There Are Pandas, and Then There Are Pandas.
And this isn't either of them! The Pandas we're talking about here, are watches, not bears. And what got me thinking about them (again) was a link posted this morning by @cm.rook who pointed a few of us to the very attractive (and not terribly priced) Yema "Rallygraph" Panda which, in it's most traditional arrangement, looks like the one on the left, but can also be had in the version on the right: The model on the left is a true Panda, while the model on the right is called a reverse Panda. The reason for that distinction is clear--Panda bears, only come in the first arrangement. Now at this point, everyone should be thinking about the most well-know Panda, The Rolex Panda, which is actually a Daytona, and among Rolex Daytonas, the most famous of which is the Paul Newman Daytona, which was famous first, because it was Paul's, and second because it sold at auction for $17.8 million (US Dollars). The story of that auction is well-known so I'll only...
Nov 8, 2019
2) While waiting for water to boil, I used to bamboo skewers to pierce the meat diagonally to try and maintain that shape. I didn't want my pork to curl up when cooking.
3) Blanch pork for 10 - 15 mins, and remove.
4) Start to score the skin with a fork, or a meat tenderizer tool. (Check out picture 3) You want to have made a lot of tiny holes in the skin, so when it cooks in the oven, the fat layer under the skin will come through and "fry" the skin.
5) Optional: Add some white vinegar or some form of acid to a baking dish, place skin side down. This helps make a crispy skin. Score the bottom of the pork belly, and add your marinade. I use a mixture of white pepper, chinese 5 spice, salt, sugar, and shaoxing wine. Let the skin sit in a marinade for a couple of hours. You can do this over night, and do step 6 onwards in the morning if you are planning to make this for dinner.
6) Remove pork belly from vinegar, and place skin side up. (you can use another tray, or just give it a quick rinse. You now want to sprinkle salt liberally all over the skin and give it a quick massage, getting the salt into some nooks and crannies.
7) Allow it to sit uncovered in the fridge for a few more hours, the longer the better. The salt + the dry air of the fridge will help to dry up the skin. The salt will draw out the moisture from the skin, so you will have to pat the skin dry before cooking. You can rub off all the excess salt too, as we want it to be as dry as possible.
8) Just to make sure i have score the skin well enough, I used my tenderizer to score the skin again.
9) Now, I forgot to mention that you'd want to remove your pork belly from the fridge at least 30 mins before cooking. It's gonna go into a hot oven for an hour, and to prevent the sides of the meat from burning, I wrapped it up tightly in aluminium foil.
10) After an hour of cooking, the salt has almost formed a shell/crust of sorts, and can be removed. I'm not gonna lie, sometimes it can be a hassle. Use a spoon of the back of a knife to scrape it off.
11) Brush some cooking oil on the skin, and send it back into the oven. Switch it from bake/fan mode to broil/grill. You can choose to bring the it up close to the heating element, but I just leave it on the middle rack. Watch the bubbly magic happen! This step can take any where from 5 - 15 mins, SO PAY ATTENTION. Eyeball it, and you can push it as far as possible, just before burning.
12) Let it rest for 10-15 minutes, and its time to cut! I recommend cutting it skin side down to get really nice straight lines of skin. If you try cutting it skin side up, you'd probably crack the skin in jagged lines, which is no biggy.