Guest chef Danielle Alvarez’s roasted pork rack with caramelised apples and mustard

This pork rack is a great dish to cook for a crowd and the roasted sweet apples and mustard make an ideal sweet and savoury sauce.

Roast pork. Picture: Benito Martin and Jess Johnson

This pork rack is such a good dish to cook for a crowd, and I love how the roasted sweet apples and the mustard and creme fraiche become a perfect sweet and savoury sauce. Look for pork that has a good fat content and good provenance. If you can find a piece that is not wrapped in plastic, even better – the skin will have already been air-dried, which is the key to crispy crackling. Serve the oysters as a starter or with drinks: shucked just before eating and paired with a fresh mignonette and perhaps some lemon, they are absolute heaven.

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ROASTED PORK RACK WITH CARAMELISED APPLES & MUSTARD

1.25kg pork rack, bone in

8g sage leaves

10g salt

5-6 sweet apples, cored and quartered

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1 teaspoon wholegrain mustard

2 tablespoons creme fraiche

Prepare the pork rack the day before cooking. Score the skin in thin narrow lines from top to bottom. You want to cut through the fat, but not into the flesh. This will allow the fat to melt out and the skin to blister. Next, make your sage salt by crushing the leaves and salt together in a mortar and pestle until it is almost paste-like. Rub the sage salt around the flesh of the pork, but not the skin. Crack black pepper on the meat, then sprinkle plain sea salt on the skin; refrigerate, uncovered, overnight.

The next day, remove pork from the fridge and allow it to come to room temperature. Preheat the oven to 220C (200C fan). Place the pork, skin side up, on an oven tray. Roast for about 20 minutes, then add the apples to the tray and turn to coat them in a bit of the rendered pork fat. Roast for another 30 minutes, or until the internal temperature at the thickest part of the meat reads between 58C and 65C. At this stage, place your roast under the grill for a minute or two, but do not walk away from it; this little blast of heat will make any last bit of skin blister and puff into crackling, but it can burn very easily. Remove from the oven and place on a chopping board. Let it rest for at least 15 minutes while you finish the sauce. Remove the apples from the tray and pour off the juices and fat into a saucepan. Set over a medium heat and add the mustards and creme fraiche. Bring to a simmer, then check for seasoning and set aside.

Cut the pork rack in between the bones into chops. Serve one warm chop per person with a few wedges of apple and a generous tablespoon of warm sauce on top of each chop. A little sprinkle of salt on top of the sliced meat is also a good idea. Serves 4-6

Oysters with coriander, lime and white pepper mignonette. Picture: Benito Martin and Jess Johnson

OYSTERS WITH CORIANDER, LIME & WHITE PEPPER MIGNONETTE

12 freshly shucked oysters

3-4 lemon wedges

Mignonette

3 tablespoons agrodolce-style chardonnay vinegar

1 tablespoon sherry vinegar

1 small shallot, finely diced

1 teaspoon minced coriander stem

½ teaspoon grated lime zest

Pinch of white pepper

Serve the oysters on a bed of crushed ice, or rock salt if you don’t like them cold. Mix all the mignonette ingredients together; serve with the oysters and a few lemon wedges. Serves 1-4

Edited extract from Always Add Lemon by Danielle Alvarez (Hardie Grant, $50). Photography: Benito Martin and Jess Johnson