This is one of those dishes that just happened. I’d bought a chunk of pork belly at IGA, to use as the Saturday night roast, with roast potatoes and a mélange of caramelized onions, fennel, beetroot and red cabbage.
During the week that followed I used the leftover pork in a casserole, together with other leftovers – I had a chorizo, some Kaiserfleisch, bacon, leeks, onions, capsicum, fennel, shallots and some Parpadelle.
Kaiserfleisch is also called Kassler, or smoked pork loin. This is really tender and tasty, and just $16 a kilo at Coles. You can use speck or lardons or thick bacon … in this dish more than most, anything goes. I had the idea to make an east-west fusion kind of dish.
The pork belly was the most juicy, most melt-in-the-mouth pork we’ve had in a long time so I didn’t want to overcook it. Therefore I left it until last, just to warm it up. The process was:
- Put the onions, capsicum and fennel into a roasting dish with some olive oil, and cook at 175 degrees for 30 minutes.
- Add the chorizo – I add it whole and cut it into chunks later since it stays moister that way
- Add the Kaiserfleisch or speck or lardons
- Watch a bit of TV or read a book for 15 minutes
- Fry the bacon, leeks and shallots with some ginger and garlic
- Add some white wine and chicken stock, bring to simmer and add to the dish
- Add Passata to thicken the sauce to your taste (I don’t like it thick)
- Add the parpadelle just before serving
What is ideal here is a roasting dish that you can also use on the stove across a couple of jets, because you want to have the liquid bubbling gently while you add the herbs & spices.
- Garlic, ginger, soy, honey and sweet chili sauce
- Add a little sherry and Balsamic reduction
- Add bay leaf, thyme, Rosemary and coriander
- Add seasoning
- Add wine and stock and passata as needed
- Check the taste and adjust – we want something halfway between European and Asian on the flavour spectrum. Mildly hot and spicy.
Give it another 20 – 30 mins, and add the Parpadelle a few minutes before serving.
