A slow and slightly disappointing roast.

I spent Sunday pottering about the house doing useful things (or less useful things, like accidentally destroying a perfectly good cake). Because I knew I was going to be about the house for most of the day, but also quite busy, and because I knew we'd want a nice dinner to fight off Sunday-night-itis, I decided to cook slow roast pork belly for dinner.

I've made slow roast pork once before, using a Jamie Oliver recipe where you rub crushed fennel seeds into the rind, and delicious it was too. But Nigella also had a recipe, and I thought I'd give it a go because it looked even easier. It involved marinading the pork meat below the rind in a combination of tahini, soy sauce and lemon and lime juice, and it all smelt lovely as it sat there, waiting to go in the oven.

It roasted away happily at 150C for three and half hours, looking and smelling better and better by the minute. But then I followed the final part of her instructions - whacking the temperature up to a massive 250C for the last half an hour. The smell got slightly more acrid.

As  I got the pork out of the oven, things looked promising - the crackling had crisped and swollen up under the heat and looked like puff pastry. But when I carved it, it was a different story. The bottom was black and hard, and the meat in the middle was only ok, not melt-in-the-mouth soft and unctuous. The only taste from the marinade that really stuck was the tahini, and to be honest it was a little off putting on my pork. The best thing was the crackling, which crumbled and crunched in the mouth.

I served it with roast vegetables, and they did very well in the high heat - collapsing into concentrated flavour and softness, with little charred sections like they'd been cooked on the barbecue.

But the pork? I'll stick to Jamie. Even if it did take me about half an hour to crush the fennel seeds last time.