Eat: Need Some Greens? Then Eat this Pork Belly

Sam Kaplan for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Suzanne Lenzer. Prop Stylist: Deborah Williams

Since opening nearly 20 years ago, St. John, Fergus Henderson's famous nose-to-tail restaurant in London, has developed a justifiable reputation for using underappreciated parts of many different types of animals (rolled pig's spleen, anyone?). Henderson also helped popularize serving unusual vegetables and vegetables in unusual forms. I remember ordering "English peas" and watching a kitchen worker reach into a crate, pile a couple of handfuls of unshelled peas onto a plate and send them to the table.

I still visit St. John on most visits to London, and on a trip last year I ordered crispy pig's cheek with dandelions, about as representative a dish as the restaurant offers. It was sensational: crunchy, fat-drenched croutons, hard crackling, moist, salty meat and superbitter greens with a powerful, caper-laden dressing. When I got home, I emailed Fergus — with whom I've cooked — and wrote, basically, Tell me how to do this. His reply:

Hi Mark,

Take a fatty pig's cheek with skin on, confit, place on a piece of bread and pop it in the oven to crisp up. The bread will sup up the fat. Then chop up cheek and toast, mix with bitter dandelion leaves and dress with a mustardy vinaigrette and capers. As easy as that.

Best,

Fergus

I'm pretty good at interpreting chef-ese, but I needed more guidance than this, so on my next trip to London, I asked Chris Gillard, St. John's head chef, to walk me through the procedure, which he kindly did.

As it turns out, preparing this dish pretty much is "as easy as that" — except for the shopping. Back at home, the challenge was procuring a skin-on pig cheek and some lard. (Lard can always be replaced by duck fat — though that can be expensive — or good oil.) I ultimately got both from Flying Pigs Farm in upstate New York.

Nevertheless, the cooking is straightforward, if time-consuming, and even when made by amateurs, the dish is impressive. It needed to be tweaked, though, for those (many) times when a pig's cheek isn't to be found.

I've used turkey as a substitute for pork before — they're not dissimilar as eating experiences go — so I figured that the thigh might fill in nicely for the more difficult-to-find and expensive cheek. I'm happy to report that it does.

Fergus doesn't approve of this substitution, but I think that turkey thigh qualifies as an underappreciated cut of meat. (Pork belly isn't bad treated like this, either.) Here's the adapted recipe; made with cheek or thigh, it's a beauty.

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