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In advance of my piñata-inspired Summer without red meat I decided to indulge a bit this weekend.

Pork belly is the cut of meat that bacon is made from, so it’s pretty fatty. Not something you’d want to eat more than a couple times a year, but all that fat imbues the belly with a rich and toothsome flavor. Slow roasting the meat makes it falling apart tender, and give the herbs and spices used as flavoring agents plenty of time to penetrate all the way through the meat.

The one down side of making pork belly at home is that it can be rather difficult to find. Until recently, the belly was considered a cheap cut and was looked down upon by snobbish foodies. Unfortunately, those days are long gone, which means it’s much harder to find. I bought a whopper of a pork belly (10+ pounds!) at Central Market. The butcher told me that I was lucky to get it– most of them are snapped up by gourmet types as soon as they are taken off the delivery truck.

If you’re grocery store has a butcher, ask if they can order pork belly if it isn’t something they regularly keep in stock.

I love pork belly but 10 pounds would make a MASSIVE roast, so cut it down into four two-and-a-half pound cuts. Carefully wrapped in freezer paper and freezer bags, the belly will keep in the freezer for a couple of months.

See that thick layer of creamy white fat? That’s going to become cracklin’, otherwise known as the most delicious thing you’ve ever put in your mouth, a.k.a. meat candy.

To flavor your pork belly, you can go old school with just salt and pepper or use your favorite bar-b-que rub or spice mixture. I used a tablespoon of sea salt, a teaspoon of coriander seeds and a teaspoon of fennel seeds. I just sort of bashed them roughly together with a mortar and pestle and then rubbed the mixed all over the belly, making sure to get it into all the little nooks and crannies.

Pop the roast into a roasting ban or baking dish– you don’t want to go too shallow because there will be a great deal of rendered fat in the pan when all is said and done. Preheat your oven to 45o degree and cook for half an hour or so, then reduce the heat to your oven’s lowest setting.

Cook the belly for six hours. I like to give the top one more bog blast of heat before removing it from the oven to make sure it’s deeply browned and crispy on the top. Switch the oven to broil for a couple of minutes, and remove when the roast has reached the level of burnished glory that you prefer.

Place the belly on a rack over the baking dish to the fat drain off and then remove to a cutting board for slicing.

Because pork belly is so rich, you’ll definitely want to serve it with some form of carbohydrate. A green salad with a tart vinaigrette is nice too, to cut through the unctuousness.

I was against using lavender in cooking until my friend Cherry took me to Blackbird Bakery on Bainbridge Island last year for their Lemon Lavender Sugar Cookies. The cookies were a revelation. The key to culinary use of lavender, I discovered, was using only a small amount. Too much, and your food winds up tasting like old lady perfume.

Since I just started the JMF Three Week Kettle Bell Challenge on Monday, baking with lavender seemed like a bad idea. Instead, I decided to pair lemon and lavender in a healthy frozen yogurt! The only problem? My Mama doesn’t have an ice cream maker. Luckily, when it comes to dessert, determination is my middle name. A little bit of experimentation yielded delicious results!

Ingredients:

1 large container of plain Greek yogurt (32 oz or 35 oz. depending on the brand)

1 cup lemon curd, home made or store bought

1 teaspoon lavender blossoms

To make a creamy frozen yogurt, you’ll need to remove as much liquid as possible from the greek yogurt. Line a fine strainer with a double layer of damp cheesecloth or paper towels and place the strainer over a bowl. Allow to drain at least overnight in the fridge, preferably two nights. After draining, the yogurt will have diminished significantly in volume and be very thick.

Place the strained yogurt, lemon curd and lavender in the bowl of a stand mixer and blend for three to four minutes. In addition to combining the flavors, mixing will incorporate air into the yogurt, giving it a better mouth feel.

Put the yogurt mixture into a plastic container and freeze.

 Between two and three hours in the freezer produces the creamiest yogurt, but everyone’s freezer is different, so test it after two hours. This frozen yogurt is best eaten the day you make it. If you have any leftovers that must be frozen overnight, allow time for the yogurt to thaw a bit before serving.

One of the things I learned in culinary school is an appreciation for shallots. Like garlic, shallots are members of the genus Allium, but their flavor is much sweeter and milder. In fact, shallots are often mistaken for a type of onion. They aren’t, but they can be used in place of onions when you’re looking for a more subtle flavor.

Roasted shallots are one of my favorite ingredients. I like to keep some in the fridge for stirring into soups, filling omelets and topping pizzas. They are dead easy to make– you don’t even have to peel them. Just toss them in bowl with olive oil to coat them and tip them into a baking dish. I sometimes throw in a few stems of rosemary or thyme just for added flavor. Cover the dish with foil and pop it into a 350 degree oven for an hour or so. The shallots will be completely soft.

To use, just squish the delicious gooey shallots out of the skins (they same way you would with roasted garlic), drizzle with the left over oil and store in a covered dish in the refrigerator.

For a quick weeknight dinner, I topped a store-bought pizza crust with roasted shallots and their oil, sautéed mushrooms and fresh mozzarella. The shallots are so sweet and flavorful that I sometimes leave off the mozzarella and just give the pizza a good grated of parmesan. Sublime!

This is my new favorite way to start the day. Last night’s leftover vegetables (in this case, roasted asparagus, carrots, potatoes, mushrooms and tomatoes) with a sunny side egg on top and a dollop of goat cheese. The yolk and the goat cheese make a lovely sauce for the vegetables.  Delicious and decadent.

Personal-sized cast iron skillet here.

We are harvesting several pints of strawberries a day from my mama’s garden and it’s my job to find something to do with all of them. Generally speaking, I don’t like cooked strawberries. They get kind of flabby and lose that lovely ruby color. But these muffins are just amazing and completely justify the cooking.

Ingredients:

3 cups all purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups plain greek yogurt
2 large eggs
1/2 cup safflower oil
1 1/2 cups chopped strawberries
4 oz fresh goat cheese, crumbled

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 375°F.  Line a muffin tin with baking papers.

In a large bowl, whisk the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.  In a separate bowl, whisk the yogurt and eggs together until smooth.  Gently fold yogurt mixture into flour mixture with a rubber spatula until barely combined. Muffins are actual best when they stirred the least, so don’t worry if there is still some unincorporated flour in the bowl.

Gently fold in the strawberries, crumbled goat cheese and safflower oil.

Fill each muffin cup to near the top with batter.  Bake until golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out with just a few crumbs, 25-30 minutes.

Let muffins cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then remove and cool for 10 minutes on a wire rack before serving. Yields 18 regular sized muffins.

Try these with a little lemon curd or even some clotted cream.

I still had an awful lot of strawberries to contend with, so I made another batch of muffins using the same recipe, substituting a mild crumbled blue cheese for the goat cheese and OH MY GOD they were amazing! Even the skeptics gobbled these up and came back for seconds. I know it sounds weird but trust me and give these a try.