Elaine: Braised Pork Belly

The hunt for pork belly: When asking the Jewel butchers if they had pork belly, they looked at eachother with blank faces and said " pork belly??? do we have THAT?" but they were really thinking "this asian girl should go to chinatown where she can also pick up her chicken feet, pigs blood and live frogs". My happy place, Whole Foods, didn't have it either. Finally ventured to our infamous Paulina Meat Market (nicest butchers ever! ) where sam basically had lunch there, sitting on the counter devouring handfuls of bologna the butcher kept on offering while I was waiting for my gorgeous little pork belly.

End result was...TO DIE FOR! First of all, I made the carrots super chunky cuz I knew I didn't wanted to keep those for our plates. They were like candy after all that braising. Yumm-O! I also can't believe the recipe asks for you to throw away the crunchy morsels of skin. I snacked on some of those homemade pork rinds while I waited those last 20 min. Those last 20 min felt like a lifetime...so long, that I took them out before they browned to perfection. Oh well, that's me being impatient. I didn't have much liquid left but the couple drops I had were so good. I think the 2 #s of pork belly is supposed to serve 4 but Mike and I ate it all. I served it with crispy sauteed string beans.

Now I know how to make my favorite chinese pork dish. They must braise the pork belly in a sugared soy sauce liquid. Then slice it and sandwich it between light and fluffy steamed bread. Mmmm. I'll definitely braise pork belly again. I might invite 2 more people over though so we had an excuse NOT to eat all 2 #s of belly.