Good morning Morsels has arrived. This is the seventeenth newsletter arriving in your inbox.
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I’m thinking about how I can rework the format of recipes in this newsletter. I want them to be easy to access, easy to screenshot and east to hold onto. I have been considering the feedback I’ve received so far and attempting to implement it. Today I will try out a different recipe format that will hopefully be more accessible in the email form. Any feedback is welcome. Thank you to those who have taken the time to brainstorm over wine and pâté.
After the soup recipe from last week I decided that this week’s newsletter would focus on how to improve base soup stocks with ease, while creating a by product that is multifunctional and outright delicious. If you are a vegetarian my advice is to refer to the ‘Broths’ newsletter, and use the onion broth. Alternatively, use the vegetable broth that is an often discarded byproduct of cooking chickpeas.
The thing I am excited to share with you today is a base pork broth. Below you will find one of the easiest and most impactful broths you can make at home.
A pork belly broth works in this interesting way. It holds fat, salt, gelatine and an uncanny ability to absorb and enhance flavours that it is paired with. Make this broth the day before, remove the pork and put it in the fridge. I eat the pork with rice and sautéed greens and a little bit of grandma’s chilli crunch. Having this broth base in the fridge affords the simplicity of just cooking vegetables,tinned beans, or some leeks and potato (as Mumma Wilson did last week) and without any effort transforming it into a soup with a depth of flavour that can run far beyond that of dried, jacketed, liquid or even a well made homemade beef or chicken stock.
If you want recipes for stocks they can be found in this newsletter.
It’s important to keep by-products and to think about how you can use these elements effectively to potentially draw out flavour in other dishes. In Emilia Romagna, when they are breaking down the white pigs in the creation of cured meats like coppa, strolghino, zampone and cotechino they keep all of the lower quality fat, skin and nipple off cuts. The fat is heated up and the skin and nipples are fried together and then compressed under the heat and pressure of the oil to form what is known as ciccoli - fried pig- skin biscuits. Lambrusco… and raviolo, alongside some cutlatello - forget about it.
Pig Broth
This is for the broth. The braised pork belly is more of an afterthought with this recipe that is slightly impacted by the braising liquid but not overly seasoned as it would be if you were to have given it a dry rub. If you want to mess around with a dry rub, do it - I would recommend something simple that won’t mess with the broth too much like some ground fennel, ground allspice, garlic powder, onion powder - play with it if you like but in all honesty I am very big promotor of the simply braised belly, death to the spice rub. Simplicity in one pot wonders is always the best, especially at home.
This is a soft broth. I know the idea of a pigs broth can be intimating or at the very least create the image of fatty, rich and overwhelming flavours. This is very different from that. It is soft and delicate and malleable to whatever you choose to add it to. It will enhance the flavours of any other ingredients when making a soup. The balance between the sweet acidity of the broth base affords it the complexity of a stock far more treacherous to execute. It is brilliant. It is easy. It is worth having a big old bag full of it in the freezer.
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