Pork and Pepperoni

The inspiration for this dish riffs pretty heavily on a post from Ideas in Food, I highly recommend getting them into your daily reading list, or hit them up on twitter. I actually have version two of this on the go now as I write, I’ve amped up the seasoning and am going to experiment a little more with the cooking and serving, so not really the same dish but this served as a springboard to push ideas further.

Counter to my last post about getting maximum comfort for little effort this post is really pushing things in the other direction, but holy heck is it worth it! It’ll take a little time and a little bit of investment of going to a butcher and getting a decent slab of pork belly, which may or may not be frozen, a supermarket is not going to have what you need, I’ve never seen a good three inch thick slab of belly at one, and quite frankly you’ll probably be paying twice the price. I ended up by chance at Preston's in town after doing my restock at Yan's Asian supermarket and they just happened to have a good deal going on frozen bellies, so $20 later and more than 2kg heavier, I left a happy chappy.

There is a bit to this but it’s not really all active, there is a lot of down time, so there are no stress about getting stuff done on time. You’re going to have to plan ahead a few days, so here is the rough break down.

• Defrost the belly if you have to, in the fridge.
• Cure the pork, 24 hours.
• Remove, rinse and dry the pork. Dust with white pepper and place on a rack uncovered in the fridge for 24 hours.
• Place in a roasting pan with the braising ingredients, cook for 8 hours at 120ºC.
• Sometime during that 8 hours make some cavatelli, which is about half an hours work.
• Remove and rest for half an hour, uncovered.
• Cook cavatelli and remove excess fat from the braising liquid, taste and season, combine.

So as you can see not really a whole lot of work, mostly down time, but it’s 56 hour investment of time, totally worth it I promise.

Ingredients
Pork belly, 2kg or so
Pepperoni
Bottle of red wine
Tomatoes, 2 cans crushed
White pepper
Cure mix

Cure mix
1 Part Sugar
1 Part Salt
Chilli powder
Garlic powder
Cumin powder
Bay leaf powder


Weigh the pork and work out what 2.5% of the total weight is, that is the weight of sugar and salt to use.


Score the pork deeply to the meat, rub the cure mix in and transfer to a zip lock bag, refrigerate for 24 hours, try to flip it once or twice during that time.


Remove the pork from the bag and rinse, pat dry, coat in white pepper and place on a rack on a pan. Put it back in the fridge for 24 hours.

Time to cook!

Place the pork in a roasting dish. Dice the whole pepperoni and scatter around, add in the tomatoes and the whole bottle of wine, I used a tasty Shiraz. Place the tray into an oven preheated at 120ºC. Set a timer for 8 hours and forget about it.


Well apart from the cavatelli you need to make. Just follow the recipe on this page, I subbed out roasted rye for wholemeal flour but rye would be pretty awesome here too.


Take the pork out of the oven and very carefully transfer it to a board. Pour the braising liquid into a pot and let it settle for a while, skim off any excessive fat as this will be a sauce, place it over a very low flame to keep warm.


Bring a pot of water to the boil and cook the cavatelli, drain and stir through the sauce, keep warm.
By now the pork should have rested for 30–45 minutes. Slice into thick slabs, cutting along the scores, serve with a generous spoon of cavatelli.

Braised Beef Cheeks

Slow cooked meat is awesome, melt in the mouth, big rich flavours, it’s all good, apart from the time it takes to get the result, you can cheat it with a pressure cooker, well the texture kind of, but you can’t cheat the rich strong flavour that a three hour braise produces, which is a problem when it’s a Wednesday night at 6pm and you have beef cheeks you really want to eat, but like hell you’re going to wait til what will probably be a 10pm dinner time. So like the crazy food weirdo that I am, I think hey I can cook two meals tonight, I don’t need to be sociable, I’ll just set up shop in the kitchen for the night. With one dinner made, and ate, I set about getting a beef cheek braise on the go, I figure if I get it in the oven by 8pm and cook it for 3 hours at 140ºC, I should be able to get it cool enough and get it in the fridge overnight to be finished off the next day.

2 Beef cheeks
2 Carrots, diced
1 Onion, diced
2 Celery stalks, diced
1 tsp Smoked sweet paprika
1 tsp Hot paprika
1 tsp Mustard
1 tbsp of Garlic confit
1 tbsp Tomato paste
250 ml Red wine
50 ml Tawny port
2 Bay leaves
1 Bunch of thyme

Preheat the oven to 140ºC

Brown the cheeks in a little olive oil, remove and place in a casserole dish (or dutch oven, I would have used one, but the enamel on mine exploded off with some gusto a while back and I haven’t replace it yet).

