This week’s newsletter is a bit later than others – it’s just one of those things. Rob moved in at the weekend (!!) and I am working on a couple of projects outside of work, and we also have a TV unit that we need to assemble, so it’s all kicking off really. Also I spent a lot of last week eating leftovers. Live by the sword, etc.
I don’t think this week’s newsletter reinvents the wheel, but it’s definitely a tribute to freewheeling a little bit. It’s supposed to be about inspiration in the kitchen, first and foremost, and being honest (case in point: I had an amazing Vietnamese takeaway last weekend, from Urban Orient in Crystal Palace). Anyway this week is a pork-based affair, but I think both dishes would be amazing with mushrooms subbed in (I absolutely love shrooms and will definitely be writing about them – and less meaty recipes – in the not-too-distant future).
1. The pork belly garlic oil noodles
This isn’t my own recipe at all but I have to share it because when I say it’s one of the best things I’ve cooked at home, I mean…. ever. Honestly. It’s so good. It’s by Amy and Emily Chung and it was in last weekend’s Observer Food Monthly. It’s incredibly complex tasting despite having so few ingredients, and as I said in the intro, I think it would be amazing with mixed mushrooms (fried in a bit of butter – with bigger mushrooms I like tearing, not slicing, so they have these craggy edges that crisp up in the pan).
The garlic oil is deceptively easy, but a note on the pork belly: you might have clocked it in the intro and thought this isn’t the kind of affordable food you expected in his newsletter. I am sort of the same; I/we never buy pork belly. But the pork belly slices in Sainsburys were enough for 4 portions, and cost £3 – so at £0.75p per portion I’m pretty convinced I’ll be buying it more often.
No caption, just vibes, Franz Ferdinand edition.
What really made this recipe for me was the stock. As the recipe says, I used veg stock (using a cube! Although there will be a whole issue on stock soon, promise. I have a system!). To the veg stock, I added a teaspoon of Iberico pork fat, which was reduced to 10p (yes ten pence) in the shops. I checked online, and it’s 10p there too! This is because it’s probably close to the sell by date, but pork fat (or any lard) should keep for up to a year if it’s in the fridge (notably this stuff was kept in the non-fridge section in the shops). I think the pork fat is what added the really rich flavour to the liquid the pork was braised in; I drank some out of a shot glass, it was so good, and I’ll keep it for cooking later in the week. Alternatively, a dollop of miso would be good, I think. I also added thinly sliced pak choi near the end, to up the vitamin quality.
2. The semi-successful pork belly BLT (hereby: PBLT)
Here lies a sort of short story. The above recipe calls for slicing the pork belly to about 5mm thick – I did it a little finer, and I couldn’t help but think the resulting slices looked almost bacon-like. What if, I thought, I grill these wafer-thin slices and use them instead of bacon in a BLT for lunch?
The answer is: it will taste delicious, but the bread you bought isn’t going to hold up to the heartiness of it and you’ll make such a mess that even with your soft lighting in the flat the sandwich will look like someone has stood in it first. Delicious: yes. Photogenic: no. We will come back to this another day because I think it could be banging if I make a few tweaks.
3. The pork belly rice bowl
Okay so Rob was out one night this week and I was specifically told I didn’t need to make him anything. Before he moved in, I had what I considered a fairly efficient freezer system, which is: the last week of every month is a kind of ‘freezer week’ where the job is to eat as much out of the freezer as possible. The idea is to avoid the big food shop (generally but especially on an empty stomach) ahead of payday. It works, trust me.
When you live alone, freezer week is fairly easy because for every pack of chicken thighs you buy, or repurposed meatballs you make, there’s always leftovers, so you bang them in the freezer and come back to them. So the leftover pork belly slices from Monday were defrosted, but I wasn’t sure what to do with them.
In the end, I took a recipe from the Recookables – my little black book of amazing, always filling, always satisfying, never-let-me-down-yet recipes I come back to again and again. It’s these pork meatballs from BA, which come with these pickled cucumbers and are packed with fish sauce, garlic, and ginger. But I adapted it slightly, swapping out roasted meatballs for cubed and sliced pork belly.
The idea was to cook the pork belly, letting the rendered fat make the pork really crispy, and just before the end, as the rice cooker started to make a hysterical whistling noise, I added in the sauce that BA use to form the meatballs. My logic was that the sugar, garlic, etc will burn in the hot pan, so they couldn’t be in as long as the pork. What happened was the fish sauce, sugar, etc cooked and caramalised, forming a gorgeous sweet/savoury crust around the pork (I was reminded of the fish sauce wings at Smoking Goat). Again, like almost anything in this rich, hearty issue of Scraps, a few more veg wouldn’t go amiss. BA use carrot as well as cucumber in their quick pickle, but I didn’t have any kicking around (plus, you need to slice them the exact same thickness as the cucumber so they pickle at around the same time, which is a bit of a faff).
And… that’s it! Thanks to everyone who has said nice things about the newsletter so far. Hopefully next week is back on schedule.