Braised Pork Belly

For the second year in a row Chris cooked myself and some friends a fancy five course meal for my birthday dinner (New Year's Eve). He set the standards pretty high last year and he continued to impress this year.

The meals came from Ad Hoc, Chantrelle, and the French Laundry, needless to say we started prepping on Monday night. There were three different stocks involved not counting the other things that needed to be done well in advance.

The first course was braised pork belly. It was from Ad Hoc. We had had Thomas Keller's pork belly at the Bouchon in Las Vegas while we were there in June of this year. So when we saw this recipe in Ad Hoc we thought we would give it a try. Once again TK is pure genius. This was quite delicious.

Overall as with a lot of the recipes in Ad Hoc this recipe is not overly complicated and if all that pork fat was not so bad for you we'd probably have it pretty often.