Slow-Cooked Pork Belly – Murdoch Books 365 Challenge FEBRUARY 21 4

Ah…..where to begin…..

I kind of want to start by discussing Twitter. It is my prediction that Twitter shall = Facebook very, very, VERY soon. By this I mean that shortly, I think EVERYONE will be tweeting. I remember when I first signed up to FB, oh I think it was 2006? And plenty of my friends and family laughed and teased and questioned etc etc etc THEN within 1.1 seconds they were all signing up and uploading pictures of their kids at school swimming carnivals.

Well my Twitter experience has been the same. “You loser!” said my brother. “What’s the point of it?!” said my sister (who I might add, confessed to me just this morning that she often googles my twitter name – phoodietweets – to see what my latest tweets have been!) “Twitter’s just WEIRD” said my BFF. There you have it. 3 people who I know will have accounts momentarily.

My point of discussing twitter in this SLOW COOKED PORK BELLY post is this, if it wasn’t FOR Twitter I would not have done, won, or seen heaps and heaps and heaps of great things! I won’t go into detail about all of them, but here are a few examples; Claire Winton-Burn did a shout out to food bloggers for an article she was writing for The Age / The Herald, I responded and as a result my opinions (and the link to my blog!) were published, I’ve won $1000 worth of chocolate (moment on the lips lifetime on the hips, but whatever) and lots of other things, and most recently, Slow Cooked Pork Belly-wise, I was given the opportunity to join a very funky team of food lovers, called the MURDOCH BOOKS 365 TEAM!

Murdoch Books have put together a group of like-minded food obsessives with the aim of cooking our way through Stéphane Reynaud’s awesome book “365 Good Reasons to Sit Down to Eat”. Julie and Julia style, we are all pitching in to cook a recipe from this book EVERY SINGLE DAY for a year. To see all of the recipes so far, you can go to http://murdochbooks.squarespace.com/

My first contribution to the 365 team can be seen below. I had lots of fun doing it, the meal was a great success and I can’t wait until my next turn comes along!

FEBRUARY 21 – SLOW-COOKED PORK BELLY

Ingredients

1.5 kilo pork belly
300ml Veal Stock
3 tablespoons Tomato Ketchup
3 tablespoons Soy Sauce
2 tablespoons Honey
1 Onion studded with 4 cloves
1 Bouquet Garni
4 Garlic cloves, chopped / minced
Seasonal Veges

Step 1: Place the Pork, the clove studded onion and the bouquet garni in a large pan.

Step 2: Cover with water and turn on the heat.

Step 3: Simmer for aboutttttttt an hour.

Step 4: Whilst the pork is poaching, chop up some carrots and potatoes, splash generously with olive oil, rock salt and pepper and roast in oven until golden and crunchy.

Step 5: Make the pork marinade by chucking into a bowl the tomato sauce, soy sauce, honey, garlic, and veal stock and whisking together.

Step 7: Oh look it’s been an hour! Remove pork from water.

Step 7: Slice Pork into 2cm thick pieces.

Step 8: Place slices of pork in baking dish and cover with marinade. Cook in oven at approx. 160 deg cel for aboutttttt 20 mins. You want the liquid to start caramelising.

Step 9: Oh look, the veges are done. (Before putting pork in), Remove these gorgeous golden goodies from the oven.

Step 10: Ok, so after the 20 or so mins of cooking the pork in the oven, grab the roasted veges and place them in with the pork, stir around roughly and place back in oven for another 5/10 minutes.

Step 11: Et voila! Mmmmmmmmmm! Smells sooooooooo good! Plate up, serve, cry, weep, inhale, inject. DE-AH-LISH-US! And a BIG THANKS to Murdoch Books for welcoming me on board! Annnnnd here is the link to the Murdoch Books Blog – scroll down to see Phoodie! http://blog.murdochbooks.com.au/365-challenge/