This might be one of the more rewarding things I've ever done. In a previous posting, I noted the three different cures we put on the fresh pork belly. A regular cure, and to that cure one part of the belly had many more spices added and the other had blue cheese added. The smell on the blue cheese one, when the food saver bag was opened, was so amazing. It's such a natural mixture in my mind, pork and blue cheese.
After a rinse, a soak and thoroughly dried, the cured bellies where put into our smoker and slow smoked for several hours. It was a cold night. Bringing these steaming, smoking slabs of love into the kitchen was a pure moment of absolute pleasure. First by just the aroma filling the room, then admiring the color and the beauty of each piece. The fat cap was quivering and almost completely see-through. The flavors of each where extremely distinctive and special. Salty. But, each very special and hope for future pork belly adventures. The blue cheese cure worked so well, I can't wait to apply to other cuts.
One lucky customer got a piece freshly cut from a slab, still hot from the smoker and added to their appetizer of Scallops and Bacon with Toasted Blue Cheese Polenta, Balsamic Braised Red Cabbage, Candied Pears and Poblano Honey.
There's a place out there that has "pig candy", what a wonderful idea and treat. The place is called Lou. The pig candy is so thick and sticky with brown sugar it's like salty, crunchy sticky buns.
canapes.
Potatoes are peeled. The peelings are roasted and infused into milk and cream mixture to give a baked potato flavor. The potatoes are cut into thick slices and allowed to come to a simmer for 4 minutes, they are then rinsed in cold water and covered with cold water, salted and returned to a simmer until tender. This removes starchy gelatinous texture that come from mashed potatoes.
The potato puree is allowed to set before it's breaded in shredded potato and panko.
I think the addition of methocel will help this issue.
In another attempt to work with local farms, I came upon a farm in Friedens that listed a lot of items on the PASA website. I called and got a list of what they had. I was really excited to get some fresh pork belly. It turns out they only slaughter pigs once a year and that was this past week. 
