Tanja to Mallacoota

It was time to farewell the farm. The rain was setting in somewhat & we were eager to hit the road. 

Before we left we planted a red cedar to signify Baby A's birth seven months ago. The tree was a gift from my mother & has a healthy headstart. The big kids had fun teasing its roots & watering it with water from the creek in the rainforest gully. This tree will soon take off & A can visit it in years to come. 

While we packed our daughter, P, who overheard A's cries, realised he was tired. A few minutes later I came back in the shed to find that P has rocked A to sleep in her arms and this is where he slept for forty-five minutes. 

Farewell Tanja!

We had a short lunch stop on our way to Mallacoota in Pambula at Wild Rye's before heading to Mallacoota - a fabulous bakery where we stocked up on sourdough bread (& pies for lunch). Our favourite pie was the beef in red wine. Erin, the barista, made a great couple of coffees too! 

Want some crackling with your pork?

We bought our Weber BBQ just before we left Sydney & we've have only used it a handful of times so we wanted to use it on the farm and see what we could do with it. A very crackly pork appears regularly on the Weber Facebook page I follow. 

I've only ever made one other roast pork with crackling & probably eaten pork a dozen times at most so it's not something I feel comfortable cooking & I was a little worried about the outcome yesterday. 

Before I started I made sure I read lots of recipes so I didn't miss any vital steps. 

This recipe is based on a few. 

ingredients 

1.5kg rolled pork (deboned) 

oil (I used EVOO)

salt (I used pink himilayan salt) 

Any vegetables you might like (we had carrots, potatoes, Brussel sprouts & broccoli)

Apple sauce (I used store bought because I wanted to focus on the pork but it's dead easy to make. I'm sure there are plenty of recipes flying around on the web). 

 

method 

Leave the pork out of the fridge for up to two hours so it reaches room temperature. 

Turn your BBQ on the highest setting & leave to preheat for 20 minutes. You don't need to lift the lid during this time. 

While your BBQ is heating up prepare the meat. Firstly pat the meat dry with paper towel. You will need to score the fat ensuring you don't cut in to the meat. I remember seeing Jamie Oliver using a retractable art knife and measuring the fat from the side of the cut of meat & retracting the art knife just a few millimetres so the knife would only cut in to the fat. 

To score the fat cut along the shortest side of the cut in lines measuring about a centimetre apart. 

Now baste the meat with oil. I used EVOO but plenty of sites recommend vegetable oil. Using your hands rub the skin with salt enduring you push it in to the cracks. I used a handful & it was a lot. You don't need to layer it on (like I did) but it does need to coat the skin. 

Place the meat on a Weber trivet & then on a convection tray. These are designed to let the air flow around the meat, acting like an oven.  

Leave the meat to rest for 30 minutes. 

Now that the BBQ has heated up place the meat (on trivet & convection tray) on the BBQ. Leave the temperature on the highest setting & cook the meat for 25 minutes. This will crackle your crackling. After 25 minutes lift the lid and you'll see that the pork has crackled. 

           This was our final product.

Reduce the heat to medium (half way) and leave the meat in the BBQ for a further 1 hour & 5 minutes. Do not lift the lid during this cook. This will give you time to prepare the veggies. If you're organised (I wasn't) you could cook these for the 1hour & 5 minutes around the meat on the BBQ. 

After 1 hour & 5 minutes turn the BBQ off but, without lifting the lid, let the pork rest (as the oven cools). 

After 20 minutes carve the pork and divy up the veggies & crackling. Don't forget the apple sauce! 

This is best eaten by an open fire looking down the paddocks out to sea (if you're lucky). 

at the farm

Readers of my blog will recognise the farm. After visiting friends in Tathra today I returned to the farm. J had harvested some almonds from the old orchard planted by his parents about thirty years ago. By some almonds I mean two. In total. But J was determined to find more & the kids scoped out the orchard to identity the almond tree before they collected J to see if they could find more to add to the measly harvest. 

While I wouldn't suggest the tree had given a good return for investment when they came back with four more almonds, I would say that there's nothing more special than harvesting fresh food from plants that you know have been lovingly planted and care for. The almonds were like nothing I've ever tried - crunchy and succulent at the same time. I'll never look at a store bought almond the same again! 

While I was out J also set up our new annexe. We didn't have the time to set it up before we left Sydney but it's very pleasing to see it has met our expectations. We ordered the annexe through Winston at Express Annexes at Calga on the Central Coast. We were specifically after a versatile annexe that made from Australian products & with sturdy poles. This will add an extra room to the caravan and will be particularly useful when we're staying in places for more than a few days at a time. The windows mean we'll have light coming in because we won't have to close canvas covers when it's raining. 

We've been making the most of our outdoor shower. Does anyone else have one on their van? We've used it to wash sand off after the beach but we've loved having our evening showers outside. The photo isn't great but you get the picture! I can't see out the farm shower window because I'm too short but this means I can still take in the view. 

Tanja

Tanja is situated alongside and within Mimosa Rocks National Parks on the Far South Coast of NSW. The first thing you noticed about the vegetation is the tall spotted gum forest. 

Joel has many memories on Tanja Hall. His dad used to run the local movie night in the hall and he attended other functions there. Back in 1997 I was seeing a gig at the hall (after being bridesmaid for a friend's wedding). Joel happened to be staying just up the road and was also at the gig. We recognised each other and got chatting. We both have vivid memories of this night and it was why we decided to have our wedding reception in the hall when we were married in 2007. The tiny hall was packed with our friends and family and rocked as everyone danced in a traditional bush dance. 

We decided we'd have a fortnight on the farm after we left Sydney just to get out things in order and recover from the stress of packing up our house & finishing work. We needed to replace the leaf springs on the truck, set up the annexe and work out what we can without (& reduce our load) too. 

And this is where we woke up this morning. How's the serenity? Can you see the roos grazing in the paddocks?