Culinary Disasters

Note: Credit for this idea has to go to Michael Ruhlman who reading his blog caused me the inspiration for this dish.

So you have this great pork confit and looking for an idea for it.  Well since it is a fatty piece of meat and cooked in fat why not deep fry it and serve it on top of a caesar salad?

This is really simple to do and actually takes no time at all.

The first step is going to be to create the dressing.  For this you will need the following:

• 1 TB lemon juice
• 1 egg at room temperature
• 2 filets of anchovies
• 1 tea worcestershire sauce
• Couple cloves of garlic (if you do not like garlicy tasting items then only use 1/2 to 1 clove)
• 2 TB freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese
• 1 tea dijon mustard
• pinch of salt and pepper
• 1/4 cup of good olive oil

The first step we want to do is coddle the egg.  Basically this is briefly cooking the egg in boiling water.  So bring a pot of water to a boil.  Add in the egg and wait 30 seconds.  Remove the egg and pat dry. 

 

Add all ingredients but the olive oil into the blender and take for a spin.  Once everything has been combined and while the blender is running slowly add in the olive oil to emulsify.  Set aside and start working on the pork belly.

With the pork belly I wanted to create the illusion of croutons so I went ahead and a piece of the pork confit into a medium dice.  For the breading we are going to need:

• Flour
• 1 egg beaten
• Panko

Lay out the flour on a plate, next to the plate place a bowl with the beaten egg, and finally lay the panko out on another plate.  Basically it is a breading station.

First dredge the pork belly into the flour.

Next cover the pork belly piece in egg.

Finally cover it in panko.

Lay all the pieces on a plate to rest.

Bring a vessel filled with oil to 325 degrees on the stovetop.  If you don’t want your house to smell like frying then you can do this outside over a turkey fryer base.  Once the oil has reached 325 degrees slowly lower in all the pieces.  Cook for a couple minutes till the skin is nice and dark.

Once the pieces are done, remove and put on a plate lined with paper towels.

Now time to work on the salad and this for you are going to need:

• Dressing that was made earlier
• Fried pieces of pork confit
• Romaine leaves cut into a couple inch sections
• Freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese

Pour a little bit of dressing over the romaine leaves and toss to lightly coat.  Shred some parmigiano-reggiano over top.

Place the pieces of fried pork confit on top.  Serve and enjoy.

Tags: pork, All //