Braised Pork Belly

Well, Laurie and I are back from our culinary adventure in Chicago.  Who goes to Chicago when it's 5 degrees out and snowing? People who like to eat (us), that's who. We spent 4 days trying to hit as many good eats as possible. ALL of Rick Bayless's places exceeded expectations, from Xoco, the 'fast food' place to Topolobampo the fine dining menu, to Frontera, the in-between. I recommend Hot chocolate and churros from Xoco, and the Chicken soup (I forget the menu name) from Frontera/Topo. We were disappointed by Charlie Trotter's place, it just didn't hit the mark for us. Service was outstanding, but the food was just not memorable, no matter how much I wanted it to be, for the money spent. The wine pairings were great though (we choose the wine pairing with the tastings). Chicago deep dish pizza? I'll take NY. The Publican and The Violet Hour hit the mark for us. Our bartender at the Violet Hour, (the one from Morristown NJ!) was one of the best bartenders I've come accross. He just got it. I wish there were more places like that in NJ. Enough about Chi-Town...if you are a foodie, it's an awesome city. Click here for some pictures of our trip.  (btw - we flew out of JFK - Jet Blue. Terminal 5. The restaurants there and the whole setup, is WORTH driving through Staten Island for. Seriously. Our flight was delayed for ~4 hours due to weather in Chicago, but we passed the time eating and drinking. Terminal 5 has a great selection of fine-dining restaurants now!! We ate at 5ive Steak. The bar made a surprisingly perfect manhattan too! (with Rye even!)

Changing gears for a minute, I wanted to address a question I'm sure some of you are asking.  'Why?' Why is someone doing a blog like this? Well, I thought about this for a while. I LOVE to cook & I LOVE to eat...but unfortunately, I'm not a chef and don't have a restaurant. The closest I can get to the feeling a chef must get when he cranks out 100 plates of a dish that people just love, is cooking for myself, my wife, and a few friends, and sharing the experience and pictures with 100+ people on the internet. Half obsessive, half ego I suppose. If I could fit 100 people in my house, though, I surely would try. Unfortunately, my barely 1200sq/ft cape cod can only accomidate 4, for dinner!

In any case, while we were away, we received some requests to do the Braised Pork Belly recipe. As if I didn't eat enough pork in Chi-town. Pork belly is the not-so-new trendy dish at many fine-dining restuarants, but, no one can deny that it's usually quite tasty. For good reason too, it's bacon. I don't believe I've ever had this dish at Nicholas, but the recipe sure looks good so we figured, what the heck.  I've cooked pork belly a few times before -- Once from a Jean-George recipe that came out just okay, and once from a Momofuku/David Chang recipe that came out fantastic. This recipe is a braised pork belly, over napa cabbage with some peanut-coconut dressing, and some gingered pluots (more on the pluots later)

We drove  to the only place around (within 20 minutes) to actually get pork belly. Hong Kong Supermarket. I'm usually a little weary about the quality of some things here, but there is no denying they always have whatever obscure ingredient I need. All of the ingredients for this dish cost me about 15-20 bucks. On a side note: They seem to always keep the whole store at 30 below zero so if you go, be prepared with a coat, even in the summer. Brrr.


The recipe calls for 1lb of pork belly. This was a little suspect, since when I picked out what I thought was a reasonably sized slab...it came to 3.73lbs. Yikes, no worries, I'll just make extra, I figured.

So, I came home and took out my tape measure, and portioned into 5x3 inch pieces as per the recipe. That whole 3.73lb slab yielded...2 portions. Granted they are pretty big portions. Use your gut if you are making this recipe for guests. I doubt that 1lb would feed 6 people even if the portions are small.

I'm not sure I tied the ends right, but I consulted my wife, who gave the OK.

I started getting excited when we made the braising liquid. Just getting together the ingredients made my hungry. This was going to be  good braise, and one like I've never done before.

...and in the pot the bellies go...

Look at that. How can that taste bad? I think you can put a shoe in there and it would come out pretty good.

When it comes out, it looks...well...just as good to me!!

Here is what the pork belly portions look like. I threw them in the fridge on a sheet pan with a rack to dry so they will crisp up on final preperation.

