Poitrine de porc farcie aux fruits (Stuffed Pork belly)
Disclaimer : This is not a recipe for the queasy and definitely not for vegetarians. Not thrilled by the idea of shoving your hand into the middle of a chunk of pork belly? Serve boneless, skinless chicken breasts instead.
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Ingredients
- Pork belly with its rind approx. 2-½ pounds (1.2 kg)
- Apples 3 (Granny Smith are recommended)
- Sour cream 2/3 cup (150 ml)
- Prunes pitted, 7 oz. (200 g), cut into small pieces
- Lemon juice of 1
- Honey 3 Tbsp.
- Calvados 3 Tbsp., see Note below
- Rosemary
- Salt and pepper
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
- Peel, core and finely chop the apple. Mix with the lemon juice. Add in the cut-up prunes and the rosemary.
- With a sharp knife, remove the tough outer skin of the pork belly, leaving the layer of fat intact. Resist all temptation to trim the fat off. This is the good stuff!
- Now cut a large pocket into the thick of the pork belly. Be generous because now you need to stuff your 3 apples and your 20-odd prunes into this pocket.
- Sew the opening tightly shut. (See note below)
- Place the sealed fruit-stuffed pouch on a roasting pan. Make light incisions into the fat layer in a crisscross pattern, being careful not to pierce through to the meat. Salt and pepper.
- Roast 1 hour in the oven.Reduce the temperature to 375°F (180°C), add a small glass of water to the roasting pan and roast an additional hour.
- Spread the honey over the pork belly and roast 30 minutes longer.
- Place the roasted pork belly onto a heated plate and cover with a tent of aluminum foil. Keep warm in the open oven.
- Pour the Calvados and a little boiling water into the roasting pan and scrape thoroughly to recuperate all the good juices and other tasty crud that has encrusted itself onto the bottom of the roasting pan. Pour all this goodness into a saucepan. Add the sour cream. Let boil for 4-5 minutes.
- Serve on top of, alongside and poured all over the hot pig belly.
Notes
Serve with… you could serve this with, say, a side of potatoes and carrots, but you could also take it easy on your dinner guests. After all you are about to put 3 pounds of bacon stuffed with fruit and slathered with cream on the table. Leave room for dessert.
Calvados: Calvados is an apple brandy from Normandy. According to the Gourmet Sleuth you can replace it with Armagnac, Applejack or unsweetened apple juice. I can’t guarantee your pork will be quite as content but in the absence of Calvados, it’s worth a try.
Sewing closed a pork belly: I had gotten this far without reading the recipe thoroughly ahead of time. Right...“sew the opening shut”. Apparently a pork belly-stitching needle and thread is standard kitchen equipment here in France. Perplexed, but not deterred, I created a suture of toothpicks inserted in x-formation. Julia Childs would have scoffed but it seemed to do the job and since, I’m going to go way out on a limb and assume you also don’t have such a needle in your kitchen drawer, I recommend you do the same.