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| Canarian roast leg of pork, recipe adapted to the home oven Directo al Paladar |
Anyone who has been to the Canary Islands knows one of its most popular dishes, oven-roasted pork leg, similar to the mechá meat of Andalusia but with an unmistakable flavour of spices and aromatic herbs. As this dish is normally made with a whole pork leg, today we are going to make Canarian roast leg, adapting the recipe to the home oven, and to a medium family size (serves 6). Of course, you can adapt the recipe to larger quantities, calculating between fifty minutes and one hour for each kilo of meat.
Ingredients:
Lean piece of leg of pork 1.2 kg
Fresh rosemary to taste
Coarse salt
Ground black pepper
Black peppercorns
Fine herbs
Extra virgin olive oil
Method:
Start by making diamond-shaped cuts to the skin of the pork leg. Cover the leg with coarse salt and leave it in the fridge for about two hours. After that time, take it out of the fridge, bring it to room temperature and remove the salt.
In a mortar, crush black pepper, fresh rosemary, aromatic herbs and seasonings to your liking. Spread the pork leg with olive oil and paste this mixture of spices on the surface.
Bake for one hour for each kilo of meat at 200º. If using a whole leg or a 3 kg piece for example, protect with aluminium foil after one hour of cooking so that it does not burn. If you use a kilo-odd piece as here, an hour and a quarter is enough, without the need to cover.
Allow the meat cool in the oven once switched off - it will take an hour or more - and then wrap it in aluminium foil and place it in the fridge to cool fully for two hours.
Canarian roast leg of pork is excellent both cold and hot and can be eaten as an aperitif, as a cold meat, to make sandwiches, and of course also as a main dish, heating it with the juices from the roast and accompanying it with wrinkled potatoes or cooked rice.
