Brandon Bundy, Julep’s executive chef, spent his boyhood years on a farm in Drake’s Branch, about 75 miles southwest of Richmond. “It was very rural,” he recalls. “We didn’t even have a fast food restaurant in the county ‘til I was 14.”
Today, Bundy wants to share the tastes he grew up with. “We always had fresh tomatoes, corn, squash and cucumbers,” he says. “We had an apple tree in the yard, a cherry tree…persimmons. Cherries, to me, were this great, flavorful, somewhat sour taste, versus the big black, kinda sweet, kinda flavorless things you get at the grocery store.”
Bundy feels like a lot of people are out of touch with what food tastes like, or what it used to taste like, anyway. He’s passionate about introducing diners to those flavors of days gone by and says that he tries to use at least one local ingredient in each dish he prepares. To capture those flavors, Bundy will use, when possible, heirloom products that “taste the way food tasted 200 years ago,” he says.
Bundy’s love for the fresh, flavorful foods that he grew up with makes for a perfect marriage in a restaurant that has, for years, delighted Richmonders with true Southern cuisine.
For the Heritage Pork dish, which he prepared for our visit, he starts with Berkshire pork – a breed that dates back some 400 years. The pork sits on a bed of Hoppin’ John, which is also known as Carolina Peas and Rice. Bundy uses Carolina Gold rice, the granddaddy of long-grain rice in America, from Anson Mills in South Carolina. The variety of black-eyed peas that he uses is, he says, the great grandfather of the black-eyed peas we’re familiar with today. “It’s more flavorful than one could imagine.”
Here is Chef Brandon Bundy’s recipe for his Braised Heritage Pork. For best results, enjoy this delicious dish at Julep’s Restaurant located at 420 E. Grace Street.
Braised Heritage Pork
4 servings
RICE
2 cups rice, rinsed
2 quarts water
1 fresh bay leaf
1 Tablespoon salt
1 Tablespoon butter
RED ISLAND PEAS
½ cup dry red island peas
1 quart water
1 pint stock, pork preferably
½ small Vidalia onion, small diced
½ carrot, small diced
1 celery stalk, small diced
2 garlic gloves, minced
1 bay leaf
3 sprigs thyme
½ jalapeno, minced
PORK
1 ½ pound boneless pork shoulder, preferably a heritage breed. (We use pork from Black Boar Farms, which sells at the South of the James market every Saturday.)
½ pound pork belly
½ carrot, rough chopped
½ onion, rough chopped
1 celery stalk, rough chopped
2 tablespoon tomato paste
3 garlic cloves, smashed
2 bay leaf
2 teaspoons peppercorns
1 pint white wine
1 quart stock, preferably pork
Salt & pepper
For the rice:
Preheat oven to 325. Bring water, bay, and salt to a boil. Meanwhile, rinse rice thoroughly to wash off starch; this will keep the rice from being sticky. Add rinsed rice to boiling water, cook for approximately 4 minutes. The rice should be just barely cooked through. Drain, spread on a sheet pan with butter, place in oven for 7 minutes
For the peas:
Let peas soak in water at least 8 hours, preferably overnight. Tie the thyme and bay with kitchen twine for easy removal later. Place soaked, drained peas into a pot with all other ingredients and bring to a simmer. Cook roughly 30 min, until beans are cooked through
For the pork:
Cut pork shoulder so that the chunk of meat opens up into a fairly rectangular piece of meat, relatively the same thickness throughout. Cut pork belly into a cubed strip. Wrap the pork belly with the shoulder in a way where the belly is in the center and the shoulder fully wraps around the belly. Tie with kitchen twine as you would a roast to ensure it holds the circular shape throughout the cooking process. ALTERNATIVELY, use a 2-pound boneless pork shoulder and disregard the part about the pork belly, but it is still recommended you tie as if it were a roast. The end product will be very similar, just not as rich. Salt and pepper the shoulder heavily, and sear in a heavy bottom pan on all sides, then place in a roasting pan. Add the rough chopped veggies in the same pan the pork was in. Brown veggies, then coat with tomato paste. Deglaze with the white wine, then add to the roasting pan. Add stock to roasting pan, cover tightly with foil, and roast in oven at 325 degrees for 4 hours. Remove pan from oven; let cool; and place in refrigerator overnight. (This allows the juices to settle into the meat and lets the fats congeal for easy portioning later.) Remove twine from pork and cut into 4 equal portions, about 7-8 ounces.
To plate:
In a large, heavy-bottom pan, heat up just enough bacon fat (or oil) to cover bottom of the pan, then place portioned pork into pan. Let the pork sear for about 90 seconds over medium heat, until the face is caramelized, then flip and reduce heat to medium-low. Cook for 5 minutes. Spoon rice into bottom of bowl, then spoon peas over rice with cooking liquid. Place the pork shoulder on top. A dash of hot sauce or barbeque sauce pairs great with this dish.
