Menus from an Orchard Table

Pork Belly is one of those dishes I’m always surprised by. I never think to order it in restaurants, then end up drooling over it on someone else’s plate (and if that someone else is the husband, stealing bites). Thankfully, the husband was flipping through this book as I was looking for the next recipe to make, and with his love of Pork Belly, he zeroed in on this fantastic dish.

This one starts with a great, Asian-inspired spice rub, and sits on a tray in the fridge overnight as the salt draws any excess moisture out of the meat and the spices infuse the pork belly with flavour. Or at least, that’s the ideal scenario. We ended up out late the night before Pork Belly Day, so I did the rub/fridge thing in the morning for about 6 hours worth of absorbing. Were I to do this one again, I’d be keen to let it go overnight – I think the flavour would be a lot more intense.

Not that it was any sort of disappointment in the flavour department. After rendering the fat side of the pork belly until it’s got a good, golden colour on it, it’s then braised in a mix of vegetables that’ve been sauteed in the rendered fat from the initial crisping, white wine, stock and apple juice.

I’d read of the sear/braise/sear technique for making super crispy chicken thighs in a recent issue of Cook’s Illustrated, so was pretty interested in seeing how a practical application would work. Turns out, quite well!

Once they come out of the braise, the pork bellies are browned again to crisp up all the edges. We served them on a bed of braised red cabbage.

Mine turned out a bit darker and crustier than the golden, translucent fat-layer shown in the picture in the book (this book is pretty short on photos of the recipes, for those to whom that kind of thing’s important), but it was damn good nonetheless. Definitely a keeper.

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Cirspy Pork Belly Braised in Joie’s Orchard Apple Juice – page 214
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This recipe was so tasty and so easy, I’ll definitely be adding it to my regular repertoire of sides (or lazy-day main courses when I’m just feeding myself).

Except, of course, the part where I didn’t have shelled pistachios. I had a huge quantity of pistachios in the shell, so there was no way I was going to go out and buy more, but yowzah. Shelling a hand full of pistachios as a snack (eating them all the while) is one thing. Standing around mid-recipe shelling enough pistachios to fill 1/2 cup measure is entirely another. A monotonous, frustrating, finger-callous-inducing other.

So that is my warning to you. Just go find the shelled pistachios. And then toast them for all they’re worth and throw them on your fragrant rice.

And if you happen to have made this dish as a side to some roast pork loin in fennel sauce, drown the rice in that fennel sauce. Your tastebuds will thank you!

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Moorish Pilaf – Page 251

I wanted to try something that seemed not too daunting for my first real foray into cooking recipes from this book. For me, that means working with ingredients I understand. I’m well familiar with pork loin and am in the middle of a serious late-winter love-affair with fennel, so this recipe seemed like a perfect place to start.

The first challenge with this recipe was scaling it down to a serving size that makes sense for the two of us. The recipe is based on making enough for eight, but I figured instead of a 3lb pork loin, I’d go for a smaller tenderloin and stuff that with the recommended mix.

After trussing and searing the pork tenderloin, it went into the oven to finish cooking through. And I got started on the real star of this dish (for me at least), the fennel sauce.

Blanching and blending fennel into a cream sauce and adding it to the roast juices to make up a sauce for over the dish led to gravy the likes of which I’ve never encountered. It was INCREDIBLE. I never think to make a gravy or pan sauce by putting anything other than a flavourless starch-based thickener (a roux or corn starch slurry) into drippings.

This is also the only part of the recipe where I wished I’d used the cut of meat originally called for. Tenderloin is so lean that there weren’t a lot of drippings to go around. We’re total sauce junkies, so any extra drippings to add more flavour would’ve just been, well, gravy. Literally.

All around though, it was an auspicious start to cooking through this book. We served it with the suggested Moorish Rice Pilaf and a simple fennel salad we’ve been making a lot of lately.

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Spanish Roast Pork Loin in Fennel Sauce – Page 211