With a need/desire to cure more bacon and eat delicious pork, we hopped down to Sparrow's for some pork belly only to find that there were whole sides of belly (10-12 pounds) in the butcher case. For only $25 for an entire side of belly, we said, "Why not," wrapped up the whole thing, and hauled it home.
About half of that belly went into our Sunday "superbowl" dinner meal to feed about 10 people. Because we thought about it in advance, we were able to marinate/cure the belly for a day before actually braising it, which allowed the meat to take on more flavors. We scored the skin and fat of the belly, then rubbed the whole thing down with a mixture of salt, cloves, star anise, pepper, and cinnamon.
(A note about spices: stuff like this works best with whole spices, which pack a lot more flavor, don't you agree? One of the good things about our move this summer was that we ended up with some doubles: double microwaves, double ice cream scoops, and also double coffee grinders. One of our coffee grinders now resides in our spice cabinet to grind up fresh herbs and spices as needed.)
Anyway, the rubbed down belly (mmmm, belly rub) sat in the fridge overnight, then the next day was browned in the cast iron dutch oven, then joined with some carrots, celery (fennel would work VERY nicely but I forgot to buy it at the store), onion, leek, and bay leaf.
Once those were nicely stirred up we added enough of our Wasem's apple cider to cover and let it simmer, simmer, simmer away -- adding more salt and pepper as needed. (You may consider adding some apple cider vinegar for an extra kick.) When it was tender we took it out and put it under the broiler for a few minutes to get the skin more crackly. There's just something fantastic about those explosive pops as crackling gets going in your oven!
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