Pork belly canape

Karena and Kasey Bird shared this recipe from a set they created for Auckland Council’s Matariki Festival in 2014. It is particularly good because a little goes a long way and people just love you when you serve crispy pork. This recipe serves 6-12 depending on the size you cut your cubes of pork.

Ingredients

800 g	Pork belly, I recommend Freedom Farms (Main)
1 Tbsp	Horopito seasoning, see pantry notes below
5 sprays	Manuka smoke spray, see pantry notes below
2 cups	Watercress
½ cup	Cream
1 Tbsp	Butter
½	Onions, finely diced
2 cloves	Garlic, finely diced
50 g	Blue cheese

Directions

1. Heat oven to 150C. Ensure pork belly skin is well scored (ask your butcher to do this or use a very sharp knife or stanley knife).
2. Rub entire piece of pork belly with salt, horopito and olive oil.
3. Place in a tray on a rack and cook in the middle of the oven for 3 hours.
4. Remove from oven, turn heat up to highest point and place pork back in the oven, cook until crackling is golden and crunchy.
5. Allow to rest then spray underside of pork with 4-5 sprays of smoke spray.
6. For the creamed watercress, melt butter in a saucepan and gently fry the onion and garlic until soft. Add cream and reduce by half. Add blue cheese then once melted add watercress and cook for a further 5 minutes.
7. To serve, pour creamed watercress into the bottom of Asian spoons then place a bite-sized portion of pork on top.

Pantry notes

Look for Simon Gault's horopito seasoning in supermarkets and speciality food stores and manuka smoke spray from The NZ Manuka Egg Company at specialty food stores ornzmanukaeggs.co.nz.