EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/mjxM9jO.png)
I made this dish yesterday because while struggling to adjust to a diet with a caloric deficit I was craving a dish with good fat content and heartiness. I guess you could consider this a cheat meal, but I didn’t feel to guilty about it all because it didn’t contain any carbs, just some good protein, fat, and veggies.
The pork belly was really simple to prepare – I just rubbed salt and oil onto the skin, just for flavour and to ensure the skin becomes nice crispy and golden brown. All you have to do then is just dump it in a pre-heated oven at 160C, and there isn’t any specific time because all the cuts you get are different, but the minimum I guess is a solid hour. I don’t know why so many people are obsessed with exact cooking times because all this fussing is meaningless because the ingredients everybody has are different. The food will be done when it’s done.
I made the French beans as a side only because I had some of them laying around in the fridge. Really simple to cook them, and I think these beans are absolutely horrid if you don’t cook them properly because if they’re undercooked you get this really stringy and fibrous vegetable that’s just inedible. Anyway, I just blanched them for a minute or so and then finished them off in a pan with garlic after draining them.
Roasted pork belly with rice was one of my absolute favourite dishes to eat as a child, I always (and still do) refer to the pork by it’s Hokkien name, sio bak. I remember my grandmother always brought Styrofoam boxes of sio ak (roast duck) and sio bak from the hawkers to family dinners, and they were my favourite part of the meal. The roast pork I made was a far cry from what I usually eat, but I think I can produce something similar if I used a spice rub, maybe next time I could just use some Chinese five-spice. The skin also wasn’t something that I was used to, if I could describe what it’s like I’d probably say that it was a huge biscuit that doesn’t quite belong with the meat because it just breaks up as soon as you cut into it.
I really like it when meat is served on a chopping board because it has this charming rusticity to it, I think it’s probably my favourite way to plate meat. Then again, it could just be that I’m a big fan of charcuterie boards.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/HJKJ0gA.png)
