“Miya [Takashi Miyazaki from Miyazaki restaurant in Cork] gave me some of his homemade shiso miso paste recently. He said, ‘Oh I know your brother loves fire. Put the shiso miso on the pork belly after you’ve cooked it in dashi and blow-torch it.’ I thought, oh, that sounds great. It’s a simple dish to make but interesting and very tasty.”
– Clovis Ferguson, gardener and chef, Gubbeen, West Cork
Note:
If you can’t find shiso miso paste, mix white miso paste with finely chopped shiso leaf or perilla seasoning. If there is no blowtorch handy, put the miso coated meat back in a hot oven or under a grill until blackened. This should take about 15 minutes. Then allow to rest before serving.
Serves 4
INGREDIENTS
1kg pork belly
1 sheet dried kombu, cut into small pieces
5 slices of ginger
5 dried shiitake mushrooms
2 tbsp shiso miso paste (or white miso paste mixed with finely chopped shiso leaf or perilla seasoning)
Mooli radish salad:
400g mooli radish
1 tbsp sesame seeds
½ tbsp sesame seed oil
½ tbsp mirin
½ tbsp rice wine vinegar
1 tbsp ponzu yuzu sauce
A few chives, chopped
A small sheet of dried nori, thinly sliced
Mixed leaf salad:
500g mixed leaves (Clovis uses summer purslane, texel greens, mustard greens, oak leaves, wild rocket, coriander flowers, nasturtium flowers, fat hen & red salad bowl lettuce)
Good quality extra virgin olive oil
Lemon
Salt and pepper
METHOD
Add the pork belly, kombu and dried mushrooms to a large pot of water and bring to the boil. Simmer for roughly an hour, or until the fat of the pork starts to soften and the meat has taken on the umami flavours of the kombu. About halfway through the boiling time, add the ginger and a large pinch of salt to the water.
Meanwhile preheat your oven to 180C and put a baking tray in the oven to heat up. Once your pork belly is ready, transfer to the hot tray and roast until the fat has rendered out and the meat is tender and juicy – approximately 45-60 minutes.
Remove the cooked pork belly from the oven and apply the shiso miso paste to the outside of the meat. Using a blow torch, slowly toast the outside, blackening the miso all over. Leave the meat to rest for a few minutes while you make the salads.
For the mooli radish salad, peel the mooli and run it through a mandoline, cutting it into thin julienne. In a dry frying pan, gently toast the sesame seeds, then add to the julienned radish. In a bowl, blend the mirin, ponzu yuzu sauce, rice wine vinegar and sesame seed oil. Add this to the radish and sesame seeds and toss all together well with the strips of nori.
Dress the mixed leaves salad with olive oil and sea salt and a squeeze of lemon and toss it all together.
To serve, slice the pork belly into roughly 1cm slices and lay out on the plate with the radish salad and mixed leaves on the side.
