A few weeks ago, we had my friend Chad and her boyfriend J over for a Sunday roast lunch. Jac loves cooking for guests, and she cooked up a feast featuring two roasts and lots of vegetables. This was the roast leg of pork, complete with salty, crunchy crackling.

Jac peeled the crackling off the meat before handing me a knife so I could chop it into smaller pieces. They don’t call it “crackling” for nothing!

A beautiful sight – a dish of crunchy fresh bite-sized pieces of pork crackling. Does pork crackling call your name too? :)

Jac also cooked an Inghams turkey thigh roast, the same sort we’ve had before at Christmas (see turkey thigh roast from Christmas 2008). This is one of my favourite roast meats – EVER. The meat is deliciously seasoned, succulent and juicy. It’s got a little fat through it, as well as the skin all around it – it tastes fantastic.

I couldn’t wait to try the roast pork either. It smelled unbelievably good.

Jac arranged the carved roast pork and turkey on a platter, garnished with roasted chilli peppers.

Jac had roasted lots of vegetables too, which she tossed in the pork drippings so they’d be extra delicious – potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, carrots and whole onions.

She also steamed green beans and broccoli.

To go with the pork, Jac made some apple sauce.

She also made gravy using some of the roast meat juices with a little help from Gravox gravy powder. I have since decided I have to stay away from instant gravies – I always end up with an insatiable thirst that lasts for days afterwards.

Jac bought some bake-at-home white bread rolls too. They were lovely, freshly ovenbaked, crusty on the outside and warm, soft and fluffy on the inside with a little butter.

So here’s my plate, round one. I’m not usually a fan of fruit sauces with roast meats, but for the sake of the photo I decided to have a little of Jac’s homemade apple sauce with the roast pork. You know what? It was delicious! I think I’ll be more willing to have roast pork with apple sauce from now on. Everything tasted as good – no, even better than it looked. I’m so lucky Jac is such an amazing cook. And the great thing is, she really enjoys cooking – so it’s a win-win for her as well as me (the cook, as well as the glutton)!

I’d volunteered to make dessert, and I made tiramisu. Just before serving, I grated dark chocolate over the top.

I was a little over-enthusiastic with the coffee + marsala on the sponge fingers – they were soggier than they should’ve been, but the coffee flavour was really good, with not too much taste of booze. I was pleased with how creamy, smooth and light the marscapone / custardy layers turned out.