference is that pigs, for all their vaunted intelligence, still haven’t worked out how to farm us.

You can make Pork Bennett with loin chops or belly strips, but whichever way you go, the vital element is fat. You want fatty chops or fatty belly, a good half-inch of bright white fat, because fat is flavour and fat is good. And please don’t fall for the old delusion that fat will clog your arteries and still your darling heart, or indeed that fat will make you fat. Fat’s just energy. The most popular and successful weight-loss diet, the keto diet, abounds in fat. Inuit people eat little but fat, and they’re not fat. Fat’s fine.

Allow two fat chops or fat belly strips per person. Sharpen your best knife. I bought a knife years ago from an Asian store for $10, used it for everything for a month, then went back and bought two more, and I’m confident the three of them will see me out. Sharpen your knife ‘til you’re scared of it. Sharpen it ‘til it sets your teeth on edge just to look at it. Now cut the skin off the fat. Pare it as thinly as you can. Try to lose no fat. Fat loss is sadness.

Lay the skinned meat, the flayed meat, in an oven tray, pepper it liberally, salt it even more liberally and put it into the oven at standard oven temperature. Then pour wine into a glass. I favour those modern stemless glasses. They don’t chime as musically as stemmed glasses, but they hold more and fall over less often.

You are pouring wine because it is time to put your feet up. The hard work is done. What remains of this recipe is a stroll down Doddle Avenue.

There was a chocolate bar in my youth called a Crunchie that had a heart of honeycomb. That’s the crystalline texture you want in your pig fat. As it approaches that texture, it gives off a distinct aroma that activates the salivary glands.

When you smell that smell, cut up onions, one per person, and fry them in a big hot pan. Cut up mushrooms, several per person, and add them to the big hot pan. Now put plenty of frozen sweetcorn into the microwave. Microwaves are very good for heating frozen vegetables and for absolutely nothing else. Tip the hot corn into the big hot pan.

Now comes the nub of Pork Bennett. Add sweet chili sauce to the big hot pan. How much? The amount that feels right, plus a tad. Then add roughly the same amount of - are you ready now? - Worcestershire sauce.

Why these two work so well together, I can’t tell you. But once you have joined them in culinary matrimony, you will not want to tear them asunder. Stir the big hot pan.

If the fat is crunchy, take the meat from the oven, remove any bones and dice what’s left into half-inch cubes. Try not to drool on it while dicing. Divide the diced meat into bowls. Divvy up the contents of the big hot pan. Salt each bowl with sea salt. Add a knob of butter for that extra bit of fat. Eat with a spoon and shiraz. Feel your knees tremble, then dissolve with delight. Pork Bennett.