I can't believe I have "abandonned" my blog for nearly 3 weeks...

blame it on Christmas! Happy New Year to anyone wo will read my late night posts by the way . Since you ask (?) Christmas was great! Relaxed family time, a roast duck, a bit of foie gras (to go with THE onion jam from dad!) and a couple of visits to the pub...100 yards away from the house, would be criminal not to. Amongst the pile of presents was one I had on my wish list for a while and SO trilled to have finally got it: The River Cottage Meat Book. If you half like good meat, get yourself a copy it's well worth it. I particularly wanted to look at the first part to get to grip with the correct terms for each cut of meat...in English!. I have been struggling a couple of times at the butcher trying to explain which cut I wanted without any success, hopefully this it the end of that. One of the cuts I am after at the moment is "palette"  (which happens to be a shoulder of porc) to make one my favourite winter dish: Petit salé.

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We used to eat that a lot in winter, especially when there was a lot of us round the table. I suppose it makes sense since it's easy to prepare well in advance (so no slaving in the kitchen), cheap (which kind of count when you feed loads of mouths every day!) and relatively healthy (the lentils are full of iron and other good things you see and since you don't have any gravy/butter/cream with it and the meat is boiled/cooked in a pressure cooker it's relatively low fat too).

Petit Salé comes from Auvergne (by the way, petit salé means "little salty" so you can make it with various cuts of porc- belly, ham hocks/ knuckles/shoulder...). It's served with Lentils du Puy, those tiny dark green lentils you can buy everywhere now. When it comes to making this dish you can either buy your cuts of porc ready salted (called "demi sel" in France) or make your own, but it takes much longer that way obviously. Nevertheless, since I am not sure you can actually buy a salted shoulder of porc or knuckles, here's how you can make it from scratch (I am going to experiment with this repice next week, myself i'll keep you posted...but it's from a trustworthy source!).

For 6 people. you'll need..

 to prepare the meat-
1shoulder (off the bone) or ham hock
600g of pork belly
make a "saumure"  (brine) by mixing 5l of water with 1 kg of rock salt, 24g of saltpetre (think you can find this at the chemist?), 30g of sugar, a couple of bayleaves, a branch of rosemary, a handful of peppercorns  and a few cloves. Sink your meat in the mixture and leave it to marinate for 3 to 6 days depending on the size of the cuts.
(Saltpetre helps keep the meat a nice pink colour). Apparently, according to John, my supplier of really yummy porc meat, you can also use a mix of curing salt and regular salt and nto bother with the saltpetre...

Alternatively if you have managed to find your meat already prepared, jump in here...

to make the petit salé, you need (on top of the meat):
600g of Lentils du Puy
3 carrots
2 small leeks
1 onion
 3 cloves of garlic
1 bouquet garni
salt and pepper

here goes

Soak the salted meat in clear water for 24 hours, changing the water 3 to 4 times.
Soak the lentils in cold water for 4 to 5 hours
Put all the cuts of meat in a pressure cooker or a deep pan, cover with cold water and bring gently to the boil
Add 2 peeled carrots, a few peppercorns and  the leeks and leave to simmer very gently for 1 1/2 hour (if you are not using a pressure cooker, then simmer on the hob very gently for 4 to 5 hours with a lid on)
in the meantime, drain the lentils.
place them in another pan, cover them with cold water and add the remaining ingredients
bring to the boil and simmer for 30 minutes
Transfer the lentils with the meat and cook on very low heat for another hour
taste for seasoning before serving pipping hot!

Enjoy