Calming Winter Lunch for 6

Much as I love proper roast leg of pork with its carapace of amber-glazed crackling, I don’t cook it that much: roast boned and rolled loin is my more regular pig-out. I feel at ease with it, even though the flesh can tend to dry stringiness. Ask the butcher for rib-end of loin (hard to carve, but wonderful tasting). And put a little liquid in the roasting pan so the meat grows tender in its own small pool of odoriferous steam. Anything will do: a glass of wine or cider, some stock, water mixed with apple juice, the leftover liquid you’ve cooked carrots in.