{"id":2201,"date":"2013-07-01T19:49:50","date_gmt":"2013-07-01T23:49:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scientopia.org\/blogs\/goodmath\/?p=2201"},"modified":"2013-07-01T19:49:50","modified_gmt":"2013-07-01T23:49:50","slug":"2201","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/2013\/07\/01\/2201\/","title":{"rendered":"Recipe: Sous Vide Braised Pork Belly with Chevre Polenta"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/scientopia.org\/blogs\/goodmath\/files\/2013\/07\/IMG_20130701_182032.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/scientopia.org\/blogs\/goodmath\/files\/2013\/07\/IMG_20130701_182032-300x225.jpg?resize=300%2C225\" alt=\"IMG_20130701_182032\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-2202\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n I really outdid myself with tonight&#8217;s dinner. It was a total ad-lib &#8211; not recipe written in advance, just randomly trying to make something good. It turned out so good that I need to write down what I did, so that I can make it again!<\/p>\n<h2> Part 1: the pork<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li> 2 1\/2 pounds pork belly. I&#8217;m picky about pork; if I&#8217;m going to eat it, I want it to be good. I didn&#8217;t grow up eating pork. My family didn&#8217;t keep kosher, but we didn&#8217;t bring pork into the house. To this day, I don&#8217;t like most pork. Grocery store pork is, typically, bland, greasy, and generally nasty stuff. But the first real pork that I ate was at Momofuku in Manhattan. It was Berkshire pork, from a farm in upstate NY. <em>That<\/em> was delicious. Since then I&#8217;ve experimented, and I really think that nothing compares to fresh Berkshire. It costs a lot more than grocery store pork, but it&#8217;s worth it. I order it direct from <a href=\"http:\/\/flyingpigsfarm.com\/\">Flying Pig Farm.<\/a><\/li>\n<li> 4 cloves garlic.<\/li>\n<li> 1 teaspoon salt.<\/li>\n<li> 1 1\/2 teaspoons fennel pollen.<\/li>\n<li> 1 teaspoon dried rosemary.<\/li>\n<li> 1 tablespoons olive oil.<\/li>\n<li> pepper <\/li>\n<li> 1\/4 cup salt.<\/li>\n<li> 1\/4 cup sugar.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ol>\n<li> Prepare the pork belly: trim off the skin, and any egregiously extra fat from the skin side.<\/li>\n<li> Put the garlic, fennel pollen, rosemary, 1 teaspoon of salt, and the olive oil into a mortar and pestle, and crush them to a paste.<\/li>\n<li> Coat the pork with the herb paste.<\/li>\n<li> Add fresh-ground black pepper to the pork.<\/li>\n<li> Mix together 1\/4 cup each of sugar and salt, and coat the pork with it.<\/li>\n<li> Put the pork into the fridge overnight.<\/li>\n<li> In the morning, remove the pork from the fridge, and discard any liquids that were drawn out by the salt.<\/li>\n<li> Sealed the pork in a sous vide bag, and cook at 190 degrees for<br \/>\n  5 hours. (If you don&#8217;t have a sous vide machine, you could probably<br \/>\n  do it covered in a 200 degree oven. You&#8217;ll probably want to add a bit<br \/>\n  of water.)<\/li>\n<li> Take out the pork, and separate the meat from the liquid that&#8217;s collected in the bags. (Do NOT discard it; that&#8217;s pure flavor!) Put<br \/>\nboth into the fridge for a couple of hours to cool.<\/li>\n<li> When it&#8217;s cool, the fat that rendered out of the pork will have solidifed &#8211; remove it, and discard it. (Or keep it for something else.)\n<\/li>\n<li> Cut the pork into 2 inch thick chunks. <\/li>\n<li> In a smoking hot cast iron pan, brown the pork chunks on all sides. <\/li>\n<li> Add in the reserved liquids, along with 1\/4 cup of port wine.<br \/>\n  Reduce until it forms a glaze over the pork. Remove the pork to a<br \/>\n  plate &#8211; it&#8217;s done!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h2>Part 2: the Polenta<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li> 1 cup polenta. I use very coarse polenta &#8211; I like my polenta to have some texture. (My friend Anoop teases me, insisting that I&#8217;m making grits.)<\/li>\n<li> 4 cups chicken stock.<\/li>\n<li> 1 cup water.<\/li>\n<li> 1 teaspoon salt.<\/li>\n<li> 1 tablespoon butter.<\/li>\n<li> 2 ounces chevre goat cheese.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ol>\n<li> Put the salt, water, and chicken stock into a pan, and bring to a boil.<\/li>\n<li> Reduce the heat to medium low, and stir in the polenta.<\/li>\n<li> Cook the polenta on medium low to low heat for 1 1\/2 hours. <\/li>\n<li> Remove from heat, add in the butter, and stir until it&#8217;s all melted and blended in.<\/li>\n<li> crumble the goat cheese in, and stir it in.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h3>Part 3: the assembly.<\/h3>\n<ol>\n<li> Put a big pile of the polenta in the middle of a plate.<\/li>\n<li> Put a couple of chunks of the glazed pork onto the polenta.<\/li>\n<li> Put sauteed asparagus around the outside.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I really outdid myself with tonight&#8217;s dinner. It was a total ad-lib &#8211; not recipe written in advance, just randomly trying to make something good. It turned out so good that I need to write down what I did, so that I can make it again! Part 1: the pork 2 1\/2 pounds pork belly. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recipes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s4lzZS-2201","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}