A Taste Of Cutting-Edge Cuisine

A NOTE FROM JOHNNIE

My cooking centres around what’s in the garden right now, so I usually take a walk, see what is peaking and then use that as the anchor for the dish. If you don’t have a garden, you can still follow the same process – take a walk to the market or green grocers, see what’s good, then go from there. It doesn’t have to be a vegetable: fish and meat and cheese all come with their own seasonality.
For this dish, pear was the starting point – perfect pears are one of the ingredients that instantly transport me to autumn. I wanted something fatty, juicy and crispy to balance the sweetness of the pear, and pork belly ticked all those boxes. The dish is finished with a kind of pear Waldorf Salad for flavour, freshness and acidity to complement the pear sauce and pork belly.

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Johnnie Collins

Pork Belly With Pear Sauce

INGREDIENTS FOR THE PORK BELLY

1 piece of pork belly. Depending on how many you are cooking for, you can use a half belly or ask the butcher to cut it into quarters and then you can freeze some for a later date — Brown sugar — Sea Salt — Olive Oil — Whiskey

INGREDIENTS FOR THE SAUCE

2 pears — 1 cooking apple — Some stock veg – garlic, onion, fennel trim, celery whatever you have in the fridge — 500g chicken stock — A good glug of whiskey

INGREDIENTS FOR THE SALAD

1 pear — Some nice leaves — Some nice shavings of good blue cheese — Almonds — Lemon juice and zest — Olive oil — Sea salt

INGREDIENTS FOR THE JUS

Leftover juices - wholegrain mustard - Dash of Apple cider vinegar - Dash of soy sauce

Cooking Instructions

The first step is to brine the pork belly: for a quarter belly piece I made a 6% salt sugar brine – so for 1kg of water I added 60g salt and 60g sugar. I then topped up with 200g of whiskey. Whisk cold until fully combined. Then submerge the pork belly in the brine for six hours.

Once you have brined the piece it is essential to give it a decent amount of time in the fridge, uncovered to dry it out. Wash the brine off, pat the pork belly dry. Place on a rack or plate in the fridge with a little added sea salt rubbed into the skin. You need to dry it out to help get lovely crackling. The sugar and whiskey in the brine will help give the skin and fat lovely flavour, as well as seasoning the pork belly from the inside.

TO COOK THE PORK AND SAUCE

Score the pork belly, cutting through the skin into the fat. Take a little time over this step and use a sharp knife. My new Victorinox Santoku worked a treat. In fact I used it over multiple stages in this recipe, for scoring, chopping and fine slicing. It’s versatility will definitely mean it finds a happy place in my kitchen.

Rub a little olive oil into the skin and then add sea salt. Put on a rack over a baking dish and into a hot oven at 230 degrees for 15-25 minutes. From the brine the fat should puff up and you should get beautiful cracking. The fat will drip into the dish, and we are going to use that to cook the pears for our sauce.

Peel the apple, core, chop and add to the baking dish with the fat. Core and chop the pears and add those in with the stock veg (I used 1 onion, a few cloves of garlic and some outer bits of fennel), then add the chicken stock and whiskey a pinch of salt and pop into the hot oven to get a bit of colour.

To finish the pork, put it back in the oven sitting over the pears and cook at 120 degrees for an hour or more depending in the size of your piece. You want to cook it through but keep it juicy for a lovely piece of pork belly with crispy-crunch skin. Rest the pork out the oven while you finish the sauce and make the salad.

For the sauce – drain (keep the liquid) and blitz all the stuff we cooked under the belly until smooth. Then pass through a fine sieve, add a little butter for richness and shine, a drop of sherry vinegar and a final pinch of salt if required. Warm on the stove until you are ready to serve. It’s a very simple thing to bring together and beats any apple sauce I’ve ever had.

For the jus - to really add layers you can use the leftover juices of stock, pear and whiskey, reduced with wholegrain mustard, a dash of soy sauce and vinegar and a little spoon of butter for sheen.

For the salad, slice some pear very fine. Wash and chop some nice leaves (I used castelfranco for a little bitterness and some mustard leaves), toast and chop some almonds then shave some lovely blue cheese and dress this simply with lemon zest and juice, olive oil and sea salt.

To serve, carve the pork belly and season, add the pear sauce to the plate, then finish with a good piece of belly and tuck a nice handful of the salad. It’s a real celebration of pears and autumn and a wonderful thing to serve to friends and family at this time of year.