Slow cooked pork belly

A long slow cooked d dish that slowly takes on all the flavour of the spices and you get a lovely sweet sauce with it. Now you can make this off the bone or on the bone either way it does not really matter. If you do cook, it off the bone you can cut the pork up after cooking and pop it in to a bowl with some rice or noodles and it is really tasty.

You will need

1kg/2lb 4oz pork belly

3 tbsp vegetable oil

2 tsp cane sugar

750ml/1 pint 7fl oz chicken stock

1 whole star anise

1 stick cinnamon or cassia bark

7.5cm/3in piece fresh ginger, unpeeled

5 cloves of garlic

3-4 tbsp rice wine or dry sherry

125ml/4fl oz dark soy sauce

pinch white pepper

4 spring onions

Good pinch of toasted seamy seeds

Now to start with you need to get a large pan of water on the stove and bring it to the boil. Now put the belly pork in the boiling water and let it cook for about 2 to 3 minutes. Boiling the pork in water forces a lot of the fat out of the meat and when you cook it is not swimming in fat. Then drain of the water and refresh the pork in cold water to sop it from cooking any more.

Now take a frying pan and heat it up so it is very hot add just a little oil and then brown your pork on in the frying pan. once you have done this remove the pork and lay it in a casserole dish that has a tight fitting lid. You might have to do the pork in two or three batches but make sure that you pan is hot you do not want to start to boil the pork.

Now here id the next step to make your sauce. If you have a lot of fat in the bottom of the frying pan then you might want to get rid of some of it. Add the sugar to the frying pan and let that melt down in to the juices form the fried pork so you get a caramelised base, but be care full you do not want it to burn. This will take just a few minutes.

Now deglaze your frying pan with half the chicken stock and make sure that you get all the crystallise brown juices of the side of the pan. If you need to use a little more water then just add it to the pan and let it reduce with the stock. Be carful as you add the stock you do not want to get burnt with the hot melted sugar and fat.

Now to the pan add the crushed ginger, chopped garlic, star anise, and broken up cinnamon stick. Let every thing infuse together then add this to the pork in the casserole dish and top up with the rest of the chicken stock. Finally add a pinch of white pepper cover with the lid and place in a warm oven set at 160c/325f and let it cook for about two hours.

Finally remove the lid and add the soy sauce rice wine and return to the oven for about another half and hour. What you should end up with is very tender and tasty melt in the moth belly pork. Finally chop some spring onions up and sprinkle them over the top and a good pinch of tasted seamy seeds then serve with rice.