Claypot Pork Belly

If you ask me what my favourite meat is, my answer is pork.

This is kind of predictable because I’m Asian and for some reason or another all Asians like eating pork. It's like in our blood or something.
 
There is a Cantonese saying that goes “giving birth to a slab of char siu would have been better”. Parents say this to their children when expressing their disappointment in them. It roughly translates to and means – “if I had char siu at least I could eat it, but you, your useless.” 

But why char siu? 

Char siu is one of many famous Chinese BBQ meats that you’ll see hanging out the front of Hong Kong style BBQ restaurant windows. There is also roast duck aka siu ngaap or soy sauce chicken aka see yu gai. So why would people say that they would rather give birth to char siu and not siu ngaap or see yu gai? 

I asked my parents if they knew where this saying originated from and they didn’t know. I had grown up hearing this saying, I’d often hear it on Cantonese TV shows and movies in family dramas. I then asked my parents why pork and not duck or chicken. It didn’t take us long to figure out why you would want to say “giving birth to a slab of char siu would have been better” and not siu ngaap or see see yu gai because duck is slang for a male prostitute in Cantonese and chicken is what you call a female prostitute… why? I don’t know, but don’t ever say out loud you are calling chicken or duck in Cantonese, it could get awkward.

This makes me think of the time when I was in Japan with my friends Karen and Crispin in 2010 and we were at an izakaya with some of Karen’s Japanese friends. We let the locals order and they asked us what we felt like eating which was met with “I’m easy, order whatever you like”. Karen’s Japanese friends asked what we meant by “I’m easy” and we explained to them that it means we will accept anything that they order. So they started repeating out loud “I’m easy” like it was some cool new English saying they had just learnt and then we realized that they should be careful with saying I’m easy because as with calling chicken or duck in Cantonese, it could get misconstrued and get awkward!

“giving birth to a slab of char siu would have been better”

Well this isn’t char siu, I already have a recipe for char siu on my blog which happens to be my most popular blog post but this is one of my other favourite pork dishes – claypot pork belly. 

This is the kind of dish I love eating in winter. Pork. Fat. What else do I need to keep me warm?

Enjoy :)

Claypot Pork Belly

(An original recipe by the Blue Apocalypse)
 
Ingredients

•    peanut oil
•    1 kg pork belly, thinly sliced
•    4-5 slices of ginger
•    2 shallots, sliced
•    3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
•    3 stalks spring onion, cut into 2 inch lengths (I only use the bottom third)
•    10-12 dried red chillies (soaked in hot water until soft and deseeded)
•    3 tablespoons oyster sauce
•    4 teaspoons dark soy sauce
•    2 teaspoons light soy sauce
•    1 ½ cup chicken stock
•    2-3 tablespoons Shaoxing wine
•    1-2 teaspoons sesame oil
•    salt and sugar
 
Method

Heat 2-3 tablespoons of peanut oil in a wok and fry the dried red chillies until the oil is coloured red and the chillies are crispy. Then add in the ginger slices and fry together until fragrant.
 
Add in the shallots, garlic and fry until the shallots have softened
 
Add in the sliced pork belly and fry until it starts to brown. Then add in oyster sauce, dark soy sauce, light soy sauce and fry everything together so that the pork is coated with the sauce. Deglaze with Shaoxing wine and then add in the chicken stock.
 
Heat up a claypot and transfer the pork from the wok to the claypot. Bring to boil, cover with lid and simmer for 1-1 ½ hours until the pork is tender and the sauce has thickened. 

Stir occasionally and add more water or stock if the sauce dries up.
 
Add the spring onions, cook for a further 5 minutes and season to taste with a little salt and sugar. Add in the sesame oil last and mix together just before serving.
Serve with steamed rice.

Here are some of my other pork belly recipes:

• Braised pork spare ribs with pumpkin
• Vietnamese braised pork belly with eggs in coconut juice (Thit Heo Kho Trung)
• Twice cooked pork (Sichuan style)
• Roasted pork belly - sui yuk
• Kakuni (Japanese Braised Pork)
• Braised pork belly with daikon
• Chinese BBQ Pork 
• Communist Pork (Red Cooked Pork)
• Baki Kecap (Indonesian braised pork in sweet soy sauce)

Fried Tofu with Salted Fish, Minced Chicken and Prawns

If I was a fish, I would be insulted.

