Doing it…

I sure enjoyed the roast meat from Eric’s mum a lot and my missus also roasted some chicken thighs, marinated with the “spicy bake mix”…

…and it was so very nice too and yes, I did say I would try doing it myself so I went and bought a slab of pork belly or what we call sar chan bak (three-layer pork). This cost a little over RM10.00, 12 or 14, I cannot remember exactly now so I guess price-wise, it was all right…

I rolled it up and placed it skin-side down in a saucepan, filled it with a little water and boiled it for a while…

I did not want to submerge the whole thing in water as I would not want to lose the sweetness and juices in the meat but the boiling, if I am not wrong, is needed to soften the skin to make it easier to poke holes in it…

I did that once without the boiling using a fork (perhaps it was one of those cheap ones) and despite all that force until the fork ended up bent, I did not manage to get the desired effect on the skin.

After the poking, I rubbed the skin with a bit of vinegar, followed by the mix…

…and I marinated the meat with it too. I did not use a lot, just half of the packet and having done that, I left it in the fridge for around half an hour.

Then I put it in the oven to bake and after one side looked a little done, I turned the slab onto the other side. When both sides were done, I took it out…

…wrapped the meat part in foil, leaving the skin exposed…

…and put it back into the oven.

There! Finally, it was done…

The wrapping did not seem to help a lot as the meat was a little hard in its crusty layer on the outside but it was good on the inside…

However, probably I overcooked it so the skin was quite hard – crusty in parts, crispy at times and there were a few bits that were too hard so I had to spit them out – not much but there were a couple of occasions when I had to do that. I wonder if anybody knows why. Is the skin of varying thickness and hence, the differences…or did I do something wrong? It tasted like those crisp croutons of pork lard found in Penang char kway teow or KL Hokkien mee so I would not say that I was all that excited about it…but yes, the meat was very nice.

Another thing that put me off was there was so much splutter going on in the oven whatever the cause was. Maybe I did not dry the meat enough? Gosh!!! It wasn’t just the oil that dripped onto the baking tray that I had covered with aluminium foil – it made a whole lot of noise and went shooting in all directions, north, south, east and west! That made such a mess in my oven that it required some massive cleaning the next day (when it was no longer so hot). That alone would put me off roasting my own, ever – I think I’d just go out and buy, should I feel like eating it, never mind that it is not as nice and more expensive. For one thing, I would not buy so much so at the end of the day, I would not be eating all that much and that actually would be good for me, right? Hehehehe!!!!

In the meantime, I guess after this, we’d just stick to roasting chicken thighs – they’re very nice too! LOL!!!