Roast pork belly with apple and sage stuffing

Yes, more apples...I find it is necessary to be quite inventive when it comes to cooking garden produce, otherwise everyone in the family gets very bored of the same old ingredients as I try to use up surplus from a very productive harvest. Luckily, apples are very versatile, and excellent with savoury as well as sweet cooking.

Ingredients:
1.5 kg pork belly
4 sweet apples, peeled, cored and chopped
6 or 7 shallots (or 1 small onion) peeled and chopped finely
3 cloves of garlic
dried sage (about a dessert spoon full, or thereabouts)
olive oil
salt

The free range pork belly came ready rolled and tied from Waitrose, but I stripped off the ties, unrolled it, and placed peeled and chopped apple, with dried sage, a few chopped shallots and about 3 cloves of garlic in a layer over the meat.

Re-rolled and re-trussed with kitchen string, I added some peeled carrots and more shallots into the meat tray, and poured a small amount of olive oil over the vegetables.  Then I put a small amount of salt onto the skin of the pork to ensure very crispy crackling.

I roasted it in the pre-heated Rayburn (mid roast temperature-which is about 200⁰C  for one and a half hours. 

As I was pre-occupied with other things to do, I didn't follow exactly the method of  'sizzle for 20 mins followed by roast at 160 for 25 mins per 500g' as set out in Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall's 'River Cottage Meat Book', instead I split the difference between the sizzle phase temperature and the main roast phase, and cooked for slightly longer than the 25 mins per 500g.  The key thing is to make sure the pork is properly cooked before eating, i.e. it is not pink and the juices run clear

After taking the pork out of the oven and leaving to rest for 10-15 mins, I made gravy in the meat pan, adding apple juice (home made) and a bit of water, slightly thickened.