Recipes: Pork knuckles honeyed and easy

The pork leg with the appropriate marinade becomes a delightful delicacy. Try a recipe with honeyed knuckle and easy.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 teaspoon tablespoon dried sage, finely grated (or 1 tablespoon dried rosemary, grated)
• 1 teaspoon sweet zest of whole lemon
• 1/2 teaspoon soup coarse sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon sweet freshly ground pepper
• 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 1/3 fl. pomegranate pomegranate tea * (or equal amount of pomegranate or honey, mixed with 2 tablespoons lemon juice)
• 4 pork knuckles **, weighing about 1.500 gr. each, with the bone (each knuckle is enough for 2 servings)
• 40 ml of olive oil

Servings: 8
Preparation: 30΄
Baking: 3 hours


Procedure:
Preheat the oven to 200 ° C. In a bowl, mix the sage (or rosemary), the zest, the coarse salt, the pepper and the garlic. Add 1-2 teaspoons. soup from the pomegranate petimezi (or the mixture of petimezi or honey with lemon) and mix, preferably with the fingers, until you make a relatively thick mixture, but without melting the salt.

We turn a knuckle upside down, that is, with the bone down and the bristle up. With the blade of a knife, make two - three deep incisions in the fish (carefully, without piercing the thick skin) and in each incision we put a little of the petimezi mixture. Repeat the process with the other three knuckles. Wrap each one separately as a package in a piece of oil paste and then each package in foil, relatively tightly, so that the broths do not escape during baking.

In a bowl, mix the olive oil with the rest of the pomegranate petimezi. Put the knuckles in a pan that fits them exactly as much as possible. Put the pan on the middle shelf of the oven and bake for 30 minutes. Then lower the temperature to 170 ° C and bake for 2 hours.

Remove the knuckles from the oven, unroll them from the foil and the oil seals carefully (so as not to lose any tasty liquids from the packages) and put them back in the pan together with any liquids. Brush them with the oil-petimezi mixture and bake for another 30 minutes, until their skin is well browned.

To serve, carve their skin and remove it together with the subcutaneous fat. Distribute the softened, honeyed lentils on the plates and accompany with a good mustard and baked potatoes (we can cook them at the same time with the food on another shelf of the oven) or with pilaf that will be enriched with raisins, boiled chestnuts and pine nuts.

Secrets
* Pomegranate petimezi is a sweet and sour and dense mixture of concentrated pomegranate juice and simple must petimezi. We now find it in some grocery stores and deli, often with the name "roias emvama".

** We find pork knuckles in all the good central and neighborhood butchers, but it is good to ask our butcher in advance to place our order, if needed. Their weight ranges from 1.300 to 1.800 gr. each, depending on the size, and each is enough for two servings.

In our glasses Rose from Syrah - Grenache rouge, an elegant rose from Provence. Also a Chardonnay, if you move more cautiously.

Recipe: Nena Ismyrnoglou / Gastronomos Magazine