Slow-cooked Pork
The Olympics are normally a good excuse to try out something new in the kitchen, but I suck at cooking Chinese. I therefore surprised myself by making slow-cooked Chinese pork the other day, with a slap of pork belly from the local butcher that needed eating and wouldn’t fit into the freezer.
There are no hard and fast rules about making this dish. Basically, the meat is rubbed with spices and slow-roasted for anything between 3 hours to overnight, with a final blast of heat to crisp up the rind (if it does, that is.) To help with the crackling, I generally score the rind (the butcher did it this time—with a box-cutter!) and pour over some boiling water, leaving it to dry out before rubbing in the spices.
Spice Paste:
2 cloves garlic; 1cm ginger; chilli flakes, to taste; 1tbsp soy sauce; pinch sugar; 1tsp 5-spice powder (star anise, cloves, fennel, Szechuan peppercorns, cinnamon); 1tsp oil
Work this into a paste and rub half of it into the skin, working it right into the scores. Put the meat into a hot oven for ½h, then turn down the heat.
Rub the rest of the spices all over the meat. Pour over ca. 200ml of water or stock. Since I had a fennel to hand, I chopped it up and rested the meat on top. Cover and roast slowly for several hours.
After the elected roasting time, you probably have a lot of liquid left. Pour it into a pot and bind it with cornflour. Rest the fennel on top. Now return the meat uncovered to a hot oven for ½h in the hope of crisping up the skin.
Slice and rest on top of the fennel and liquid. Heat through as required. You should be able to skim off a good deal of fat.
As the above picture indicates, this is best served with condiments—on top of udon noodles, boiled for 2 minutes (together with a head or two of bok choi, chopped lengthwise, if you want).
Tags: 'Round the World Recipes, Chinese Food, Cooking, Olympics, Tag Index
Denni