Crisp pork belly

I bought strips of organic pork belly at Neston Park Farm Shop, just outside Bath, when we were there a few weeks ago. They had been chilling out in the freezer until I decided what to do with them.
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Sunday morning I received a text from my lovely friend Carrie, telling me about the foodie magazine in the Observer. I of course acquired the paper and what should I find? "Five ways with pork belly" by Nigel Slater. Thank you Carrie. Thank you Nigel.

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Tonight I made Nigel's "Crisp belly pork roast". Nigel uses a 1-1.5kg piece of pork belly - boned, skin intact (isn't that the whole point?) and finely scored. My belly was in thin strips (about 2cm wide), so I reduced the cooking time somewhat.

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Of course, I read the recipe for the first time at 7pm, a time of the day when you don't want the first line of the recipe to read "marinate for a good 4 hours, if not overnight".

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In any event, I "marinated" my pork belly in 3 crushed cloves of garlic, 2T light soy sauce, 1T sesame oil (Nigel uses groundnut oil), 2tsp of salt and 1tsp of All Spice powder (Nigel uses Chinese five-spice powder which I'd run out of) for at least 8 minutes, whilst waiting for my oven to heat up to 220 degrees C.

Place the pork in a roasting tin, skin-side up, and roast for 20 minutes. Lower the heat to 200 degrees and cook for a further 40-50 minutes (I turned my oven down to about 180 degrees and cooked for 15-20 minutes as my pieces of pork were so much smaller).

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Nigel then wants you to rest the belly for 10 minutes before carving, but I'm sorry Nigel - don't tell me how to make my pork belly smell that good and then ask me to wait. That's just mean.

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We devoured our pork with some blanched broccoli accompanied with groans of ecstasy. The belly was crisp on top, tender and delicious. Imagine how utterly wonderful it would have been had it had 3 hours and 52 minutes more marinating time?