Next at Home: Tour of Thailand: Practice Tom Yam

Bottom line, this might be the most labor intensive dish I've made in my ten years of cooking seriously. Portions of this dish had been in process since Tuesday.

I actually time this well.  This bad boy came in on Tuesday and I had to get started right away in order to pull this dish off this weekend.  This is a 13 pound pork belly that still had the rib cage. 

From the whole belly I broke off about a 1/2 pound section and prepared it for the cure which included canola oil, lemongrass, coriander, fennel, green cardamom, salt, sugar and thai chiles.  All of the ingredients except for the pork belly got mixed together to for the cure and then covered the belly until Saturday. 

This is the completed cure.

And here the belly is ready to go into the fridge.

Now that the pork belly was in the cure it was time to start the stock.  Two pigs feet when into five liters of water along with four pork shanks and simmered for 10, count them 10 hours.

This is the stock about halfway through the cooking process.

The stock after ten hours, notice how the shanks have broken down completely.

I strained the broth through a colander and let it sit overnight because the soup was still not done cooking.

 Next day it was time to take the soup to the next stage.  Here we have the pork stock, mushrooms, shallots, pepper, coriander, leeks, carrots, tomatoes and garlic. 

I put everything together in a stock pot and simmered it all together for another four hours.

While the soup came to temp it was time to deal with the pork belly that had been in the fridge for four days.  I pulled it out, rinsed it off and this is what it looked like. 

I cut off a small piece from the cured belly and vacuum sealed the portion and cooked it sous vide for four hours at 194 degrees.

Here is the soup after having cooked for about two hours.

After four hours I strained the remainder and this is what it looked like.

The final step of the soup was what was called the fresh infusion.  This is the soup based combined with salt, palm sugar, fish sauce, dried thai chiles, lemongrass, limes, basil, ginger, lard, garlic, galangal, kafir lime leaves and cilantro.

I combined everything into a stock pot and let it simmer for another 30 minutes.  Keep in mind this soup was 14 1/2 hours in the making.  Once the soup had simmered I let it cool to room temperature and set in the fridge overnight to allow the flavors meld. 

It's finally eating time, I prepped the garnishes first, tomato, jalapeno, thai chiles, mushrooms, galangal, garlic and shallots.

I cut the cooked and cooled pork belly into bite size pieces and pan fried them until crispy on all sides.

The completed, seared pork belly.

While the pork was being seared I heated up the soup and portioned out a half a cup for service.

Now that everything was prepped are started plating.  At the bottom of the bowl I put a slice of tomato and then topped that with the pieces of pork belly and then added the mushrooms, garlic, galangal, shallots, dried thai chiles and micro basil.

I poured the soup into the bowl table side just like they did at the restaurant.  People, I have to tell you it was a lot of work, but holy shit, was this ever delicious.  Perfect amount of spice and a bit of sour.  I'm so glad I made this dish.