brilliant belly

i’m very proud of my belly – well, it’s not so much my not-quite-six-pack abs, but rather this brilliant slab of pork belly.

i love roast pork belly. there’s nothing like anticipating that strip of crispy bubbly crackling over a moist juicy hunk of pig that warms my heart. growing up back home, roast pork belly was always readily available from the roast meat hawkers and mostly were of more than decent quality even from the most ordinary of purveyors. if i had my way, i’d airlift one of these roast meat hawkers (and while I was at it, a whole hawker centre) to canary wharf in place of the ubiquitous prêt-a-mangers. fat hope.

the best bit about making this was that it was actually not as complicated as I thought it might have been. I tapped into the wisdom of gordon ramsay, nigel slater and lily ng on this matter, and they said similar things. the trick to crispy crackling seemed to lie in scoring the skin sufficiently, drying it out with rubbed in salt and an overnight rest in the fridge. the meat beneath was rubbed with a mix of five-spice powder, soya sauce, sesame oil and pepper and left to marinate. where they differed was the actual roasting of the pork belly – I eventually went for a first hot blast at 220C for 30 minutes, followed by a further 30-40 minutes at 180C.

I ate the pork belly with rice noodles and a fried egg as george watched, overcome with jealousy. he must have thought it was good too as any politeness gave way to feline fearlessness and jumped up, swiped the last piece off my plate with his little paw and carted it away to eat it gleefully. greedy git.