Sweat the onion, carrots and celery in the pan.

Add the paprikas, mustard, tomato paste, and garlic, cook until fragrant.

Deglaze with the port, and when almost evaporated add the red wine, bay leaves and thyme, simmer for a couple of minutes.

Pour the mixture over the cheeks and place on a lid, or cover tightly with a double layer of tinfoil. Cook for 3–4 hours.

When done, carefully remove the cheeks to warm bowl, and strain the liquid into the same, the vegetables have done their work, and will be pretty bland, so just discard them.

While the meat rests in its sauce, prepare the polenta. I unashamedly use instant polenta, good for you if you have the time and patience to put up with making the regular kind, and for putting up with the burns you get from popping bubbles of steamy polenta hell. Bring 500ml Chicken stock to the boil, remove from the heat and whisk in 125 grams of instant polenta, keep whisking until thick, you may have to put it back on the heat for a couple of seconds, but usually it isn’t needed. Add half a tub of crème fraîche and whisk in until fully incorporated.

Spoon a pillow of polenta onto a plate, take a cheek and slice it in three, then rest it on the polenta, spoon over a generous amount of sauce, and finish with a grating of a nice nutty cheese and a sprinkling of herbs.

Red wine marinated roast beef salad

This is so simple to prepare, all it takes is a bit of patience or forethought, and a mandoline (or a sharp knife and steady hand). The earthy taste of the carrots pair nicely with the thin slices of medium rare beef, then little explosions of saltiness from the capers, finishing with fresh anise from fennel cleansing the palette ready for the next bite.


Marinate the beef in red wine and garlic for about 8 hours, or overnight, heck longer the better, but you probably wouldn't want to leave it much longer than 24 hours.


Preheat the oven to 200°C, and get a heavy based pan on the heat, preferably one which is oven proof. Pat the beef dry and season well with salt and pepper. Brown the beef on all sides in the pan with a little butter and oil, you want a good brown crust as it adds bundles of flavor to the beef. Once browned place it in the hot oven and cook until medium rare (internal temperature of 55°C).


Let the meat rest for as long as you can, preferably until it's room temperature.


While the beef is resting, slice some carrot on the thinnest setting of a mandoline, put aside some of the carrot slices to use raw, and in a bowl mix the remaining slices with a bit of vinegar, salt and sugar to make a quick pickle. Chop some parsley, and slice some fennel on the mandoline, again thinner the better. When the beef has finished resting, slice it thinly and lay it out on a plate. Garnish with the carrots, pickled carrots, fennel, capers, parsley, and drizzle over a simple vinaigrette (oil, white wine vinegar, dijon mustard, salt and pepper), finally sprinkle over some flaky or kosher salt.

Simple dinner

Sautéed potatoes.


Rump with red wine mushroom sauce.

Chicken and Red wine redux

I revisited my earlier post and cooked up another lot of red wine and chicken, and I wasn't disappointed. This is quite an image heavy post, so the rest is after the jump.


Chicken cut in half.

Cottage pie

The line up for the stew, brown the shins, remove, then soften onion and carrot, deglaze with the red wine, add bay leaves, mustard Worcestershire sauce, paprika and thyme. Cook until done, you could do this in a slow cooker, oven, stove or pressure cooker.

Prepare the vege, I used some pickling onions just simply peeled, small mushrooms and a large dice of carrot.

Once the meat is falling off the bone tender, pull the meat out on to a board and pull in to large chucks. Make sure to push the marrow out of the bones (discard the bone). Strain the liquid, and start reducing it, make sure to taste it so you don't over reduce and can adjust the seasoning. Add the vege and meat to the liquid and cook till it's almost a glaze.


Pile the mixture in to a dish.


Spoon over some pea purée (which you'd obviously make while the above part is cooking), A dash of lemon, cooked peas, salt and pepper with a small amount of garlic whizzed up.


Mash potatoes with some butter and milk, season well.


Spread it on top of the peas and score with a fork.


Grate some cheese on top.


And either place under a grill until golden, or you could prepare the dish the day before and then bake until hot and golden.