Tag: pork hock

Delicious Filipino Food at Kusina

Published on by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Kusina
Location: 3024 Hurontario Street, Mississauga
Website: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61558706068051&mibextid=LQQJ4d

Kusina is a delightful Filipino take-out joint with various meaty and seafoody dishes on offer.  I’m not incredibly familiar with Filipino cuisine, but the guy in front of me said that the pork hocks are the thing to order, so that’s what I did.

Kusina

There weren’t any labels on of the items on offer, but based on a quick google search I believe that this is a dish called paksiw na pata, which features slow-cooked pork hocks and banana flowers (which are the blossoms of a banana tree).  It comes with a healthy portion of white rice and costs nine bucks, so it’s a great deal.

Kusina

It’s exceptionally delicious.  Pork hocks can be a bit gummy if they’re not cooked well, but these were absolutely perfect, and were abundantly tender.  And the flavour was pretty amazing — sweet, savoury, and a little bit tangy.  I can’t quite put my finger on what’s giving it that tanginess (the banana flowers, maybe?), but it gave this dish a really unique personality and was extremely tasty.

Beast

Published on by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Crispy Pork Hocks from Beast
Location:  96 Tecumseth Street, Toronto
Website: http://thebeastrestaurant.com/

I’ve actually written about Beast before, on Serious Eats, where I raved about the Beastwich.  But I have to rave again — the Crispy Pork Hocks at Beast were so damn good that I felt compelled to bring this blog out of semi-hiatus so I could talk about them.  Immediately after eating them, I was hit by a powerful compulsion: I need to tell someone about this.  I need to tell everyone about this.

The hock — the part of the pig where the foot attaches to the leg, usually served as one big, unwieldy hunk of pork, bone and all — has been streamlined by Beast into convenient little cubes of crispy, porky goodness.  It has been perfected.

Each cube is maybe an inch-and-a-half square, with an amazingly crispy, crunchy exterior, and a rich, perfectly cooked interior of tender, decadently fatty pork.  I’m not even sure I can put into words how amazingly good this was.

Seriously, look at this and tell me you don’t want to eat this right this second:

Crispy Pork Hocks from Beast

That layer of crispy, crunchy amazingness is just so incredibly satisfying, and the interior is the perfect combination of extravagant fattiness and fork-tender pork.  You might think it looks too fatty, but trust me, it’s not too fatty.

It’s served with a thick, sweet variation on soy sauce called kecap manis that kind of reminded me of hoisin sauce; it worked amazingly well with the pork.  It also comes with two eggs cooked how you want them, crispy potatoes, toast, and a fairly generous pile of zingy kimchi.

I don’t want to over-sell this, but I think it might be one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.  This is not a drill.  Drop whatever the hell you’re doing right now and get yourself to Beast.  If they’re not open yet, just camp out and wait.  Because who cares what else is going on when something this good exists in the world and you haven’t tried it yet.