Pinot, Bretzels, and Cathedrals

My dear friends,

I trust this month of September has been treating you well. 
I am currently only working half time so I have launched an Instagram page sharing my food journey.  It includes some stories, and some recipes where I can fit it into that medium, but sometimes it’s not possible, so you can expect the occasional recipe post in your inbox going forward. 
To follow that Insta page, look for the handle Culinary Mom on my blog sites homepage.  It covers a variety of sweets and savoury, baking and roasting, grilling and salads.  Some are healthy, some are not, but it’s as real as it could be given it’s all coming from my own kitchen.

This week I included pork belly on the family  dinner menu, and I spent a while looking for recipe suggestions online that weren’t overly sweet and sticky. Since I’m also trying to learn to use Miso, I wanted to make use of that. Alas, I couldn’t find a recipe, so I took it upon myself to figure it out myself.  I went on to document the entire process with photos, and am going to share it here in the event you want to try something different.

It has a rather long list of ingredients, it’s definitely not a OnePotWonder, nor is it quick and easy but I enjoyed it.

As I wrote up the recipe I included some thoughts and notes so this reads a bit long.  I have included a hard copy of the recipe at the end if you prefer to print it.

Without further ado, here you go.

Pork Belly with Miso, Shitake and Spinach

Serves 6

Ingrediants:

1Kg Pork Belly

1 medium sized Onion, peeled and cubed

2 medium sized Carrots, peeled and halved

1 spoon fresh Ginger, chopped (or 1teapsoon ground ginger)

1 large Garlic clove, chopped

1 tablespoon –approximately- of whole Cardamom pods, crushed

1 full Star Aniseed

2 Cloves

2 tablespoons Miso Paste

30ml (light) Soya Sauce

20ml Molasses (you can replace this with pouring honey if you can’t find molasses)

1 teaspoon Szechuan peppercorns

Early morning preparation:

– Score the fat on the belly of pork, and rub salt onto the surface.

– In a pan large enough, bring it to high heat and place the piece of pork onto the pan, fat side down, and cook until it is browned and a little crispy.  I planned on cooking the belly in my Lecreuset pot, so I went ahead and browned it in that  

– Next up, add the pork belly to an oven proof pot or casserole.  I made use of a deep 2litre Lecreuset pot with a lid.  Alternately, use a deep roasting pan, making sure you can cover the cut of pork with liquid.

– Now add the onion, carrots, ginger, garlic, cardamom pods, aniseed, cloves, miso paste, soya sauce, molasses and peppercorns and cover with water.

– Place into an oven preheated to 150˚C and cook for 90 minutes.  Turn off the oven, but leave the belly in the oven to cool down.

Approximately an hour before dinner, you can continue with the following:

– Remove the cooked pork and the carrots from the cooking liquid and set aside.

– Strain the stock into a stove-top pot, you can discard the onions and spices. Bring the stock sauce to the boil; reduce to simmer while preparing the vegetables.

– While the stock reduces; you can cube the pork belly into approximately 5 x 5 cm cubes.  Place them into a medium hot saucepan to render the fat and brown the pieces.  I added some of the cooking liquid occasionally to avoid drying out, but just a generous splash every now and then. (For a very sneaky extra, drizzle some honey into the pan to caramelise the pieces and bring a bit of sweetness to the dish.)

– While the pork is sautéing, you can prepare a variety of vegetables to add to the broth. 

I made use of the following:

50g button mushrooms, sliced

1 clutch of dried shiitake mushrooms

1 leek, thinly sliced

100g raw spinach, finely shredded. 

– You can swop spinach for some Chinese (Napa) cabbage, and you could add some broccoli florets.

–Add the Shiitake mushrooms, the button mushrooms and half the leeks to the simmering stock sauce.  Slice up the carrot from the initial cooking pot and add that to the broth too.

– Cook the sauce for about 15 minutes.

– 5 minutes before serving, add the spinach and remainder of the leeks, season the sauce with salt and pepper to your taste. Add the caramelised pieces of pork to the pot and serve.

– In the case of this preparation, I wanted a more liquid broth for the dish as I had made sticky rice, so I didn’t reduce the broth all the way down, and I didn’t thicken it.  However, if you are considering serving it with noodles, before adding spinach (or cabbage or broccoli) you can reduce it for another 15 minutes, and then thicken it with a cornflour and water paste  (2 tablespoons  cornflour with 4 tablespoons water).    

Serve with sticky rice or egg noodles. Sprinkle some toasted sesame seeds over for an extra pizazz 😊.

As a little postscript, I have given thought to doing something similar with lamb ribs but I doubt neither miso nor shiitakes would be as welcome with the lamb, so I’ll have to rethink this version.

I trust that you’re in good health and not overly stressed out in these still-ongoing strange CovidDays.
All my love to you and your loved ones.

Love and best wishes,

Me

xxx