 

I wouldn't whip up this dish if you have guests coming over in a few hours, but the recipe is layed out so that you can do most everything ahead of time, and just toss it together ala minute when your guests arrive. I'm finding many of the recipes in the book are layed out this way and I love it. I always want to have awesome food when I have guests over (it's the only way I can get people over my house!), but I don't want to be slaving over a stove the whole time. With this cookbook, you can have a 5-course quality dinner, most of which can be made ahead! I did the pork belly and gingered pluots on one day, and kept them in the fridge overnight.

This brings me to the gingered pluots. Or rather, the lack of pluots. A pluot is similiar to a plum, and the recipe states you can substitute plums if you can't find pluots. It's not pluot nor plum season, and no store around here carried either, so...not wanting to do something half-assed, I still wanted to do 'something' rather than just leave this component out. I'm going to catch shit for it, but, since it's just an accompaniment, and not a integral part of the dish, here is what I did.

DOH!

I had the idea to substitute something else that is in season, but here is why I'm a desk jockey and not a chef...I couldn't come up with any ideas. Do you guys/gals have any ideas on what I cold have subbed?

These do look kinda sad

We did the above cooking on Saturday. If you live in NJ, you know that a giant blizzard (the first of the year) had started in the morning. So, we also decided to make a pot of chili to stay inside and be cozy all day. Click here for how that came out! We prepared with a trip to the grocery and wine store the day before. Most people get milk and bread and water, we get slabs of angus chuck and wine. Our house smelled fantastic. It was the first time I made my own chili powder from dried chilis too!

Believe it or not though, with all the cooking we did that day, we didn't end up eating anything we cooked (yet), except for stealing tastes of the chili!! We ended up taking our new 4x4 Jeep out in the blizzard to one of our favorite restaurants, Stage Left for a burger (THE best burger in NJ) with my Mom, Dad, and Sister. Due to the weather, they were running a deal of half priced bottles of wine over $150, so we figured having THE best burger in NJ, with a nice bottle of wine at retail store prices, in a blizzard, sounded even better than our chili. So we threw the pot of chili in the fridge and headed out at around 7pm! There is something about driving in the worst weather conditions that makes a man happy. I drove to Sayreville to pick up my family and we trekked into New Brunswick.

What a great spontaneous night! It was especially good, knowing that I had a whole pot of chili and pork belly waiting in the fridge for the next day....

Now, Sunday is here, and it's time to finish this dish. What was left was to make the dressing, and prep the cabbage, then sear off and cook the pork belly in a 400 oven for a few minutes...

Here are the ingredients for the dressing. Don't knock my Jiffy.

The result was a little better than my last run in with using crappy Jiffy.

Mixed with the napa cabbage and some chopped peanuts, I have to say, the slaw was pretty tasty.

The pork belly needed a few more minutes than the recipe called for in the oven. Actually, I sould have lowered the temp a little bit and cooked it for even a bit longer to render some more fat out. For the record, this was a pretty crappy cut of pork belly, way too fatty for a dish like this, but I did manage to get a few good cuts.

...and finally, one to match the book.

My Thoughts: The best part of this dish was the slaw and the gingered plums (even though they were from a can!), the braise was awesome, but the cut of pork belly I had, was not. I knew it going into the dish, but figured I'd give it a whirl anyways. Such is life when purveyors won't deliver to your house (believe me, I've tried). The flavors were really good. I'm definitly going to make this dish again when I come across a better cut of pork belly. Asian supermarkets are good for finding off-the-wall ingredients, but be cafeful. We didn't pair the suggested wine with this (a Riesling), I simply forgot when we were stocking up at the wine store this weekend, however we did finish off a bottle of Spanish Priorat throughout the day (which we opened with the Chili we had for lunch). I'm eager to try this dish at Nicholas. I'm also going to try, once again to get some better sources for ingredients, especially meats.

Up next? Laurie made the Chocolate Souffle' today too but it might be a few days until I can find some time to get a post together. I put a black truffle for Christmas list, so if Santa brings one I'm going to try out the couple of dishes that don't require actual truffle (just truffle oil), but it's listed as optional. Those dishes are Hen Egg Truffle Ravioli, Risotto with Truffles, and Truffle Egg Custard wth Truffle Creme. Maybe Santa will bring an ice cream maker too.

I can't wait until Spring, there are so many great spring recipes in this book!