Making Pancetta

I have some of the pork belly left over from the rillette the other day, about a 1kg piece so I came across a recipe for pancetta in one of my books called 'The Gormet Farmer'.

Its fairly straight forward, basically using a mixture of herbs, spices and salt you cure the pork belly. So for a kilo of pork belly you need the following:

• 10 fresh sage leaves
• 1 small fresh sprig of rosmary
• 10 whole black peppercorns
• 1 whole nutmeg (grated as needed)
• 100g fine sea salt

Putting half of the above ingredients in a pestle and mortar, grind them up with a teaspoon of salt, when a smppth paste, mix with the remaining salt and then rub into the pork. This is what mine looks like at the moment, its then left in the fridge for 3 days. After this its washed and then the remaining ingredients are ground up and rubbed in and the pork is left to hang for 6 weeks. 

I will go into more details in a few day when I reach the next stage.