Rojões à Minhota

Ingredients

• 1 kg pork shoulder or leg, with its fat
• 350 ml dry white vinho verde
• 6 garlic cloves
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 tbsp sweet paprika (colorau)
• 3 tbsp pork lard
• 1 tsp coarse salt
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 600 g potatoes
• 2 tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley
• 1 lemon, cut into wedges

Before you cook

• Cut the pork into 4 cm cubes, leaving the fat attached.
• Crush the garlic cloves under the flat of a knife.
• Put the pork in a bowl with 330 ml of the wine, the garlic, bay leaves, salt and pepper.
• Turn everything with your hands, cover the bowl, and leave it in the fridge for at least two hours.
• Peel the potatoes and cut them into 3 cm chunks.

Steps

1. Lift the pork out of the marinade and keep the liquid.
2. Put the pork and the marinade together into a wide heavy pan or iron pot.
3. Bring it to a boil over high heat, uncovered.
4. Boil hard for twenty-five to thirty minutes, until all the wine has evaporated and the meat starts to sizzle rather than bubble.
5. Add the lard to the pan.
6. Turn the heat down to medium-low and cook the pork for thirty to forty minutes, stirring every few minutes, until the cubes are deeply browned all over and swimming in clear fat.
7. Lift the pork out with a slotted spoon and keep it somewhere warm.
8. Add the potato chunks to the fat left in the pan.
9. Fry the potatoes for twenty minutes, turning them, until crisp outside and soft within.
10. Lift the potatoes out and salt them.
11. Dissolve the paprika in the remaining two tablespoons of vinho verde in a cup.
12. Pour that paprika mixture into the hot pan and stir hard for one minute, scraping up everything stuck to the base.
13. Return the pork to the pan and roll it through the red fat for one minute.
14. Tip the pork and potatoes onto a warm serving dish.
15. Scatter over the parsley and serve with lemon wedges.