So every night in our house has a different ‘feel’. Mondays are usually meat free and healthy, sort of a detox after the weekends, with the use of things like kale and quinoa. Wednesdays are usually pasta. Friday night is always some kind of Asian, whether it be a Spirit House style Thai BBQ, a Chinese banquet of Dan Hong’s prawn toast and Kung Pao Chicken, or an Indian feast, that must include mums onion and cauliflower bhajis! And then Sunday is always a snacky style dinner with a matching cocktail. Homemade pizzas, Turkish breads and dips, or something on toast.
Now if you mix up a day, its worse than jet lag and you can be thrown off for days, it’s really is quite distressing.
So, today I am sharing the quintessential Kelly Sunday night dinner. Go on, try it. And hopefully you aren’t quite as strange as us and this can be enjoyed any day, or night of the week.
- 4 slices of rustic loaf bread
- 1 small piece of lean pork belly, about 800gm
- ½ cup aioli
- 4 eschalots, finely sliced
- 3 tbs vinegar
- 2 tbs sugar
- 8 white anchovies
- 4 radishes, finely sliced
- Micro (chervil, celery, tatsoi) or regular herbs (chervil, fennel fronds, celery leaves, parsley)
- First thing to do is get your pork belly cooking. Preheat oven to 160°C. Remove the skin from the pork belly in one piece. Place on a lined baking sheet and set aside in the fridge. Slice the pork belly into 1 cm slices, place in a baking dish, flat and in a single layer. Salt well. Wrap the dish completely in foil. I recommend at least 2 layers. Place in the oven and cook for 3 hours. After 3 hours, remove the pork belly, keep covered and leave to rest, turn the oven up to 220°C. Take the pork skin out of the fridge, boil a kettle and pour a kettle of boiling water over the pork skin. Pat dry. Brush with oil, salt generously and bake for about 40 minutes or until golden, bubbling and crisp. Remove and allow to cool. Your pork belly should hold together but cut like butter with a knife.
- While the pork skin is in the oven, in a metal bowl mix the sugar, vinegar and a teaspoon of water until sugar is dissolved. Add eschalots and set aside to pickle.
- Once the pork has rested, the skin has cooled and onions have pickled, you can start to assemble your toast. Lightly toast your bread on both sides, then add a generous layer of aioli, layer with a few slices of pork belly to cover most of the surface, add your radishes, pickled onions and anchovies. I also like to drizzle a little bit of the pickling liquid like a dressing to add a bit of extra acidity to cut through the rich fattiness of the pork belly. Finish with micro herbs and eat immediately. Yum!