What’s with all the rumours about me having a 3 second memory? Well, guess what? It's not true! Scientists have found that I can actually recall information for months. Just seems like an excuse to put fishy in a corner. Do you think I’m not aware that all I see is my own tail in my fishbowl?

I’m always the most disposable species. “I’m vegetarian but I eat fish - it's ok to eat fish because their brains are too small, they don’t have consciousness, they don’t have any feelings, they don’t feel pain...” I mean what am I? A swimming vegetable? 

Sometimes I’m made to feel important. I’ve always got a market price attached to me but then I'm overfished and the payback is that now the sharks are coming closer to shore and going after you humans (!) 

Some don’t like eating me because they think I smell weird, apparently I smell too fishy for some people. I might be white meat but the reality is that I don’t taste like chicken. 

People don’t like to eat cats and dogs because they are kept as pets and therefore it’s unimaginable that you would eat them, but no one takes offence at me being eaten and I’m a pet too!

 If I was a fish, I would feel underappreciated.

*****

Tofu is underappreciated too.

It’s accused of being bland and flavourless. People don’t like the texture of tofu or think it smells weird.  

I do not understand people who do not like tofu because I LOVE tofu and I LOVE fish too.

Especially dried Chinese salted fish. Some people might think that it stinks and it’s known as poor man’s food as it’s inexpensive, can be kept for a long time and a little goes a long way. Salted fish can also be an acquired taste but I’ve grown up on it and it provides a tasty hit of umami. It enhances the flavour of a dish, similar to the way anchovies can be used to intensify the flavours of dishes. Salted fish provides a distinctive aroma and savouriness to dishes that always whets my appetite. I tend to eat more of a dish when there is salted fish in it.

Salted fish is commonly used in Cantonese cooking and you’ll always find some variation of a salted fish and tofu dish at a Cantonese restaurant. 

This is one of the most flavoursome tofu dishes I know how to cook. It has become the default tofu dish for my family whenever tofu is on the table as my whole family enjoys it. It's the addition of the salted fish that makes it a hit, which along with the tomato sauce, provides a rich umami flavour.

(You can buy dried Chinese dried salted fish from Asian supermarkets)

 (Chinese dried salted fish)

Fried Tofu with Salted Fish and Minced Chicken/Prawns

(An original recipe Blue Apocalypse learnt from her dad)

Ingredients

•    600g box of tofu
•    1-2 tablespoons vegetable oil
•    Meat - 150g of chicken thigh + 90g of prawns (approx 5 prawns shelled and deveined) seasoned with ¼ teaspoon of fish sauce, ½ teaspoon of oyster sauce, pinch salt and pepper.
•    15-20g piece of salted fish, finely chopped
•    2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
•    1 teaspoon ginger, grated
•    ½ red onion, sliced
•    1 ½ teaspoon sambal oelek
•    1 teaspoon fish sauce
•    2 teaspoons oyster sauce
•    2 tablespoons tomato sauce
•    ½ teaspoon sugar
•    1 cup chicken stock
•    salt and white pepper to taste
•    ½ - 1 teaspoon of cornflour mixed with water (for thickening sauce)

Method

Finely chop the chicken and prawns with a cleaver so that it resembles mince. Add the finely chopped salted fish and season with a little fish sauce, oyster sauce, salt and pepper. Combine everything together, cover and refrigerate for an hour. 

 

(Chopping all the meat and seasonings together)

The box of tofu usually comes in 6 cubes which I quarter into logs. You can deep fry the pieces of tofu but I like to pan fry them in 0.5cm of oil in a frying pan. Turning regularly so that all sides are browned. Then remove and drain on paper towels.

 

(Pan fried tofu)

Discard the remaining oil from frying the tofu, heat a little vegetable oil in frying pan and stir fry the meat with garlic and ginger until golden brown. Then add sliced onion, sambal oelek, oyster sauce, fish sauce, tomato sauce and sugar, stir fry to combine and add stock. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Add in the tofu and simmer for a few minutes. 

Serve with steamed rice.

