Olive Oil Poached Pork Belly

As a tribute to the Hawaii Food and Wine Festival 2013, I had to create my own dish this past weekend, an olive oil poached pork belly. Though the Love for the Land event stressed a farm to table approach, I'm pretty sure the slab of belly I purchased wasn't Shinsato Farms. Oh well, I did purchase it from Foodland which is the only local supermarket chain. First cured for 2 days in brown sugar, smoked salt, garlic and onion powders and various dried herbs then slow cooked in olive oil for 6 hours (and yes, I did strain and save the oil for the next batch).

We sampled this with both a 2003 Bert Simon Auslese Riesling (which the Mrs loved)

And a 2009 Passopisciaro IGT from Sicily

Now I just gotta perfect crisping the skin without drying out that luscious meat...