Scallops and Pork Belly

Okay, so I know its no longer fashionable, but a follower of fashion I have yet to become! I just like this combination and I really don't get to dine out that often so P and I are not over it and have made our own version of this dish.

We have made the dish twice this year already, once for our NYE marathon dinner and another dinner where I invited over a couple of friends from work with their partners. I am pretty happy with the result both times. For an entree for four we used just under a kilo and scored it into about 12 square pieces (3 each as above) probably 15 all up (and had those other pieces as extras if needed).

While at restaurants I have tried versions of this dish in which I would describe the pork as being slow cooked, however P and I decided we like our pork belly rind nice and crispy, so we scored the the rind into squares. Then we marinated the piece of pork belly overnight. We made sure the marinade only wet the meat and kept the top dry. The marinade was made of simple asian flavours of oyster sauce, soy sauce & sesame oil.

We removed the pork belly from the marinade then dried the top with some kitchen towels and rubbed in some sea salt. After that we roasted the piece for a couple of hours. First at 160 degrees celcius for about an hour and a half and then whacked the oven up to 200 degrees and gave it a burst of heat for half an hour. In the event the top is not nice and crackly, you can always turn the grill on instead for 10 minutes or so.

We used about 4 scallops per person and grilled them in a pan, we have also done them on our electric bbq which is another good option for getting them nice and brown. They didn't take long to cook a scant couple of minutes.

With the remainder of the marinade we put that in a saucepan and reduced it to a nice sticky sauce that we could drizzle over the final dish when serving.

Mmmmm... planning to make this dish again soon.