Meat in the middle. Soul on the edge. Pork belly inspires thoughts like that for me.
Maybe it's just the fat rushing to my brain.
But when I introduce someone to pork belly - to soft meat surrounded by fat that is meltingly tender on the inside and crisp on the outside - what I usually hear (through the moans) is, "That is to die for."
"Yes," I reply cheerfully. "And with that in your arteries, it won't be long."
Pork belly, of all things, has become a food-world darling. Wait - isn't pork belly the stuff that's traded as a commodity on Wall Street?
"It's bacon, something you already know and love, just in a different form," says Joseph Bonaparte, the culinary dean at the Art Institute of Charlotte, N.C.
Before you blame me, blame Bonaparte, my pork-belly enabler. He's the one who gave me my first bite.
At a Taste of the Nation event three years ago, Bonaparte and chef-instructor Mark Martin served a blue cheese-walnut cracker topped with a dab of strawberry-rhubarb jam and a slice of braised, seared pork belly.
One bite and my world stood still for a minute.
The meat was both crispy and meltingly soft, sort of like foie gras when it's seared just right. Set off by the savory cracker and the sweet jam, it was pork, but better. It was bacon, but better.
In New York right now, you can cross the city on a pork-belly high. At the sleek bistro Tailor in Soho, pork belly is cut into tender slices and tiled across a salty-sweet sauce of butterscotch and miso.
At Szechuan Gourmet on West 39th Street, it's cut thin and double-cooked in a stir-fry of leeks in hot chili sauce.
At David Chang's so-hot-they're-cool Momofuku restaurants, it's tucked into soft steamed buns with hoisin and scallions.
At Ratcliffe on the Green in Charlotte, chef-owner Mark Hibbs is serving slices of pork belly with tiny puy lentils.
For chefs, pork belly is part of the movement toward rediscovering old cuts. "It's like oxtail or shank or shoulder," says Bonaparte. "It's taking the underutilized stuff, the cuts that require more knowledge and skills. You're seeing a lot of educated cooks with good techniques and they're looking for more than just searing a beef tenderloin. They really want to feature their skills."
In other words, it's more challenging - and more fun - to take trash and make treasure.
Facing a week off in February with nothing to do but hang out at home, I took the plunge.
