Sometimes food does taste better on a barbeque.

Last night I cooked a pork loin on ours. It wasn’t really the weather for it and I lit the coals in the time between cracks of thunder and storms of rain that came down in great wet welts.

The pork came from Edge & Sons the butchers in New Ferry, bone still in it weighed just over a kilo.

At home I made a herb stuffing, finely chopping a mixture of sage, rosemary and oregano, and then mixing it with squashed garlic and salt and pepper. I pushed the handle of a wooden spoon through the soft centre of the pork and used my fingers to push the pungent stuffing inside. The skin was scoured with a very sharp knife and rubbed it down with olive oil and more salt and pepper. 

The recipe was from a book on Tuscan food called Beaneaters & bread soup. Although it is not really a recipe more an application of common sense.

I pushed the hot coals to each side of the barbeque and stoked them up so when the meat went onto the rack it wasn’t directly over the fire but the shape of the kettle circulated the heat so it cooked as if it was in the oven.

It took just over an hour and more through luck than anything else it came out just right and  was in fact one of the best pieces of pork I have had. The meat was flavoured by the garlic stuffing and the crackling was particularly teeth cracking good.

We ate it with small roast potatoes and green beans in a tomato sauce.

We followed it with strawberries and cream and a fat cigar with glasses of Pacharan in tumblers over ice. Fortunately we didn’t finish the bottle but it was perhaps too close for comfort!