Crispy Spiced Pig Tummy in Cider

For a long time I thought I hated Pork Belly. I had eaten it in a sandwich at a music festival, the kind of festival that has nice food stalls not crappy burger vans, and it had been everything I feared. Chewy boingy fatty meat. It was disgusting. Yet the world kept eating Pork Belly and I just could not believe that it could be that bad if so many people found it so good. So I had a go at cooking it myself. It turned out so much better than I could have imagined. Nothing boingy at all, the meat was succulent and flaky, the fat was no longer like any animal fat I had ever tasted and was instead like these little oozy buttery nodules and the skin was crisp and light. So I was immediately converted to the ways of the pig tummy. At least when its been cooked long and slow. So here is the recipe I invented. Excuse the poor quality of the pictures, I really have not got the knack for food photography, especially cause I left the skin a little long this time around so it got just a little tougher and darker than I would have chosen. But it all tasted lovely.

Recipe after the jump... 

Crispy Spiced Pig Tummy in Cider

Serves 4

Ingredients

4 Carrots

1 Large Onion or 2 Small Onions

2 Apples

1pint of Strong Vegetable Stock

½ pint of good dry cider

Splash of Soy Sauce

1kg of Pork Belly With Skin On

1 tsp Mustard

1 Tbsp of Honey

1 Tbsp of Chinese 5 Spice

2 tsp of Chilli Powder

Vegetable Oil

Good Sea-salt

Preheat your oven to gasmark 7\218°C Peel and then roughly cut the carrot into lumps, slice the onion anyway you please. Peel the Apples and cut into small cubes. Put all the carrot lumps, slices of onion and cubes of apple into the roasting dish. Pour the cider, stock and splash of soy sauce over the vegetables.

With a sharp knife separate the skin and top layer of fat from the pork belly. Cut plenty of slits into the skin.

Mix the 5 spice, chilli powder, mustard and honey and a generous few pinches of sea-salt together in a small bowl then rub into the meat and skin ensuring it gets into the slits in the skin.

Embed the pork belly in the roasting dish so that the liquid nearly reaches the top of the meat.

Lay the skin on top of the meat and cover with the dishes lid if it has one or foil if not. Place in the middle of the oven and immediately turn down to gasmark 4\176°C.

After two hours take out of the oven and uncover. The meat should be cooked and the skin beginning to look a little golden. Take the skin off the meat, and set to one side, recover the dish and place back into the oven on the bottom shelf. Turn the oven up to gasmark 7\218°C.

Rub some salt and vegetable oil onto the top of the skin and splash some vegetable oil over it. Place a wire rack over a baking tray, and lay the skin on the wire rack. Skin side up. Place in the top of the oven and cook for about 30 minutes, the skin should be crisp when you tap it and be a dark brown but not black and solid. .

Remove both the skin and the meat from the oven, slice the meat into chunky cubes and cut similar sized squares of skin and lay ontop of the cubes. Place a few cubes on a plate add some of the juice from the dish along with plenty of carrots and onions. Serve with mash potato (leave the skins on the potatoes for lovely nuttiness and more goodness), new potato's or roast potatoes and some sort of green veg like broccoli, cabbage, peas or sprouts.