God and Bacon - The divinity of the Belly!
God created the heavens and the earth. “The
heavens” refers to everything beyond the earth, outer space. The earth is made
but not formed in any specific way, although water is present. God then speaks
light into existence. He then separates the light from the dark and names the
light “day” and the dark “night.” This creative work occurs from evening until
morning – one day.
Then on Day 2 he made the Sky... Day 3 the Sky…Day 4 the Stars...
Day 5 he created creatures that live in water... Day 6 he creates Humans and
I’m sure on the seventh day and realised what a feck up Day 6 was... so on Day
7 he created BACON!
Pork belly, to be precise. Thank you God!
Bacon, a.k.a. pork belly, is but one incarnation of pig fat in its
most heavenly and slimy form, unconstrained by too much sinewy meat. In the right hands it is among the most
delectable -- if not heart-stopping -- extravagances you might fantasize about.
Brined, braised, sliced and crisped in most any way you may imagine, in a morning
fry-up or in a Michelin Star restaurant.
Bottom line: Bacon is LIFE! Nothing makes you rub your belly like
a pork belly!
3 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp garlic powder (you could use fresh garlic finely chopped as
well)
1 tsp ginger powder (you could use fresh ginger finely chopped as
well)
2 tsp crushed black peppercorn
1 ½ tbsp paprika or standard chilli powder
½ tsp Cinnamon powder
Salt per preference
For the main:
Approx. 750 gm chunk of whole pork belly.
Mixture of 1 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp teriyaki and 1 tsp red wine
vinegar
1 orange or clementine
To start off, you can ask your
butcher to score the skin or simply use a sharp knife to score the skin. Be
careful not to cut through the skin into the fat and meat. Start with cutting
the pork belly through the middle and give the flesh some criss cross cuts. Sprinkle
salt on the meat and spread it around. Then do the same with the dry spice as
well. Make sure you get the spice rub into the cuts as well. Keep greasing your
fingers using the mixture of the sauces. Squeeze one half of the orange over
the meat and close the flap. Now repeat the same process on the scored skin as
well. Let this marinade for at least two hours. I did mine on the previous day
so the meat had absorbed the marinade really well.
Nothing like some sticky sushi rice to go with this:
You can use my sticky rice recipe from this link https://fouxdefafafa.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/teriyaki.html
Heat the oven to 230C/200C fan assisted. Put it
in a roasting tin with the grill and in the oven for 30 minutes. Now take
out the tin and turn the temperature down to 160C/140C fan assisted. Add
the leftover spice rub, the soy/teriyaki/vinegar mixture to the bottom of the
pan along with some water. The fat from the belly will drip into this and
create the thick sauce. Through the process, you might need to keep adding some
water to the bottom of the pan to keep the sauce from burning away. Put the
belly back in the oven for about 1 hour (depending on the size).
After 1 hour, turn the oven up to full whack at
230C/210C fan assisted and roast for another 20 minutes until the crackling gets
crisp. When done, remove the pork from the oven and wrap the meat. DO NOT cover
the crackling as it might get soft due to the steam and moisture. Let it rest
for about 15 minutes.
Remove the juices from the roasting tin into a
pan and give it a quick high heat treatment to thicken up. You could add flour and
butter to thicken it up but I’d suggest you to just let it thicken up naturally
by evaporating off the excess liquid. Cut off the cracking and set it aside. Take
some of the sauce from the juices and spread over the fat with a brush and put
it under the grill at full whack for 5-7 minutes. This was a random experiment
and it worked ‘swimmingly’ as they say in Scotland.
Slice up the belly and serve over the sticky
rice. Drizzle the thick dark jus over that and serve!
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