I have been dying to make this for weeks and as soon as we were back from our last mini adventure I set about making it happen. Even as I was making my first meal back (meatballs) the pork belly was sitting in the fridge lathered in salt already on the start of it's glorious journey. I had been reading restuarant menus, consulting whatever chef would talk to me, including one we stayed with in Uluru and the one putting us up, Chef Stu! I had also done some online research and read recipe books and at the end of the day there are so many ways to cook it that I doubt you could do it wrong so I just went with it.
So, the pork belly sits in salt for about a day, with the skin scored to let in more salt. My piece actually had the ribs still attached which I wasn't expecting but I was glad that they would be there to add to the flavour. You then rinse the meat so that it isn't too salty to eat and I laid it in a deep baking dish to braise for a while. I filled the dish to just below the pork skin with chicken stock and let it gently cook in the oven, I think it was at about 150 degrees or less for a couple of hours. In theory, with the skin being exposed, it should have started to crisp, mine was not. I kept topping up the liquid, with water once the stock had run out, to keep the meat submerged and moist. After somewhere between 2 and 3 hours I decided that maybe things were too moist in the oven and that was why the skin wasn't crisping, so I drained the liquid, turned the oven up slightly, re-salted the skin and let it be. After about an hour there was no progress on the skin though the rest of it was looking and smelling heavenly! I cut the skin off the meat and tried to lay it out on it's on to see if that would help, but no. This left the top of the pork exposed and the fat started to crisp nicely and all the edges of the meat were golden and crisp too, very exciting! I knew the meat was going to rock, but I was still disturbed at the lack of crisp on the skin. At the end of the day we (Chef Stu and I with some input from the significant others) decided that the only thing to do was to slap it under a hot grill! Which worked! Almost instantly! Apparently their oven is a little 'moist' which may have been a cause, or there are a multitude of other reasons it could have been, the moral of the story is that if there is a hot grill around, you can still save the day!
The slab of pork belly was melt in your mouth when I eventually took it out after 5hours of braising and roasting. The crackling actually crackled! I roasted some blue and white potatoes whole to go with it, added some mushrooms to the pork tray for the last hour (which have such an intense flavour when they are roasted!) and made cauliflower and broccoli with a smoky cheese sauce. I had found a smoked cheddar with a hint of paprika which I thought would do the trick very nicely, and it did! The gravy was a combination of a packet (as always) and some of the reduced chicken stock I had braised the meat in and the roasted mushrooms, some apple sauce, squeeze of tomato sauce (as always too) and that was about it. We had my cousin over for dinner too as pork belly is his favourite. And because we wanted to see him of course!
I almost mourned the fact that I didn't take a picture of the pork belly whole before dishing it up, I think I was a little flustered in the kitchen and keen to get things on plates and into peoples bellies. I cut the belly into strips along where the ribs allowed basically. I also separated the crackling into strips too. It worked out really well, though perhaps a little rich, but only some of us felt that. I actually was rather badly affected by it all and feel that perhaps there is an ongoing aversion with pork in general, which is very sad indeed, but I won't stop me making it for other people because I know how wonderful it is!
At last, pork belly conquered, successfully! Perhaps I shouldn't have tried to serve Amarula and dark chocolate cheesecake following such a rich meal, everyone had bite size portions and was done!
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