This is the second time we have made this recipe from 'What Katie Ate'. In the book it suggests using green papaya ... even Waitrose dont sell that, so I have amended the salad to be a kind of Asian slaw affair. i think it works pretty well.
We sat and ate it in the garden ... no builders and a bit of sun ... lovely.
Ingredients, serves
4
1kg pork belly
Sea salt (I use Maldon)
Pepper
Olive Oil
5 spring onions
1 long, red chilli
1 large cucumber
1 bulb fennel
3 sticks celery
1 pink lady apple
large handful of shredded chinese leaf lettuce
large handful coriander leaves
large handful mint leaves
75gms roasted, unsalted peanuts
4 tbs rice wine vinegar
6 tsp fish sauce
4 tsp soy sauce
4 tbs lime juice
1 tbs finely grated palm sugar
1 Bird's Eye Chilli (small and strong)
Sesame seeds, to garnish
method
the pork
Pre-heat the oven to 240 degree celsius,
on a fan oven. It sounds hot, but it will start the pork belly getting nice and
crunchy.
Put the pork belly on a board, skin side up and
make sure it's nice and dry. Grab a very sharp nice, and score the skin
in 1 - 1.5cm intervals so that the skin is in nice strips that will
crispen up perfectly. Be careful NOT to cut down to the meat (..or even better just get your butcher to score the meat for you).
Rub the skin with two and a half teaspoons of maldon salt, making sure you get into the slits. Turn the meat over,
and rub the underside with a good glug of olive oil, a nice sprinkling of sea
salt and some freshly ground pepper. The oil on the bottom helps make sure the
bottom is nice and crunchy, as well as the top.
Put the pork in a roasting tin, skin side up and
stick it in the oven for 30mins. After 30mins, the skin will be starting to crispen up nicely.
Turn the oven down
to 180 degrees celsius and cook the pork for a further 2hrs. I
checked on it ever once in a while, but honestly, I turned the pan round after an hour just to make sure the heat was as even as possible. After
2hrs, if the crackling hasn't hardened all over, turn the oven up to 200
degrees celsius and cook it for another 20mins, or until it's all lovely and
crackling like.
To check that it's properly crispened up, just tap it with the
back of a spoon, and it should sounds solid and hard. Once you're happy the
pork belly is cooked, take it out of the oven and put it onto a wire cooling
wrack over a plate or dish and let it cool completely.
While the pork is cooking, or cooling, you'll
have plenty of time to make the salad and dressing.
To make the salad,
thinly slice the 2 - 3 spring
onions.
Take the seeds out
of the red chilli and thinly slice it.
Chop the cucumber in
half, length-ways, and scoop out the seeds in the centre, then dice up the
cucumber.
then finely slice, mandoline or cube the apple, cabbage, fennel, celery and chinese leaf.
Tear up a handful of
the coriander leaves and the mint leaves.
Combined these all
in a nice big bowl, along with the roasted, unsalted peanuts.
To make the salad dressing, take the seeds out
of the bird's eye chilli and finely dice it. Combine the chilli, rice
wine vinegar, fish sauce, soy sauce,lime juice and grated palm sugar in a container and mix it together.
Once the pork has
nicely cooled, dice it into small cubed. You can use the score lines in the
crackling as a guide for the first set of cuts.
Now mix as much of the
dressing into the salad as you like. Add the pork on-top of the salad and mix again. Sprinkle with some sesame seeds, and a little bit of torn mint if you'd like, and
thats it.
Not tricky, but impressive. And with the green stuff and
fruit, the crispy pork seems just that bit healthier... maybe!
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