Balinese Slow-Roast Pork & Green Bean and Fresh Coconut Salad

A Balinese feast from Rick Stein's cook book! It was a fairly time consuming feast so I was glad I chose to make it for Sunday lunch. The Balinese spice paste which was used to stuff the pork had 17 ingredients in it!!!

I used the spice grinder to grind the peppercorns, peanuts, nutmeg and sesame seeds then used the mini food processor to blend the spice mix with the remaining ingredients; shallots, ginger, galangal, fresh turmeric, lemongrass, garlic, red chillies, red birds eye chillies, shrimp paste, palm sugar, salt, vegetable oil and lime juice. The resulting paste was thick and full of flavour and colour.

The paste was used to stuff a shoulder of pork which was tied with cooking string so it would hold its shape and left in the fridge uncovered for an hour to dry the skin out. Before putting in a hot oven it was brushed with vegetable oil and turmeric powder and sprinkled with salt.

The pork ended up a lovely golden colour from the turmeric, the meat was tender and nicely flavoured with the spice paste and the crackling was sensational!!

I served it with steamed jasmine rice and a Green Bean and Fresh Coconut Salad with crisp fried shallots, garlic and chilli. The salad was also fairly time consuming to make but the result was a lovely fresh, tasty salad that would be nice served with fish in summer. To make this salad you blanch green beans, grate fresh coconut (easy to do in a food processor once you have drained the milk, removed the shell and peeled the brown skin off), shallow fry shallots, garlic and red chilli and toss together with bean sprouts, finely shredded lime leaves and birds eye chillies. I have been removing the seeds and pith from the birds eye chillies and now find they add a nice bite without being ridiculously hot. The salad is dressed with lime juice, shrimp paste, vegetable oil, salt and palm sugar. The salad worked well with the pork and overall this was a very nice Sunday lunch.

Rating for both the salad and pork 7 out of 10.