Last year we did a pork sandwich test, one with ground cherries was the clear winner. We’ve been waiting anxiously until ground cherry season to try it again. It seemed like a fun exercise to try to adapt the sandwich into a main course and practice some plating with it.

We decided to do pork belly and shoulder. The pork belly was spiced with Benton’s country ham, which is now about two years old, star anise and xx. The shoulder was spiced with cumin, coriander, white pepper, smoked paprika, cayanne, and molasses. I used the modernist cuisine recommendations and cooked for 48h at 65C.

I vacuum bagged a lemon with some Pectinex Ultra SP-L, a pectin destroying enzyme. I put some slices on the lemon’s skin, but I don’t think that’s necessary. Left out for a few hours all the pith and rind fall away and leave perfect supremed lemon slices. Maggie made a greek yogurt, mint coriander, lemon sauce. Lots of mint. Lots of coriander.

The runoff in the bags was reduced by about 50% and thickened with xanthan. The belly and shoulder were portioned and seared off on the hottest pan we’ve got. We realized that we had forgotten to make a crispy dark grainy cracker to put with them, so we toasted some triscuits until they were burned and smashed them up.

We had a plate-off, I tried to make a somewhat natural looking plating with lots of herbs. Maggie went for a saucy cross thing.

After waiting a year to try this again, we were just as excited as last time. The mixture of the pork belly exploding on your tongue then the lemon and mint and fruit salady ground cherries then dark spices doesn’t get old. It’s not a combination that reminds me of anything else. I really don’t use ground cherries enough.