(500 ml)

Crispy roast suckling pig belly, speedy kimchi

 

Ingredients:

1,2 kg pork belly
5 garlic cloves, chopped
20 g Chinese five spice
15 g brown sugar
1 large red chilli
500 ml shaoxing rice wine
4 star anise
50 ml rapeseed oil
75 g butter
20 g fennel seeds
100 g sea salt
1 Chinese cabbage
3 garlic cloves, crushed
2,5cm piece ginger, grated
20 ml fish sauce (optional)
30 ml sriracha chili sauce or chili paste
15 g golden caster sugar
50 ml rice vinegar
8 radishes, coarsely grated
2 carrots, cut into matchsticks or coarsely grated
4 spring onions, finely shredded

 

Prepapation:

With a very sharp knife score the belly’s skin crosswise, without getting into the meat. In a spice blender, whizz up the fennel seeds and salt and rub it into the dry skin of the belly.
In a bowl combine the 5 spice, chili, brown sugar, garlic and rapeseed oil. Pierce the flesh of the pork belly several times and then rub all the spices into the flesh, not the skin. Leave it to marinade for a couple of hours minimum.
Preheat the oven to 220 °C fan and add the shaoxing wine and 4 star anise to the base of a roasting tin and place the joint on a rack over the wine and spice.
Roast the belly at the high heat for about 15 minutes to get your crackling going, then turn it down to around 150 °C for a further 2-3 hours.
In the meantime, slice the cabbage into 2,5 cm strips. Tip into a bowl, mix with 1 tbsp sea salt, then set aside for 1 hr. Meanwhile, make the kimchi paste by blending the garlic, ginger, fish sauce, chili sauce, sugar and rice vinegar together in a small bowl.
Rinse the cabbage under cold running water and transfer to a colander. Boil 1,5 liter of water in a kettle and pour it quickly onto the cabbage over the kitchen sink. Let it drop for a while, tossing time to time for half an hour. Transfer to a large bowl and mix in the paste, along with the radishes, carrot and spring onions. Let it cool down in the fridge. (Unlike the normal kimchi, it is ready to eat in hours, but will not keep for more than 3 days in the fridge.)
When the meat is tender, take off the liquid of the bottom tray, turn the oven onto the highest temperature fan or grill and watch the skin, it should be puffing up. Take care not to burn it. Once the crackling is nice, take off the oven and put in a cool place. Let it rest before carving.
When you are ready to serve, place the roasting tray on the hob over a medium/high heat and bubble up all the delicious juices and wine with a bit of water until it’s thickened enough to be your gravy.
Carve nice slice of the meat and serve them on the top of your speedy kimchi with some of your sauce served aside.

The simpliest duck foie gras terrine

 

Ingredients :

1 piece duck foie gras (approx. 600 g)
coarse sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
100 ml Füleky Tokaji Aszú

 

Preparation:

Leave the foie gras out of the fridge covered with a clingfilm for at least one hour or even two to reach full room temperature. Then open up the lobes, separate the and with your hand gently take out all the veins and nerves. Keep the small bits and bites as well, but try to make nice big chunks out of the foie gras.
In a bowl mix it with sea salt (be generous!) and pepper and soak with the Füleky Tokaji Aszú. Cover at the contact of the mix with a clingfilm and let it marinate for 24 hours in the fridge.
The next day take a cast iron or ceramic terrine mould just large enough to contain the marinated foie gras and push it in the big parts first, use the small bites to fill up the holes.
Preheat the oven to 110 °C. Cook the terrine at a bain-marie for 25-30 minutes. Let it cool down, apply a piece of plastic or so on the top and push down with something (like a jar or so. Once the foie is under the rendered fat, tal off the plastic and the heavy jar, melt the top fat just a bit and cover it nicely.
Wait until 48 hours before serving sprinkled with sea salt and freshly ground pepper.

Shrimp stuffed squid with fresh herbs

 

Ingredients:

¼ small fennel bulb
1 small carrot
1 shallot
50 ml olive oil
50 ml Füleky Tokaji Aszú
2 slices toast bread
100 grams peeled raw shrimp
3 garlic cloves
salt
freshly ground black pepper
4 medium, cleaned squid (each about 80-100 g)
1 sprig thyme
1 sprig rosemary
½ bunch flat leaf parsley

 

Preparation:

Rinse and peel the fennel, carrot and shallot.
Finely chop the vegetables. Heat 1 tablespoons of the olive oil in a skillet. Add the vegetables and cook until soft. Toast the bread, pass it in a food processor to make breadcrumbs with the fresh herbs’ leaves and stir into the vegetables. Stir in the small shrimps. Peel and press 2 cloves of garlic, and stir into the vegetable mixture. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Rinse the squid and pat dry. Divide the stuffing mixture between the squid tubes.
Stuff the tubes with the mix, take care not to stuff too tight, or you can have some of them exploded, as I did. Put them in an oven tray, sprinkle with some salt and drizzle with olive oil and a decent splash of Füleky Tokaji Aszú.
Bake the about 20 minutes at 175 °C, then serve then whole (one per person), or wait 20 minutes to cool a bit, then cut into chunks.
You can present in the oven tray, with its cooking liquid, which has transformed into a nice sauce in the oven.