24-HOUR PORK BELLY
Corn, Fresh, Powdered, and Popped | Strawberries, Fresh, Powdered, and "Popped" | Rose Geranium

This course came about because I wanted to use some of the beautiful end-of-season strawberries and corn, and I generally love sweet flavors with fatty pork. Because of the sweetness, I decided to put it as the last savory course, as a transition to desserts.

Initially I planned on having some fresh corn and some popcorn. I also planned on having fresh strawberries and powdered strawberries.

I wanted to find a way to make "popped" strawberries, to parallel the popcorn and give the dish a menu element that the diners would be curious about before the dish arrived. I love doing that--putting something on the menu that will puzzle diners and make them wonder what's going to be set in front of them. I thought about various ways I could get the strawberries to "pop." One thing that occurred to me that definitely would have worked was that I could blend the strawberries with a starch (probably tapioca starch), cook the resulting puree to hydrate the starch, spread the starched puree on a Silpat, dehydrate it, break it up into chips, then deep-fry those chips. They'd puff up.

The trouble is, "puffed" strawberry, while potentially delicious, would not resemble the texture of popped corn. Then it occurred to me that freeze-dried strawberries are a perfect texture. I didn't know of any place in the city that I could get any, and unlike certain very well-funded restaurants, I don't have the equipment to freeze dry them myself, so I immediately ordered some.

Then I figured if I was having corn and strawberries, fresh and popped, and strawberries powdered, I might as well also have the corn powdered. So I dehydrated some corn kernels and ground them up. That completed the dish. The strawberry powder was Dirty Girl strawberries, dehydrated and ground. Then, because plain dehydrated strawberries turned out more brown than red, I mixed in some beet powder that I had made months ago. The fresh strawberries were also Dirty Girl. The fresh corn was from G&S Farms and the fresh baby corn was from Heirloom Organic Gardens (who only grow baby corn, they never let it get all grown up).

For the pork belly (distributed by Marin Sun Farms, but I don't know who actually raised the pigs), I modified my normal brine by adding a few sticks of cinnamon. Otherwise, it was my standard pork belly brine, submerged or vacuum-bagged with the brine for 36 hours (I used to do less time, but I like to leave it for longer now to let the pink salt do its thing, which gives the eventual product a more bacon-y look. After brining, it was rinsed, then bagged with some olive oil, and cooked for 36 hours at 73C (163F). After cooking, it was quickly chilled in ice water and then held in the fridge. For service, I scored the fat side and cooked it for a long time on medium-low heat, weighted down by a cast iron pan. That lets the fat render slowly and get crispy, as with, e.g., a duck breast.

The last piece of the puzzle was the amazingly floral rose geranium. It completed the transition to dessert. However, be careful with this herb, as it is strong and can easily overwhelm a dish. It also is fairly unpleasant to eat large pieces, so I diced it and sprinkled a bit in with the corn when warming it for service, and then sprinkled just a touch of the rose geranium on top of the dish before serving.

Posted by Barzelay on 2009/10/08 @ 22:17 | Comments (0) | Lazy Bear, Meat, Veggies, Fruit, Grain, Cheese