Recipe: Crispy Pork Belly, Thai Style
The new cookbook Thai by Tove Nilsson is packed with authentic Thai dishes. From perfectly prepared sticky rice and grilled satay gai to caramelised palm sugar ice cream with tamarind sauce: Thai teaches you to cook with the flavours of salt, sweet, spicy and sour that characterise Asian cuisine. This dish of crispy pork belly is also finger-licking good.
Slow-cooked pork belly that you cut into pieces and then fry until crispy. Delicious! Then roll the pieces together with salted ginger in a leaf. Addictively good!
Tip: cook the meat a day in advance. It will have chilled in the refrigerator and will be much easier to cut into pieces that do not fall apart during frying.
How to make the pork belly
- Preheat the oven to 150 °C.
- Place the pork belly skin-side down in an oven dish.
- Pound or grind 2 tablespoons of sugar, 2 tablespoons of fish sauce, lemongrass and ginger into a coarse spice paste. Rub the meat with the spice paste and cover the meat with aluminium foil. Bake it in the centre of the oven for about 3 hours.
- Let the meat cool and place it in the refrigerator; this will make it easier to slice. The firmer the meat, the less likely it is that the cubes will fall apart during frying.
- Salted ginger: mix ginger with salt and lime and leave to stand for at least 10 minutes.
- Cut the meat into cubes. Heat a frying pan and fry the meat in oil until crispy and golden brown. Drain on kitchen paper or a clean tea towel.
- Heat 4 tablespoons of sugar, 4 tablespoons of fish sauce and the chillies in a pan and simmer for about 3 minutes. Stir in the meat so that it is coated with the caramel sauce.
- Serve with the salted ginger and make small parcels with leaves and meat. Serve the meat with some rice and prik nam sauce (Thai sambal) for those who like a little spice.
Title: Thai
Author: Tove Nilsson
Price: €20,95
Publisher: Good Cook
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