Here are some of my other tofu recipes:

• Steamed Tofu with Dried Scallops and Shiitake Mushrooms
• Yong Tau Foo (Stuffed Tofu)
• Tofu and Chinese Chive Buds Soup
• Japanese Tofu Salad
• Seaweed, Pork Balls and Tofu Soup
• Steamed Tofu with Minced Pork

Soy Sauce Chow Mein (Stir Fried Egg Noodles)

Whenever my family went out for dinner at Chinese restaurants, this was the first dish that my parents would order for us kids to eat in order to shut us up, while we waited for other relatives to arrive or as my dad took his time to carefully consider the menu items and ordered. Once we were seated, my dad would get the waiter to immediately bring out a plate of soy sauce chow mein, this is a Cantonese dish and literally translates into “soy sauce king chow mein”, as the soy sauce is the star of this dish. It was a bit of a pre-dinner snack, pre the entrees (although we generally didn’t order entrées). Us kids would have this dish all to ourselves and eat it all up as we waited for the main dishes of the meal to arrive.

Did anyone else have a similar experience to me as a child? Did your parents order you a dish at a restaurant as a snack at the start of a meal before the mains would come?

Soy sauce chow mein is a dish that is really quick and easy to fry up at home but worth ordering at a restaurant. Chow mein ordered from restaurants always taste better than home cooked versions because restaurants have huge stovetops that enable these noodles to be fried quickly over high intensity flames, and gives the noodles ‘wok hei’, which is the smoky aromatics imparted by a hot wok on food during stir frying.

The key to getting these noodles right is to undercook the noodles a little in the first step when you are reconstituting them in boiling water, so that the noodles maintain a firm texture (take into account that you will further cook them in the wok). Have all your prep ready and work quickly. A tip that I learnt from my dad for cooking noodles so that they don’t break is to use chopsticks to stir fry and toss everything around, it works everytime, guaranteed to minimise noodle breakage! I either have a pair of chopsticks in each hand and frantically toss everything together, or have a pair of chopsticks in one hand and a spatula in the other, and use both utensils to incorporate everything. The chopsticks also allow me to get between the layers of ingredients and noodles, and mix everything together well.

I like to cook soy sauce chow mein when I want something quick, simple and tasty for dinner.

Soy Sauce Chow Mein 

Ingredients

For 2-3 serves
•    ~250g fresh thin egg noodles (you’ll find them in the refrigerated section of Asian supermarket)
•    5-6 dried shiitake mushrooms, rehydrated and sliced
•    bunch Chinese flat leaf garlic chives, cut into 4-5cm lengths
•    200-300g bean sprouts
•    salt
•    Shaoxing wine
•    roasted white sesame seeds

 (Fresh Egg Noodles from my local Asian supermarket)

Soy Sauce Mixture

This quantity of soy sauce is more than enough to cook the above serving. I always mix a bit more sauce than I need, so that I have some leeway when cooking to adjust the taste. Leftover sauce can be used to cook more noodles (you may need to mix some more if you are cooking a large quantity of noodles) or refrigerate the mixture and use for a stir fry.

•    1 tablespoon light soy sauce
•    2 tablespoon dark soy sauce
•    1 tablespoon oyster sauce
•    1 teaspoon of sugar to taste
•    pinch of salt and ground white pepper to taste
•    ½ teaspoon sesame oil
•    4-5 tablespoons of water to taste

[Note: For this dish to be completely vegetarian, you can omit the oyster sauce]

Method

Add the fresh egg noodles to a pot of boiling water and simmer until just cooked (check the packet instructions, cooking time is usually 1-2 minutes). Drain noodles in a colander and run them under cold water to stop the cooking process. Drain the noodles thoroughly until dry.

Mix together sauce ingredients in a bowl and set aside.

Before cooking with the wok, dry fry a tablespoon of white sesame seeds to colour and bring out their aroma. Remove and set aside.

 

(Toasting sesames seeds in wok)

 (Toasted sesame seeds)

Heat some oil in a wok, sauté garlic chives until fragrant, add in the bean sprouts, a pinch of salt and splash in some Shaoxing wine. Stir fry the garlic chives and bean sprouts together until the bean sprouts are cooked yet still crunchy (30-60 seconds). Remove and set aside in a colander to drain any water that leaches from the bean sprouts.

Heat some oil in a wok and sauté the shiitake mushrooms until browned. Then add in the egg noodles, toss and stir them around constantly to cook evenly (using chopsticks helps). Spoon in the soy sauce mixture, a tablespoon at a time, and stir well into the noodles, add as much soy sauce as desired (approx 5 tablespoons or more) and taste as you go (be quite liberal with the soy sauce as this is what makes these noodles taste good). Once you are satisfied with the flavour of the noodles, add in the garlic chives and beans sprouts to the wok and quickly toss altogether until combined.

