FOOD Simple slow-roast pork belly

Roasted pork belly.

Walk the right food path


Food and wine
Redmond Cabot

When fate comes along and places something in your path, you have no option but to deal with the consequences. Like so many parts of my life that I ‘happen’ across, with no real prior planning, such it is with my cooking ingredients too. Thus, despite being not a great ‘piggy’ fan, because of the practice of intensive animal husbandry in Ireland and its implications for animal welfare, I found myself being given a ‘Pork Belly’ to cook for the table.
When I was growing up it was just rashers and loin chops that were the extent of our pig knowledge. Around the 1990s, as we all become more ‘European’, the dish of ‘Pork Belly’ started being cooked by some fancy places and chefs in Dublin. 
Nevertheless, it was always in the background, but never in front of my consciousness. Until, that is, Paul O’Malley, our neighbour from Liscarney, pressed a freshly vacuum-packed pork belly into my hand and said ‘try this’. It sat in my fridge for over a week, but still pristine fresh I decided to try my hand at it.
Cooking pork belly is all about slow cooking it and then crisping that tasty fat. And that’s basically it – there is no hocus-pocus. You just slow roast the meat with whatever flavour you pick, try to not dry it out and then hot cook it for the last stage. This crisps up that tasty belly fat, which sits over delicious streams of meat that have been slow-cooked to a mouth-watering consistency. You can pick any variety of flavours: Onions and apple; chorizo and haricot beans; star anise plum sauce. I tried the old reliables, rosemary and thyme.
The thing about fat is that it’s the place where excess from an animal’s diet is stored. If the animal is raised well on good, nutritious food, free of disease and free from overbearing medicines or antibiotics, then fat is a great thing to enjoy. If the animal is raised with bad things, then it’s fat is not a good thing to be eating. It is as simple as that.
If you can trust the source of your food then you are on safe ground, another reason to develop local community purchase of your foods, providing you can vouch for its worthiness. Less air miles to travel, and more trust in the nutritional content of your foods. Local produce in and of itself is no guarantee, but true and honest local produce you can trust in is quite simply the best in the world. Trust your judgement and open your eyes when it comes to buying what you put into your body.
Slow-roasted Liscarney Pork Belly

Ingredients

• Pork belly for four
• 2 onions
• Glass of white wine
• Rosemary and thyme
• Seasoning

Method
You can wash your pork belly first if you like. Then lay it fat side up, and with a sharp knife, score/cut a criss-cross pattern across the fat. (I like deep cuts; some like more shallow.) Rub sea salt and your own freshly ground pepper onto the cuts. Turn the belly over and season that side, rubbing in olive oil too.
On the bottom of your baking dish, lay the two onions sliced in think rings. On top of this, sprinkle both the rosemary and the thyme. Lay the belly on top, fat side up, and season the fat.
Add your cup of wine, cover with tin foil, and cook in oven at 120 degrees for two hours. Then remove the tin foil and cook for 25 minutes at 180 degrees – this will crispen up the fat.
Cut your cooked belly into think slices. Serve with gravy made from the juice (or just the juice itself), boiled or baked spuds and delicious green spinach – or try some pumpkin/butternut squash as a variation to compliment the sweetness of pork.
That really is all there is to it. Surprisingly easy, a bit like fate…

Red Cabot loves food, outdoors, nature and unplanned, impromptu living. He loves and supports local, organic and seasonal foods – ‘Fresh ’n’ healthy’ is his philosophy. He sells his home-made foods and sauces every Thursday morning at Westport Country Markets, Boxing Centre, James’s Street Car Park. email him at living@mayonews.ie.