15. Sunday Chinese spiced pork belly & rice & vegetables

This started off as a meal for my mother-in-law during our son's celebrations, however unfortunately my husband's still battling his chest infection and so had to call off her visit. I still enjoyed it very much, pictured here is the green beans which I had, although my husband and daughter had the cauliflower cheese (Sam had been sent out to buy the ingredients and forgot to check the packaging, thus coming home with the wrong brand which contained wheat), if anything thought I think this worked better with green beans as it can become over rich with the cheese sauce and the fat from the pork belly.

Ingredients:

* Pork belly (I use Iceland frozen joint)
* Chinese 5 spice
* Salt
* White pepper
* Rice
* Vegetables of choice

Method:

1. Cook the pork according to package instructions; this one was 1 hour and 10 minutes at 180oC although I should have given it abit longer for the crackerling to get crisper.

2. Place the rice and water in the rice cooker and let it work its magic around 25 minutes before serving (remember to factor in the 10minutes that the pork needs to rest).

3. Cook the vegetables according to package instructions; the cauliflower cheese needed 40 minutes in the oven and the green beans about 20 minutes for the water to warm up to boil and then simmer).

4. 20 minutes before the pork has finished cooking sprinkle on the spice, salt and pepper (before I did this at the beginning and it tended to burn, I did 10 minutes this time and it hadn't fully cooked into the meat)

5. When you take the pork out to rest for 10 minutes cover with tin foil and tea towel to keep warm up soak up some of the juices and stay moist.

6. Serve and enjoy

Review:

Was very yummy, I ended up sprinkling over tamari soy sauce (japanese wheat free) over the rice and pork and it just added that extra level of flavour. I do love this though its a bit of a naughty treat as the belly is quite fatty, although I thought rice over roast potatoes kinda evens it out a little bit...maybe...i'll tell myself this anyways!