Nigel Slater’s recipes for roast pork with black pudding and apple sauce, and chocolate almond cookies

A good Christmas recipe is like an old friend: sound, reliable and to be trusted. You also know, and hope, that they will appear at least once over the festivities. In this house, there is a much-loved pork recipe, where the meat is flattened, then rolled with a stuffing of black pudding, onions and sausage meat, then slow roasted and served with its roasting juices and a puddle of apple sauce.

I choose a cut with plenty of fat, belly or shoulder, and spread the stuffing over it before rolling and tying it up with butcher’s string. Any left will appear cold, thinly sliced and with a red cabbage slaw. If there is any apple is sauce left, I’ll have that, too, thank you.

New friends are welcome, but I make a rule never to make a recipe for the first time when guests are likely to arrive. This time, it’s almond cookies baked straight from the fridge, so their edges crisp a little, but their heart stays slightly soft and fudgy. These are cookies where ground, chopped and flaked nuts all have a part to play. Dipped in dark chocolate as a parting gift – not essential, but to my mind, there are few better marriages than toasted almonds and chocolate.

Roast pork with black pudding and apple sauce

A boned and scored piece of belly is good for this, as is the slightly more expensive shoulder. A piece about 1.75-2kg in weight will feed 6 and may leave a little over for tomorrow. It is worth taking the pork out of the fridge several hours before to allow the skin to dry.

Serves 6. Ready in 2-2¼ hours

Set the oven at 220C/gas mark 7. Start by making the stuffing. Peel and roughly chop the onions, warm the oil over a moderate heat and cook the onions for 10-15 minutes, until soft and translucent.

Remove the onions from the heat, crumble in the black pudding and the sausage meat. Add the sage and season with salt and pepper.

Place the pork skin-side down on a chopping board (remove any butcher’s string it may have been tied with). Spread as much of the stuffing as you can over the meat, then pull the edges up together and tie at 3cm intervals with string. (I always find a helping hand very useful at this point.) Season the pork with a little olive oil and salt, rubbing it down into the score marks in the skin. Reserve any leftover stuffing.

Place the joint of pork in a roasting tin and cook in the preheated oven for 30 minutes, then lower the heat to 180C/gas mark 3 and continue cooking for a further 90 minutes, or until the pork is done to your liking. (Cover the pork with foil if it appears to be browning too much.) If you have any reserved stuffing, you can add it to the roasting tin 30 minutes before the pork is due out. Remove the meat from the oven, cover loosely with foil and leave to rest for 20 minutes before carving.

To make the apple sauce, peel, core and roughly chop the apples, then put in a saucepan with 100ml of water and bring to the boil. Let them simmer until completely soft, stirring occasionally. (You can add a pinch of sugar if they are too tart.) Serve with the pork.

Chocolate almond cookies

Lucky dip: chocolate almond cookies. Photograph: Jonathan Lovekin/The Observer

Remove the cookies from the oven when they are pale gold, and very soft. They will firm a little on cooling while retaining a soft centre. They have a delicious fragility to them, so a little care is needed when you dip them in melted chocolate.

Makes about 24 biscuits. Ready in 1 hour, plus chilling time

whole blanched almonds 125g
butter 135g
sea salt ½ tsp
soft brown sugar 135g
golden caster sugar 100g
egg 1
plain flour 190g
baking powder 1 tsp
ground almonds 60g

To finish:
dark chocolate 90g
flaked almonds 3 tbsp

Toast the blanched almonds in a shallow pan over a moderate heat, watching them carefully and tossing them around the pan, until they are fragrant and golden brown. (They will take several minutes to take on any colour at all, then suddenly scorch, so keep an eye on them.) Remove from the heat and set aside.

Put the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer, add the salt and the sugars and beat until light and coffee coloured.

Finely chop the toasted almonds, leaving some pieces a little larger. Break the egg into a small bowl and beat briefly with a fork, then add to the butter and sugar, beating the whole time until well combined. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then introduce to the mixer bowl along with the ground and chopped toasted almonds.

Stop mixing as soon as the ingredients are thoroughly combined, then roll into balls weighing roughly 35g each. Space well apart on baking sheets and place in the fridge for a good 2 hours. (Don’t skip this. It is important for the texture of the cookies.)

Heat the oven to 160C/gas mark 2–3 and bake for 15 minutes, until they have spread. They should be a little thicker in the middle than at the edges. Let them settle for 5 minutes before lifting from the baking sheet with a palette knife and moving to a cooling rack.

Once the cookies have cooled, melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water, then remove from the heat. Take each cookie carefully in a pair of kitchen tongs or between your fingers and dip one edge into the melted chocolate. Place on the greaseproof paper.

Put the flaked almonds in shallow pan and brown lightly over a moderate heat, shaking regularly. Scatter the almonds over the warm, melted chocolate, and leave to cool.

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