Pork Belly – I know it sounds gross or weird but trust me it is not. Pork belly is basically uncured bacon. Its flavorful, very versatile and damn tasty. Its not healthy by any means but if you eat it in small portions you can convince yourself you are doing good on your diet. I have only discovered pork belly over the past year and I have used it in many different ways. I am not ordering the really good stuff online but rather have found it very accessible at my local Chinese grocery – like $ 4 accessible. So seriously go out and find some, experiment and enjoy that porky goodness……….
you will be glad you did 
This past weekend our street had its annual Block Party. We moved in here about two months before Ethan was born and he is now four years old. Over this time we have never been able to make it to one of these parties for one reason or another. This year was different. At first we started to get worried because usually we receive a flyer about a week before but eventually one made its way to our door.
For this party, you are asked to bring whatever it is you want to eat plus stuff to share. They say grills will be provided but I, like most people, prefer to grill on their own. You can also chip in $10 and get some crawfish as well. I am not sure where they got them but there is a place at the edge of our neighborhood in an old gas station that sells them. On a windy day, even though I can no longer eat crawfish(long story), the smell in the air is intoxicating.
I wanted to do something that would show off my culinary skills a well as be approachable and finger food. I decided on pork belly (surprise) with ancho bacon bbq sauce and a play on corn on the cob. I also cooked mini burgers from a recipe I found HERE that is basically 50% sirloin and 50% untrimmed brisket. People, go out and buy a meat grinder, you will N E V E R buy ground meat again. Trust me on this.
For the play on the corn on the cob, I pureed fresh and grilled corn with garlic, butter and heavy cream. I strained this mixture, seasoned it then put it in a ISI foamer. It is the consistency of a very light whip cream with all the taste of corn on the cob. It was served on spoons. The picture I had to do at home does not look appetizing – I know but it tasted damn good.
Some of the pictures had to be recreated at home due to a number of factors – lack of table space, getting dark, the amount of beer consumed etc……
Anyway my two neighbors on our end of the street brought their grills as well. They both cooked chicken and it was great. I did not get a picture of the chicken that Teddy made (SORRY) but it was really good as were the stuffed mushrooms.
The rest of the offerings are pretty self explanatory from the pictures.
All in all we had a great time and made some new friends, I look forward to future get togethers and hope I am not labeled the "freak down the street who does weird things with his food"
Last year around this time I entered a small bite contest for an appetizer to be featured in a tasting menu put on by Joe DeSalazar from Foodie NYC. I entered a Crawfish Grits Croquette with Creole Mustard Foam and green onion "dust". I didn’t win. This year he had the same contest but not for small bites. I entered my Pork Belly PBDDL that I made from the excellent Peanut Butter Dulce de Leche from Blake of BlakeMakes.com. I did clear it with Joe that I could submit a previously blogged about dish beforehand.
Well guess what….I won. You can see the write up here FoodieNYC. I was so excited that I won although I could not claim the prize – a seat at one of Joe’s upcoming tasting menu dinners 
since I will not be in NYC anytime soon.
I did however find a person that I thought would thoroughly enjoy it – Lisa from HomesickTexan. She happily agreed to take the invite off my hands.
If you want to find out more about PBDDL go visit Blake Makes, you won’t be disappointed. Today is is his birthday and he has some exciting news as well.
I also have to credit Joe with having such great taste to finally pick me as a winner….j/k but in all seriousness he did introduce me to one of my most listened to albums of the past year : The National’s Boxer……people go check out this album.
Alright that is all for now, I have to go finish dinner and continue to work on my bubble gum recipes, yes you read that right
A little while back I came across a blog on the Seriouseats.com website named Blake Makes. What caught my eye was that he was from New Orleans. Since then we have traded emails and I would have to say we have formed an “internet friendship”. Blake’s blog is fairly new but the content on there already is amazing. He has some great things coming up for his site as well that I am excited about.
About two weeks ago I get a message to check out his site. I do, and find that he is giving away a batch of peanut butter dulce de leche that he had made. It arrived on my doorstep about 4 days later. The idea behind this promotion, SOOPZ, is to get a product out there and have people cook with it, then blog about it. Pretty good idea, but I would not expect any less from a guy who runs his own marketing firm.
I wanted to do something different with the PBDDL (surprise) and not follow the usual theme of making a dessert with it ( no offense to all the others – those brownies look great). My first thought was pork belly. The inspiration came from Sam Mason’s Tailor, where he does a miso-butterscotch pork belly. As you can tell from previous posts this is one of my favorite meats to prepare recently. I wanted to do just simple flavors with the PBDDL so there is really not a lot of things going on with this dish other than the usual accompianents.
I started by marinating the pork belly in a mixture of PBDDL, bourbon, fresh garlic and olive oil. I then vacuum sealed it and put it in the fridge for 3 days. From the start the dish was made to be of smaller proportion. Originally we were going to have this on Saturday night with friends where we all made two small dishes. It would sort of be like Tapas but not Spanish themed. Everything was on track till Louisiana’s crazy weather sidelined two of the couples with flu like symptoms. Since I had already spent so much time on the dish I decided to just go ahead and make it the main course.
I wanted to have as few ingredients as possible in order for the PBDDL flavor to come through. I settled on some micro arugula dressed in balsamic dressing with crushed peanuts to top it off. I added a “paint” of the PBDDL under the belly and added 3 drops of balsamic syrup to cut the sweetness of the PBDDL. All day Friday I kept obsessing on if I should add a “base” to the dish. My old standby of grits would take away from the idea of the dish and besides I wanted something new, something that would stand out. I came up with two ideas and actually made them both. Right before I plated the dish was when I made my decision. The two ideas both involved sweet potatoes as I assumed they would balance well with the pork and the PBDDL. The 1st idea was a sweet potatoe and ancho foam that would sit under the belly but on top of the paint.The foam would have more of a consistency of a very light whip cream rather than a froth. The 2nd idea, and the one I went with, was a sweet potatoe ice cream. It follows a basic ice cream recipe but I add two roasted sweet potaoes then strain before making the custard. Looking back I would have added more sweet potatoes for a more pronounced flavor. It was still good though.
This dish was a hit. It was filling but not to the point where you felt like you had to save up to go see your cardiologist. The ice cream played well with the sweetness of the PBDDL and the savoriness of the pork belly. Other than adding more sweet potatoes to the ice cream, I would not change anything about this dish.
Much thanks go out to Blake of BlakeMakes.com, I look forward to what he has to offer in the future and hope to contribute myself. If you can get your hands on some of his Peanut Butter Dulce de Leche I highly recommend it. The possibilities are endless.