 Serve with roasted sesame seeds sprinkled on top.

Buddha’s Delight – Chinese New Years Day Dish

It is a tradition for people to refrain from eating meat on New Years Day in line with Buddhist practice, as a form of self purification, to counteract the effects of excessive meat eating during the year. It is also considered fortuitous for garnering good karma by refraining from eating anything that has been killed on New Years Day.

Buddha’s Delight is a vegetarian dish that my family always has on the first day of the New Year. Most people have this dish as you can include a wide selection of dried and fresh ingredients which symbolize luck and success, and it’s very easy to cook (the preparation of ingredients takes a while as you have to soak all the dried ingredients first but the actual cooking time is quite short).

This is a dish were every household has their own way of cooking it. Whilst this is supposed to be a vegetarian dish, it is not uncommon for oyster sauce to be used as a seasoning. The way that my family cooks this dish is not completely vegetarian as it contains fish sauce and oyster sauce. These two ingredients are pretty much added to every stir fry that we cook. Oysters symbolize good fortune and luck, so it can add to the goodwill of the dish even if it is not vegetarian. To make this dish completely vegetarian, you can use vegetarian oyster sauce which is a concentrate of mushroom flavours, usually from oyster or shiitake mushrooms.

Buddha’s Delight can contain up to 20 ingredients with each ingredient providing a symbolic meaning due to the way it looks or is pronounced. For example - bamboo shoots = wealth and new beginnings, cabbage = prosperity, noodles = longevity, black moss = wealth, shiitake mushrooms = opportunity, dried bean curd = blessings to the house, fried bean curd = gold, snowpeas = unity, carrots = good luck. So the more ingredients you add, the more symbolic the dish can become. But it’s good to keep it simple and have just a few ingredients so that the dish will have texture and subtle, delicate flavours. Be aware that each ingredient adds a flavour to the dish and if you add too many, I think that it just clouds it. I apply my principle of not bastardising a stir fry here.

My family always cook a big batch of Buddha’s Delight, enough to feed the whole family, plus some leftovers. It’s great to have the next day as the flavours are more developed. 

Buddha’s Delights

Serves - enough to for a family of 5 with some leftovers

Quantity - a wokful

Ingredients

•    1 Chinese cabbage, leaves washed and sliced into 5-6cm pieces
•    8 dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked in hot water for 20 minutes till reconstituted, stalks discarded and sliced (reserve the soaking water)
•    3-4 dried bean curd sticks, break into 3-4cm pieces and soak in water for 15-20 minutes till softened
•    box of fried bean curd/tofu (box had 6 pieces which I sliced into 6ths)
•    3 garlic cloves, sliced
•    3-4 slices of ginger
•    1 cup of bamboo shoots (I used canned bamboo shoots)
•    1 cup of baby corn, each corn sliced in half
•    ½ cup of dried black fungus (wood ear mushrooms), soaked in water for 10-15 minutes till reconstituted and sliced
•    handful of dried bean thread noodles, soaked in water for 20 minutes till softened, drain thoroughly
•    ¼ cup of dried black moss (fat choy), washed, soaked in water for 5-10 minutes till softened, drain thoroughly
•    Optional - handful of oyster mushrooms

 Chinese cabbage

This is how you should slice the leaves of the Chinese cabbage.

Dried bean curd

Black moss aka fat choy

Seasonings
(I added in the seasonings as I was cooking and adjusted until I got the desired taste, measurements below are a guide)
•    2-3 tablespoons of fish sauce
•    3-4 tablespoons of oyster sauce
•    1-2 tablespoons of Shaoxing wine
•    1-2 teaspoons of light soy sauce
•    ½ teaspoons of sesame oil
•    pinch of sugar, salt and ground white pepper to taste

Method

Heat up a wok, add in some oil and fry the garlic and ginger first until fragrant then add in shiitake mushrooms and fry until slightly brown (1-2 minutes). 

 Stir frying shittake with garlic and ginger

Add in the black fungus, baby corn, bamboo shoots and oyster mushrooms and stir fry together (1-2 minutes), add in a little of the soaking water from the shiitake mushrooms if it gets too dry. 

 Adding black fungus, baby corn, bamboo shoots and oyster mushrooms - everything looks golden yellow. Yellow symbolises good luck in Chinese.

