Fried rice with crispy honey pork belly

Ingredients for 4 servings:

• 1 kg pork belly, boneless, not too fatty
• 1 tbsp honey, liquid
• 2 tbsp soy sauce, light
• 1 tsp sesame oil, roasted
• 250 g rice, basmati or fragrant rice
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 piece(s) ginger, thumb-sized
• 1 stalk(s) leek, approx. 250 g
• 200 g mushrooms, shiitake
• 250 g sugar snap peas
• 2 chili peppers, red
• 1 red bell pepper(s)
• 100 g soy sprouts, fresh
• Soy sauce, light
• Oil (peanut oil) for frying

Instructions

Working time approx. 40 minutes; Total time approx. 40 minutes

Make cross-shaped cuts in the rind of the pork belly with a sharp knife at intervals of about 1 cm. Season with salt and pepper. Pour about 1 cm of water into a metal roasting pan and roast the pork belly, rind-side down, at 175°C (top and bottom heat) for about 1 hour. Then turn it over and roast for another hour, until really tender. Add the basmati rice and 400 ml of water, bring to a boil briefly, and simmer over very low heat for about 20 minutes. Finely dice the garlic and ginger. Halve the leek lengthwise and cut into fine strips, do the same with the bell pepper, roughly chop the mushrooms, and halve the snow peas. Also finely slice the chili peppers. If you prefer spicier food, you can leave the seeds in; otherwise, remove the membranes and seeds. Before you start frying the vegetables, fry the rice in a little peanut oil. If you have a non-stick wok, that will work too, but mine doesn’t work so well. So I use a non-stick pan and fry the rice until it starts to brown and become slightly crispy. Set the rice aside. Mix together the sesame oil, honey, and soy sauce and brush the pork belly crust with it. Place the belly under the grill and grill until crispy. Heat a little peanut oil in the wok and briefly fry the garlic and ginger, leek, mushrooms, snow peas, and bell pepper, one after the other. Season the vegetables with the soy sauce and stir in the rice. Only at the very end are the sprouts stirred in and heated briefly again. Cut the pork belly into thin slices and arrange them on top of the vegetable rice to serve. The spicy sauce that formed during frying is poured over the rice at the end.