Rillons - Confit pork belly

I'm not a vegetarian but I'm no blood-thirsty carnivore either. I'll happily much my way through meat-free meals without so much as thinking about the big hunk of chicken or piece of steak that I could have been eating. To me a well made vegetarian dish can be every bit as good as -if not better than- its meaty counterpart. That said, there are those times when I get an itch that only something rich, unctuous, succulent and meaty can scratch, it's times like these that rillons were invented for...Rillons -a French speciality from the Loire Valley- are a kind of confit pork belly. Chunks of fatty belly pork slowly cooked in there own fat with a splash of wine, lots of garlic and thyme until they they become succulent, soft and melt in the mouth tender. After 3-4 hours of slow cooking they are very hard to resist but the French way is to eat them cold, I ate mine with homemade bread and Dijon mustard. Left preserved in their fat they should keep for a good few days in the fridge and make a great snack to take away hose carnivorous hunger pangs.I used Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's recipe as a guide adapting it to my taste. This kind of food is hugely adaptable, there's no reason why you couldn't use all manner of different herbs and seasonings, although being French I would say garlic was essential.

Recipe:
Ingredients:

• 1 pork belly weighing around 1kg or bigger diced into 1 1/2 inch squares
• Sea salt
• Lard
• 5-6 cloves of garlic
• A glass of red wine
• Sprigs of fresh thyme
  

Method:

• Melt about a tablespoon of lard in a very hot pan and brown the cubes of pork until they are golden all over.
• Season the pork with the salt and put all the pieces into a roasting dish along with the garlic, red wine, thyme and the fat from the frying pan.
• cook in a low oven for anywhere from 2-4 hours until the meat is very tender.
• Leave the meat in the roasting dish until cold and eat with good bread.