Trinxat de la Cerdanya

Ingredients

• 1 kg savoy or winter cabbage, cored and roughly chopped
• 600 g floury potatoes, peeled and cut into large chunks
• 150 g cured pork belly (cansalada) or thick streaky bacon, cut into lardons
• 4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
• 5 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• Salt and black pepper

Before you cook

• Strip out the thick cabbage ribs and chop the leaves roughly.
• Peel the potatoes and cut them into chunks of roughly equal size.
• Cut the pork belly into short lardons and slice the garlic thinly.

Steps

1. Bring a large pot of well salted water to the boil and drop in the chopped cabbage.
2. Boil the cabbage for fifteen minutes, then add the potato chunks to the same pot.
3. Cook everything together for another twenty minutes, until a knife slides through the potato with no resistance.
4. Drain the vegetables thoroughly in a colander and leave them for five minutes so the steam escapes and they dry out.
5. Tip the cabbage and potato into a bowl and crush them together with a fork or masher, keeping the texture rough rather than smooth.
6. Season the mixture generously with salt and black pepper and taste it.
7. Heat the olive oil in a large non-stick frying pan over medium heat and fry the sliced garlic until pale gold, then lift it out onto kitchen paper.
8. Fry the pork lardons in the same oil for six to eight minutes until deeply crisp, then lift them out and set them with the garlic.
9. Turn up the heat, tip the crushed cabbage and potato into the flavoured fat and press it down into an even cake.
10. Fry it undisturbed for six minutes so a proper brown crust forms on the base.
11. Slide the cake onto a plate, invert it back into the pan and fry the second side for another six minutes.
12. Slide the trinxat onto a warm serving plate, scatter the crisp pork and fried garlic over the top and serve at once.