Crispy Pork Belly and Cheesy Eggplant

I made some crispy pork belly on Friday. We had that with simple sauteed veggies and steamed rice. Then on Saturday I made cheesy eggplant and I didn’t think they’d go well together, they actually did! I mean, just the pork belly and cheesy eggplant. Don’t add the rice and veggies in there too because that’s just fusion confusion. Here we go.

Ingredients for Pork Belly:

• 1 slab of pork belly, about 1.5 – 2 lbs, preferably skin on
• 1.5 – 2 tbsp Chinese cooking wine (you can substitute this with some dry sherry or mirin, which is a Japanese sweet rice wine. In a pinch, you can also just use some rice wine vinegar)
• 1.5 tsp Chinese five-spice powder
• 1.5 tsp white pepper
• 0.75 tsp salt (if you use kosher salt, you can increase this to 1-1.25 tsp.)
• 2 tbsp white vinegar
• 2 cups rock salt (in supermarkets this is also called ice cream salt, they are the same thing)

Instructions for Pork Belly:

1. You have to start this the night before because there is a marinating aspect. Take out your pork belly and pat it dry with some paper towels. Using an ice pick, sturdy metal skewer, or some other metal tool to prick holes in the skin. Try not to prick into the flesh because that will hinder crispiness. If your pork belly doesn’t have skin on (like mine) you can skip this pricking step.
2. Flip the pork belly and rub the fleshy, non-skin or non-fatty part, with the Chinese cooking wine. Mix the five-spice powder, white pepper, and salt in a small bowl. Take your spice mixture and sprinkle them over the fleshy part of the pork belly, including the sides. You can rub them on a little bit, to make sure they stick. Flip the pork belly again and place it in a container then refrigerate overnight. If you forgot to this the night before, you can also do it first thing in the morning and bake the pork in the evening.
3. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and remove the pork from the fridge. Take a large piece of aluminium foil and place the pork on it, skin side up. Fold up the side of the foil to form a rim about 0.5-1 inch high. This will serve as a guard to make sure your rock salt doesn’t spill over. As much as possible, make sure the foil is snug around the pork.
4. Brush the pork with the white vinegar and then spread the rock salt on the skin. Pat it down a bit to make sure they are staying on top of the pork and not falling over the sides. By the way, I realize it seems excessive to buy rock salt just for this dish alone, so if you want you can substitute with regular salt mixed with an egg white or two. What you want to do is just to create a mixture that will serve as a protective layer on the pork so that it won’t dry out during baking period. This is also a common method for whole fish and larger cuts of beef like prime rib and tenderloin.
5. Place the foil-lined pork on a sheet pan and bake for 1 hour.
6. Remove pork from oven and then switch your oven to broil. Scrape off the salt (don’t forget the sides) and take the pork off the foil. Place the pork back on a sheet pan and then place in the oven under the broiler. Make sure you place it about halfway down the oven, you don’t want this pork too close to the broiler heating element because this will spark oil/fat like crazy and you don’t want to burn your house down because that will make me sad. Broil for about 20-25 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through. Make sure you keep a close eye on it because it’s very easy to overboard here.
7. This dish is very rich so serve with some simple salad that has sour and bitter elements (arugula with some lemon dressing) or something to absorb it like steamed rice and sauteed veggies (kale, anyone?). Or if you want to go big by serving it with some cheesy eggplant, read on.

Ingredients for Cheesy Eggplant:

• 1 large globe eggplant (about 2 lb size)
• 2 large zucchini (or you can also substitute with more eggplant. I’ll explain a little later)
• 4 cups of cherry tomatoes (get 2 of the pint-size packages)
• 10-12 garlic cloves, unpeeled (I loooove a lot of garlic and in this recipe, they’re pretty mild too so you can go a little crazy here, especially if your garlic cloves are on the smaller side)
• olive oil
• 8 oz. fresh ricotta
• 0.75-1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes (can add more if you like it a little bit spicier)
• 8 ounces grated mozzarella
• 1 small bunch fresh basil leaves

Instructions for Cheesy Eggplant:

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Cut your eggplants crowwise to about 0.5 inch-thick slices. You can also go a little thicker here (I like it thicc) because you’re going to need a little structure later on. Similarly, if you’re using zucchini, cut them to about the same thickness.
2. Spread them on two baking sheets and smear both sides with some oil and sprinkle with salt. Make sure none of the pieces overlap on your baking sheet. You do not want to steam the veggies! You should have some space left on one of your baking sheet, so spread the cherry tomatoes and the garlic cloves there, drizzle with oil and sprinkle with salt.
3. Place the vegetables in the oven, making sure the sheet pan with tomatoes are on the upper rack, and bake for about 20 minutes. You’ll see the eggplant will start to shrivel a bit and the tomatoes will have burst and your house smells amazing.
4. Take both pans out, flip the eggplant and zucchini in the pan. Take out the tomatoes and garlic and set aside while you put the eggplant and zucchini back in the oven for another 10 minutes or so, until they are browned.
5. Once your garlic cloves have cooled down a bit, put them on a cutting board and squeeze them out of their skins. Mash them with the fork to create a paste.
6. Combine ricotta, chili pepper flakes, mozzarella (leave about a quarter behind for topping), and garlic paste in a bowl. Drizzle with some olive oil and season lightly with a pinch of salt.
7. Now comes time to assemble: Get yourself a baking dish, something oven safe, and drizzle some olive oil in the bottom. Arrange a third of the roasted eggplant and zucchini in the bottom, then layer with a third of the roasted tomatoes and a third of your basil, torn into smaller pieces. Layer with half of the ricotta mixture.
8. Repeat this until you end up with vegetable layer at the top, but do not add the rest of the basil. We will reserve them for garnish after baking. Top the final layer or eggplant, zucchini, and tomatoes with the remaining mozzarella that you had set aside.
9. Bake at the same temp (450 degrees) for 20 minutes. Switch the oven to broil, then broil for about 5 minutes to brown the mozzarella. Take out of the oven, let cool for about 5-10 minutes, then sprinkle with torn basil and drizzle with some olive oil.

Postscript notes:

As usual, we had leftovers and I found that I really like reheating the sliced pork belly in a cast iron skillet over high heat. This crisps up the sides that didn’t get exposed to direct heat during baking.

During assembly time for cheesy eggplant, I found that the zucchini pieces were pitifully small and rather wet, so next time I make this, I think I would use only eggplant. Also, the roasted tomatoes made some of the eggplant and zucchini pieces to be very wet, so I would definitely roast them in separate pans next time around. Learn from my mistakes, people!

The leftovers for cheesy eggplant was even better the next day because the tomatoes become sweeter.

Final note: these would make really great keto dishes! Maybe the tomatoes are a little on the sweet side but they’re natural sugars. There are no added sugar anywhere in the two dishes above.

Happy cooking!