Bob Parsons Alberta wrote:How do folks here create this dish?
That's like asking "how do you cook beef" or "how do you cook fish". Pork belly is an ingredient, not a dish. The wine match depends on the dish that the pork belly is a part of, not on the pork belly itself
per se.
Dishes that I make that involve pork belly include:
o Anything French involving lardons, such as coq au vin. Lardons are traditionally made from fatty fresh pork such as pork belly. Julia Child's cookbooks say to use bacon or salt pork and to parboil it to remove the saltiness and smokiness. But that is only because fresh pork belly was not widely available in the US at retail until about 10 years ago. Now it's everywhere and there's no reason to substitute.
o Chinese red-cooked pork and Sichuan twice-cooked pork are traditionally made with fatty pork such as pork belly.
o Northern Thai hanglay curry (gaeng hanglay) is traditionally made with pork belly, as are several other Thai dishes.
o Pork belly works well for rendering lard. US supermarkets trim their pork closely these days and so other than pork belly fresh pork fat for making lard can be hard to find.
-Paul W.
