How to make perfect crackling

It must be Pork Week on Yorkshire Food. On Sunday I had the most fabulous roast pork, the meat all scented with fennel and garlic and masses of fluffy, crisp crackling. And I made it all by myself!

Scotts have to take some of the credit, since the feast started off as 1kg of their boned and rolled pork loin (£7.50ish). It's not true that you need a big joint to make decent crackling, by the way. Though if you love crackling as much as I do you might need a big one to make enough. I take it for granted you will buy decent pork with fat under the skin.

The rules are not complicated. You don't need to get it out of the fridge yesterday and pour boiling water on it. Honestly, it's this easy.

1. The skin has to be properly scored.

If the butcher hasn't done it already, use a sharp knife or Stanley knife to cut incisions through the rind into the fat. You can be rough and ready because you won't see the scoring when it's cooked. About 5mm-1cm apart is right. Simon Hopkinson explains: 'As the fat melts and starts to bubble under the scored rind, it pushes up between the strips, frazzling them.'

2. It needs to be dry.

If you leave it festering in its plastic bag until just before you need it, it will be soggy and end up like leather. Fridges are dry environments, so you could leave it in there, unwrapped, on a plate. Maybe take it out of the plastic bag an hour or so early and blot it hard with kitchen roll.

3. The oven needs to be hot.

I had mine at 240c for the 20 minute sizzle then turned it down to a positively tepid 220 for another 50 minutes. You don't need to worry about the meat drying out - there's too much fat around for that.

It worked fantastically - 100% of the skin crackled. When I carved, it came off the meat like a big moist, airy, crackling tunnel. I had salted it slightly, which helped with the flavour, and rubbed the ends of the meat with a mixture of crushed garlic and fennel seeds. Because it is Yorkshire in spring, I served it with rhubarb, which turns out to beat apple sauce hands down - it is just so much pinker and fruitier.

Stand by your ham

I had an email today from the Pigs Are Worth It campaign, because I signed their petition for higher prices to be paid to farmers for pork.

The problem is that feed costs are almost twice as high as they were a year ago. However, as the campaign reports,

'Due to price pressure from supermarkets, farmers are now being paid around £1.10 per kg for a pig that now costs them £1.44 per kg to produce. For every pig a farmer rears and sells, he is likely to lose over £20.'

The campaign is asking supermarkets,

'to pay an extra 34p per kg to help preserve British pig farming. If this price
rise were passed on to shoppers, it would only mean between 7p and 17p on the
pack price of typical pork products.'

I have every sympathy with British farmers, and it's not that I personally mind paying extra for the higher welfare pork which is produced in this country. However, there is one thing about this campaign that sets my teeth on edge. This is, that the way it is pitched buys right into the supermarkets' claim that they have no alternative to charging the prices they do.

We all know that supermarkets make massive profits. In 2006 Tesco reported profits of £2.2 billion - that's around £34 for every man, woman and child in the country, or £136 for my immediate family. Or, to put it another way, the extra 17 (or 7) pence on 800 (or 1943) packets of bacon. So I should think they can well afford it.

The pig farmers have recorded Stand By Your Ham, a version of the Tammy Wynette classic updated to put the point across about the dire state of the pork industry. You can listen to it here. It was so dreadful it made me laugh and cry at the same time. Very best of luck to them.