I'm from Ontario, so we'll start with a wine from Le Clos Jordanne, a winery making international noise for its French-style Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs. If you're not from Ontario and want to know what the wine scene here is like, think Northern France and choose varietals that grow there. Pinot Noir. Chardonnay. Cabernet Franc. Riesling. Sauvingnon Blanc. Sparkling wines do well. Le Clos Jordanne has won some blind-tastings, going head to head with major Burgundy houses. It's a pretty big deal. The wine I had in my closet was from the Claystone Terrace vineyard. It isn't their top wine, but it isn't their basic Village either. Single estate level, I guess. It ran me about $40 a couple of years ago. [...]
Pinot noir is the only light-bodied red I drink with any kind of regularity. And I don't drink that much of it. It's expensive and subtle. My palate's a bit rough around the edges. I chose it for two reasons. First, I thought that if anything in the closet needed to be consumed, it was the pinot noir. Heat and dry conditions tend to age wine prematurely. And pinots don't have long lifespans to begin with. The second reason I chose it was that I was making roasted pork belly with braised fennel. The flavours are rich but they're softer and would be washed away by too big a wine. Most matches for pork belly are whites. Chardonnay and riesling, being the most common. But it's snowing and I didn't feel like chilling anything unnecessarily and I had the pinot in that hot-box closet and pinot noirs are often said to be interchangeable with chardonnays when you're talking acid and weight so...
Slow Roasted Pork Belly with Braised Fennel & Mash
Slow-roasted pork belly is something that I've wanted to try for a while. I've seen it on those top chef challenge and academy programs and it always looks so good. It's also cost-friendly. I adapted the recipe from Jamie Oliver's 'Cook with Jamie.' Indeed, I will. Or I did. Whatever.
Here's what you need:
- 1 pork belly (2 pounds)
- 1 tablespoon fennel seed.
- 1/2 tablespoon salt and 1/4 tablespoon black pepper.
- 2 fennel bulbs, tops and outer layer removed. Cut into wedges.
- small bunch of fresh thyme, leaves picked from stems
- three cloves of garlic, crushed and un-peeled
- 2 cups of white wine
1. Preheat oven to max. temperature (mine tops out at 500 F) and score the skin side of the pork belly.
I know. I could have got those scores a little more even and a lot more numerous. Next time.
2. Using a pestle and mortar, bash up the fennel, salt and pepper until you achieve powder-consistency. Then massage said powder into the scores.
3. In a roasting pan, toss fresh fennel, thyme, garlic, a robust drizzle of olive oil and some salt and pepper. Place the pork belly on top, skin side up. Place in the oven. After ten minutes, turn the oven down to 330 F and roast for fifty minutes. Why? Jamie says so and it works.
4. When the first 50 minutes is up, take the roasting pan out of the oven and drain off excess fat. Replace that fat with delicious white wine and return to oven for another fifty minutes.
5. So the pork belly has been roasting for 110 minutes at 330 F. Pull it from the oven, remove the fennel and keep it warm (I put it in a frying pan at the lowest possible heat and kept an eye on it). Put the pork belly and wine back into the oven for the final 50 minutes until the skin is golden and crisp and the meat is melt in your mouth tender.
[Word to the wise: At this point, I got a little nervous when I saw that the wine in the roasting pan wasn't bubbling and pumped the heat up to 350. The result was still good but a little less tender than I wanted - lesson learned: things can cook without simmering bubbles. Be patient.]
6. After the final 50 minutes, allow pork to rest ten minutes. Tent it with tin foil. Pour the white wine mixture through a sieve (known as a chinois in some high-end circles) and reduce the liquid down. It's awesome. I served the pork belly and fennel on some whipped potatoes.
It tasted better than it looks here. I never claimed to be a photographer. This will serve 2-3 people.
How Did the Wine Match Up?
There were a few things working against the Le Clos Jordanne Claystone Terrace pinot noir from an expectation point of view. One, I was worried about oxidization from too much time in my subpar storage closet. Two, pinot noir has a light bricky hue in the glass. My eye, nose and how it felt on the palate made me think that the wine was, if not off, then a little cooked. False alarm. It wasn't off or cooked. Once I got used to the wine I enjoyed it. There were a lot of minerals and earthy components to the wine, as well as some sour fruit. More importantly, it was clean and balanced. High quality wine.
The pinot noir really started to win me over when matched with the food. It set off the tangy sweetness of the fennel and the soft rich flavours of the wine-braised pork. It was very nice and didn't bully the rest of the meal. I recommend giving this combination a try if you have a old-world style pinot at home. Next time, I'd like to match this recipe with an Alsace riesling, just for the sake of comparison.
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