Pork Belly (and other goodness) in our Bellies!, aka The Night of Fatty Food

There's nothing better than melt-in-your-mouth pork belly, and especially when the local butcher has it at $1.60/lb. So, when we saw this deal, we bought a slab and were waiting for a good, long, lazy day to enjoy it. (We also bought a slab to make some bacon with -- a post will come soon!) Anyway, that day came when our friend Ryan came in to town to join us for a concert, it was a perfect excuse to braise some fat meat, and share with others so we didn't feel like pigs ourselves.

There are a lot of recipes out there for pork belly. Many are multi-step processes, with a dry rub one day, brining the next, and braising on day 3. Three days of pork attention sounded tedious (especially because we wanted to eat it that night!) so after some debate over how to cook it, we decided to skip the brining process and go straight to the "rub & braise."

Meet our pork.
We scored the skin and fat, then rubbed in a mix of spices: cumin, some ground mustard, cumin, a dash of allspice, some ground cloves, salt, and lots and lots (and lots) of black pepper. Maybe some other things too, but basically we just mixed stuff together till it smelled good and savory. We did this in the morning, gave our belly a good massage, and let it sit all day.

When it's time to cook, sear it:

Then, when it's nice and brown on both sides, dunk in some veggies and some liquid, and braise away. This is where we just thought about good flavors that would go with the pork. Really, you can't screw up a piece of meat that is braised in tasty things. We added some onions into the pork to fry up a little, before adding sliced carrots, fennel, and a bit of celery. Maybe throw in a bay leaf. For the liquid, we just added water -- essentially relying on the fact that the pork would make a good broth as it cooked down. We might have also put in a decent glug of white wine that was left over from a previous night's cooking. Here, you can see everything in the pot: a nice, seared fatty side, with fresh veggies and whatnot.
To go with the pork, Ryan made a "purple dish," with purple potatoes, red onions, and beets from the farmer's market. Those were chopped up, seasoned, and put in a tray with a big ol' glob of butter.
We also made a corn polenta with some fresh corn from the farmer's market (although we forgot to take pictures.) Just follow any basic polenta recipe: high-quality cornmeal and water (maybe about 4 cups water to 1 cup cornmeal), and a hunk of butter. We cut off the kernels from two ears of corn, and decided to throw in some parmesan too. So, continually whisking/stirring, we waited for the cornmeal to thicken up, then took it off the heat and stirred in the cheese, then added the corn. Salt and lots of cracked black pepper for flavor, and it was good to go!

Meanwhile, I had made a shortbread dough earlier on that called for a ton of egg yolks, and had a bowl of egg whites feeling lonely on the counter. Mark decided to make meringues, and with three hungry minds combined, we decided to make meringues with holes in the middle so that they could be filled with other tasty goodness. (This night, we filled them with creamy caramel, but you can imagine filling them with chocolate, or even jam.) Beaten egg whites, a dash of cream of tartar, sugar, and some fun with scooping:

And there you have it! Ryan's friend came over to join us for dinner with a salad topped with fresh-picked-from-the-forest mushrooms marinated in a savory vinaigrette. The pork belly was barely holding itself together when we cut into it, and the braised vegetables made a great gravy/sauce to put on top. The polenta was creamy and smooth, with crunchy bits of corn, and the onions and beets in the potatoes were sweet and caramelized. The meringues were a good sweet treat with coffee after dinner (and, leftover caramel was hardened and cut up to sweeten our coffees for the next few days)!

As a testament to how freaking good this meal was, we didn't even pause to take pictures of it all when it was done. We just ate it. Fast.