Crispy Pork Belly + Sweet Adobo

Here's a dish that came together way too easily because everything was incidentally pre-prepared. The pork belly was roasted last week and these were two strips I hadn't used. The adobo sauce was saved from some chicken adobo I also made last week and reduced to concentrate the flavors. And this past weekend, I had made a drunken meal at about 3am and two of the carrots that I cleaned and peeled didn't make it into the food.

crispy pork belly with a reduced Filipino adobo sauce

Put this all together with some finely chopped onions and we have an accidentally luxurious and decadent meal in less than half an hour. Which I find kinda silly, because pork belly is not often a luxurious food in Chinese cuisine.

All I did was sweat some onions with the carrots and some garlic in a small saucepan. Add the reduced adobo sauce with a spoonful of sugar and a splash of dry sherry. Low simmer to soften the carrots and further reduce the sauce. Cut the pork belly into cubes and brown-crisp on all sides. Serve together on steamed rice.

The most interesting part of this was that the altered, re-reduced adobo sauce had a hint of hoison flavor.

I Shitake You Not

These are mine, betches! I love the gentle earthiness of fresh shitake mushrooms.

garlic sauteed sugar snap peas, fresh shitake mushrooms and shallots

Plum Tart

This came out exceedingly well. Instead of using the food processor (which I lurv dearly) to make the pastry dough, I went for a manual approach with a pastry cutter. It was a pain and I wasn't entirely sure I was getting the butter down to the right grain size, but what do you know? IT WORKED. It worked better than any other crust I've made in the past, and I've made many. Flour, butter, sugar, salt, ice water and that was it. Perfectly flaky. I'll have to try this out a second and third time to confirm, but in the meantime, I'm enjoying the fruit of my labor.

plum tart, pre-oven

I had some leftover Fig Almond Spread in the fridge from a wine and cheese thing a few months ago. Expensive, but it had been sitting there for a while so I figured that I'd spread the stuff on the bottom of the tart. Worked like a charm. Arranged thin slices of dinosaur and black plums on top and then sprinkled a healthy dose of brown sugar above. Done.

plum tart, shitty photo

UPDATE:

plum tart, better photo