Roast Rack of Wild Pork by Josh Emett

Ingredients

1 large wild pork rack
flaked sea salt
3 Granny smith apples, quartered, cores removed, roughly sliced
100ml honey
100ml calvados
1 sprig lemon thyme, leaves picked
chardonnay vinegar
rock salt
1 kumara, peeled, cut into bite sized natural shapes
Lupi olive oil
50g Mainland butter, divided into two portions of 25g
1/2 Savoy cabbage, finely sliced
1 white onion, brunoise
1/4 bunch watercress (picked)
50g Mainland butter

Directions

Preheat oven to 180C. Score the skin of the pork rack, rub lightly with Lupi Olive oil and rub flaked sea salt into the skin. Lay the apple slices in the base of a baking tray, drizzle with honey, calvados and sprinkle with lemon thyme. Lay the pork on top then bake for approximately 40 minutes .

Remove the pork from oven once cooked and carefully lift the pork off the apples. Set aside to rest for 15 minutes. Pass the apple mix and juices through a chinois and season with chardonnay vinegar and salt to taste to use as sauce.

Heat a medium frying pan over medium high heat and sauté the kumara in Lupi Olive oil until golden brown, then add 25g of Mainland butter to the pan. Set aside.

Bring a medium sized saucepan of well salted water to the boil and blanch the cabbage until soft. Heat a medium sized frying pan over medium heat and sweat down the onion slowly in 25g Mainland butter with no colour, add the blanched cabbage and then the picked watercress leaves.

To serve, lay the cabbage as a base, slice the pork and place on top, followed by the roasted kumara. Serve apple sauce on the side.

Serves 6

Tips

Score and salt the skin of the pork rack to help get crispy.

Cover apples and bones of rack so they don't color during cooking process.

Once pork is cooked place under grill until crackling turns crispy.

Pass apples through sieve  and use as a sauce for the pork.