You remember I was saying, last week, that this blog is supposed to be all about the best thing that crossed my fork or spoon in the last week? Well, have I got two crackers to report to you!

I might as well come right out and say it - pork is one of my favourite meats. I reckon lamb is top of the heap, beef is a close run second, but pork is there, very definitely trying to shoulder the beef out of the way.

So anyway, we hadn't had a roast dinner for a while and I'd been yearning for a piece of pork belly done in Chinese spices and chilli. Now unless I make that for myself (which isn't beyond the realms of possibility) it just isn't going to happen in our house, owing to the two chaps being so fat phobic. (It's a wonder they put up with having me around the place, thinking on!).

Then, when I was pondering on the cheaper cuts of pork (I'm a great proponent of making use of the under-utilised cuts that the general public seem to be shunning, these days) that I could roast, I remembered the slow roasted shoulder. I'd seen a number of recipes indicating that slow roasting of a pork shoulder was infinitely do-able and with good results from the chaps' point of view. The slow roasting means that a good deal of the fat has rendered out of the meat (apart from the thick layer under the skin) and the resultant meat is juicy and not in any way dry, whilst producing a good crackling. Sounded perfect!

What sounded even better was the price. At £3.88 a kilogram, you just couldn't go wrong. Now, when I'm making a casserole or suchlike, I generally reckon that anything from 500g upwards will suffice. However, I did have an extra mouth to feed, as son & heir would be having his friend J over and he would be there for dinner. I was just crossing my fingers that J was a good eater and went for just over a kilogram, so as to (hopefully) leave a little bit to have in a sandwich with apple sauce the next day. My own little hog roast.

I ground up the fennel seeds with four black peppercorns and some salt in my pestle & mortar. This lovely fragrant mixture got rubbed into the flesh of the pork and, after a dousing in white wine vinegar, into the skin for interesting crackling.

From there, it was a matter of putting into a pre-heated oven at 220deg C (fan) for 30 minutes, after which the oven was turned down to 140deg C (fan), the roast was covered in tin foil and left to think about life for the next two hours.

The oven is then turned back up to 200deg C (fan) and the meat is swathed in tin foil, but ensuring that the crackling is left uncovered. This helps to keep the meat moist whilst the crackling receives a final crackle-up in a hot oven for 20-30 mins. It's convenient, because this coincides with your wanting to put the roast potatoes in the oven at a greater temperature and you can do the two at once.

The meat just fell apart and tasted divine. Son & heir's friend J declared the dinner to be the best he'd ever tasted, apart from his Mum's roast dinner, and even dedicated a little song to it. Now there's a vote of appreciation.

Dessert was a Strawberry & Rhubarb Pie, which caused quite a clamour for the recipe from the denizens of Twitter!

I've been asked what motivated the pie. It's a good question, because it's not a combination of fruits that we have really considered using, here in the U.K. All of which gives you a clue about where the inspiration came from. I had done a blog posting involving rhubarb, which set off a chain of reactions from those friends in the USA, who were all saying "Oh, I love rhubarb, but in a strawberry & rhubarb pie" - so, inevitably, I asked what was so special about this pie. The answer was "it's not something that's easy to express, but you'll know once you've had one". So, of course, I promised myself that once strawberries were in season and £1 a punnet (they were £2.50 a punnet at the time), I'd indulge.

That time is now, and the pie has been made. The full recipe can be found on my blog. I can confirm that the sweetness of the strawberries offsets the tartness of the rhubarb and the two flavours go so well together (with the aid of a little lemon zest, lemon juice and cinnamon), that the pie is a "mmmnnnn..." and "ooooh.." and "mmhmmnff...." of pleasure, experience. The rhubarb stays in its pieces and doesn't disintegrate to mush and the strawberries are very definitely strawberries, also having resisted the urge to disintegrate to their own class of mush. The three tablespoons of sugar was very definitely enough to sweeten the rhubarb and enhance the strawberries.

The interesting thing is, that because you don't part-bake the base of the pie (it's an "under and over" type of crust) and you don't cook the fruit prior to adding it to the pie, the bottom crust has a chance to cook whilst the strawberries & rhubarb are still thinking about releasing their juice. By the time they do release that lovely juice, the bottom crust is cooked. Magic. A quick word about pastry. Because I don't have a lot of energy in my own personal tank and I was also cooking a shoulder of pork, I opted for shop-bought frozen shortcrust pastry in this instance.

However, there's no reason why you should do this if you don't want to. By all means make your own shortcrust pastry - you'll need enough to cover the base of the pie dish and provide a top for your pie.

Oh, and another quick word about quantities. I had five 9 inch long sticks of rhubarb and a punnet of strawberries - and the lot went in. I cut the rhubarb into pieces of around a centimetre or half an inch long and the largest of the strawberries I sliced in half. I piled the fruit into the pie dish until I had a mini-mountain going on - and so long as you've got enough pastry to fit over the top, I see no reason not to. After all, you won't get a deep-filled pie, unless you heap the goodies in!

Once you’ve put the lid on, into the oven it goes for 35-45 minutes or until the juice is just starting to escape from the hole in the top. Make sure you’ve got some double cream to have with it – and enjoy!