Mad About Spanish Food

Tony and I often sit down to a cabeza de lomo - or upper pork loin joint - for dinner. I love the fact that it's quick to cook, lean, and extremely cheap if you know where to buy it. I do most of my shopping in Lidl, and I can buy a lovely pork loin for around 4 Euro that will feed the two of us for two days - and we like a lot of meat on our plate! It only takes around an hour to cook as well, so you dont need to have the oven going for hours on a hot day.

Pork is just as nice cold as hot - in fact I'd say that, as with many things, the flavours develop more overnight. When I cook a pork loin, I just season it simply - a little sea salt and freshly ground black pepper and a sprinkling of oregano over the thin layer of fat is all I add. Apart from a little extra virgin olive oil to roast chunks of potato, that is. Hardly any fat actually comes out of the meat itself.

Yesterday, I had the pork seasoned and ready to go in the oven, when a friend called me from outside. I covered the meat and went to see what she wanted, and after a couple of minutes, somebody else joined us. As often happens, it was about half an hour later before I made it back into the apartment.

We might have had to wait on dinner, but the wait was definitely worth it. It was the best pork I'd ever tasted, and the only thing I'd done different was to leave it standing for half an hour in the seasoning. I've always pooh-poohed those recipes that tell you to marinate meat for 20 - 30 minutes - how can such a short marination time make a difference to the taste of the meat?

After yesterday, I know that it can, so it's one of the very few times when I'm happy to be proved wrong. From now on, I'll be seasoning my pork - and other meats - at least half an hour before cooking.