Gary does Gordon

Pork with shell fish!? Hmm, I am not convinced. I love pork, especially the belly, and I also love langoustine/prawns etc but the important thing to note is that I love them individually… in their own dish… separate from one another. I have had surf and turf before, but this was beef and prawns, not pork. And even then I didn’t really like the flavour combination. I have to admit, the thought of these two tastes combined simply did not compute. But having said that, the idea of the sweet Madeira sauce with both the pork and the prawns sounded fantastic, so perhaps this would work? Perhaps the sauce was the key to making all this work?

The ingredients

This dish is actually very simple really, and as such there aren’t that many ingredients. As the pork required the longest cooking time I started with that.  I started by trimming off the skin and rubbing in loads of pepper and salt. I then rolled it up into a … err… roll… and tied it up with some string.

The pork belly slice

Pork belly roll

This then went into the pan and was fried for a bit in olive oil to brown on all sides. Once browned I took it out and added carrots, onions, leaks, celery, bay leaves, rosemary and thyme to the same pan and let them cook for a bit. Once they began to colour slightly I deglazed the pan with some white wine and reduced until virtually all the wine had evaporated. I then added some chicken and veal stock, added the pork roll and brought to the boil. I then turned down the heat and let it simmer for 3 hours. That’s right, 3 hours!

Browned pork belly

Vegetables and herbs

Pork being braised

Once cooked I unrolled the pork belly and flattened it by placing a heavy pyrex dish on top of it with a weight (In this case it was one of those annoying catalogue books that comes through the post and probably uses half a tree in paper to make). Once cooled I transferred to the fridge. Excuse the seriously tatty looking tray used in the photo below. It is clean, I promise, it is just well used and a bit battered and scoured as a result.

Belly being flattened

It was then time to make the Madeira sauce. This is incredible easy. Plonk the Maderia into a sauce pan and reduce by half. Sieve the braising juices into another pan and reduce this by two thirds. Once they are both reduced mix them together, season and reduce further until a slight syrupy texture is formed.

Sauce reductions

Madeira sauce

Next up was the peas, and given that these need to be done right at the end, as do the langoustines and the belly slices, it was all a bit of a rush. So I apologise in advance for the lack of photos of some of the stages. Just to let you know, I had to prep the langoustines (Cut out the dodgy blue vein/intestine thingy, and clean them) before this stage… I just totally forgot to photograph it all.

Mint and peas

I added the peas and mint leaves to a pan of boiling water and cooked them for a few minutes. Whilst this was cooking I took out the pork and choped it up into little squares. Given my piece of pork belly ended up looking rather odd for the most part after cooking I didn’t actually end up with as many squares as I would have liked. You’ll see in the photo below that there were lots of other experimental shapes that ended up in the pan.

I added some olive oil to two pans and fried the prawns (Until turned opaque) and the belly slices (To warm through). Whilst these were frying I warmed up the Madeira sauce and transferred the pea and mint mixture to the food processor and pulsed the mixture with some olive oil till they were slightly crushed.

Pork belly

It was time to plate up. I made a quinelle of peas (I have to say, watching all these cooking programmes on tv made this process quite easy as they actually came out okay. Only problem is that they fell apart on the plate slightly, but hey ho, for 1 min they were perfect!) on one side of the plate and I then started laying a pork belly squares and langoustine tails next to one another in a line. Once done, I did the cheffy thing of drizzling some sauce around the plate and it was done

The final dish

And doesn’t that look simply mouth watering!!!? But was it? The answer is a definite yes. The belly was moist and so soft that it could have been eaten with a spoon. The minted peas were lovely and gave a lovely aromatic flavour to the whole dish. The Maderia sauce was sublime… I am doing this sauce again as it was so tasty and went so well with the pork. The langoustines were very nice too and I have to say that after eating this the pork and shell fish do go really well together. In fact after the first mouthful you realise that without the langoustines, the dish would have been lcking in something… I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it was sort of relief to have both the tastes and textures of the pork and the langoustines in your mouth. It was complete I suppose is what I am trying to say.

 The sweetness of the prawns complemented the peas, as well as the pork. The Maderia sauce complemented everything… all in all it was a huge success. I have never braised pork belly before, instead I have slow dry roasted it as well as cooked a confit of pork belly (Seriously good but seriously not good for you if you know what I mean), but this may be my new found best way of cooking pork belly. It is a lot healthier than doing the confit thing, and the end result is virtually the same… and you get a lovely sauce at the end of it too. It is a win win situation.

It really was not a difficult dish to do, but it looks like it took a lot of effort when plated up. A dinner party favourite for sure.

Slow braised pork belly with langoustine, crushed peas and Madeira sauce… Done!

Next up: Roast Gressingham duck breasts, with honey glazed baby onions and salsify, minted peas and a Madeira sauce.

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