Trotters, bacon and onion

Another St John recipe - this one sounds delightful: Pot-roast bacon, trotter and prune - in fact there are few recipes in Beyond Nose to Tail that don't have a prune in it. And to demonstrate the effect this is having on my wife - I showed her a jar of prunes soaking in earl grey tea and she screamed thinking it was an eel, or worse.
Anyway, looking very similar to the prunes was the trotter gear, something I did a few weeks ago. Basically trotters boiled, and then the skin, fat and meat put in jars. This is, "something every fridge should have" and so my fridge has six (no room for tonic). Well now it has five because one large Hellaman's size of jelly, fatty, meaty trotter gear is now surrounding a piece of green pork shoulder, along with loads of prunes and a glass of white wine. And what should be loads of black pepper which I forgot, back in a sec...

...oh its smells wonderful and looks like this:


Hmm, granted not that appetising, but he prunes are fattening up, the pork turning and the trotter gear melting into a broth of fatty niceness, half an hour into the two hours on medium heat.
The skin on top is just to keep it moist. It should have been done with a smoked bacon piece, but I haven't managed to find it – even the best two butchers down in Eastbourne (Green Street and Meads) only have it sliced.

I made something similar with beans in a tomato sauce with the shoulder and it was tender and rich, so I can only imagine f it was smoked it would be even more so. Therefore to accompany it, something fresh, light and wintery - beetroot, red onion, red cabbage, creme fraiche and chervil* salad. No, I don't have chervil, so parsley is making an appearance. Grate it all, mix it up with capers...ah capers...where have you been...a 'little gesture' of balsamic and olive oil.

Bring on half past eight