Then add in all the cabbage and fry all together. Add in the rest of the soaking water from the shiitake mushrooms. At this point you can cover the wok with a lid to help the cabbage soften and cook or just continue stir frying until the cabbage softens (5-10 minutes). Throughout the cooking process, you can add a little more water (½ - 1 cup) if necessary, but not too much as the cabbage will release water. 

 Adding Chinese cabbage - don't worry if it looks like it will overflow as the cabbage will shrink as it cooks.

Then add in seasonings of fish sauce, oyster sauce, Shaoxing wine, light soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar, salt and ground white pepper to taste. 

 Adding seasonings.

Add in the fried bean curd/tofu, stir everything together and simmer until tofu is heated through (5 minutes).

 Add in the bean thread noodles and black moss, stir fry all together until the noodles cook through and soak up the sauce (2 minutes). 

Optional - Thicken the sauce with some cornflour mixed with a little water, if necessary (ie: there is too much liquid). Generally you won’t need to thicken the sauce as the bean thread noodles will soak up the sauce.

Serve with steamed rice.

Related posts

• Chinese Peanut Cookies
• Chinese Walnut Cookies
• Chinese New Year's Eve Dinner 2011

Chinese Walnut Cookies

Chinese New Year this year falls on Monday, 23 January. Around Chinese New Year there are lots of gatherings, visits to friend and relatives to exchange wishes for the new year and eat! The Chinese love a bit of symbolism, so a lot of the things we eat during the new year have a special, generally auspicious meaning. You will find a lot of sweet treats offered during the new year as they symbolize a rich and sweet start to the new year.

So here is a sweet festive treat to welcome in the year of the Dragon in 2012 – Chinese Walnut Cookies.

Chinese walnut cookies are a popular treat and it’s something that I like to bake for Chinese New Year as walnuts symbolise happiness of the entire family. Walnuts are also considered a symbol of intellectuality as their shape resembles a brain. Walnuts are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, which are an essential nutrient for the human brain. Anyone who has grown up in an Asian family knows how much emphasis is placed on education and producing smart kids. So not only do you get a rich and aromatic cookie from the large amount of egg yolks and walnuts included in the cookie dough, you also score two symbolism brownie points.

 Do you think walnuts look like brains?

Chinese Walnut Cookies

Ingredients

•    150g shortening (grated to make easier to cream)
•    50g butter
•    150g caster sugar
•    pinch of salt
•    4 egg yolks
•    1 teaspoon vanilla extract
•    300g plain flour
•    ½ teaspoon baking soda
•    1 teaspoon baking powder
•    1 tablespoon cornflour
•    1 tablespoon milk powder
•    250g walnuts (lightly toasted in the oven for 7-10 minutes until aromatic – 200g crushed and 50g kept whole)
•    egg wash (1 egg yolk mixed with 1 teaspoon of water)

 Tip: I grate vegetable shortening to make it easier to cream.

Method

Sift the flour with cornflour, milk powder, salt, baking soda and baking powder together in a bowl.

Use an electric beater to cream shortening with butter and sugar until fluffy.  Add in 4 eggs yolks and cream till smooth. Fold in sifted flour mixture, then add in 200g crushed walnuts and mix together well until it comes together and forms a dough.

Roll tablespoons of the dough into a ball and press lightly to form 1 ½ inch discs and place onto a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper (if the dough is too soft to roll into balls, chill in fridge for 10-15 minutes to make the dough easier to work with).  Press into each cookie a piece of walnut. Brush some egg wash on top of each cookie.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180C for around 15 minutes, or until golden brown.

Related posts

•    Chinese Peanut Cookies
•    Chinese New Year's Eve Dinner 2011

Braised pork belly with daikon

This is a dish that my mum cooks a lot. My mum told me that she learnt to cook this dish from my grandfather. My mum comes from a family of nine children and I imagine that this would be a very economical dish to cook for a big family as it uses few ingredients and is simple to cook. I only had to buy pork belly and daikon from the shops and all the other ingredients were in my cupboard and fridge.


The pork has a lovely flavour of soy sauce balanced by the sweetness of the daikon. The pieces of pork belly are wonderfully tender after hours of braising with the enzymes contained in the daikon helping to tenderise the pork as it cooks making it almost melt in your mouth. I also love the juices that are released from the daikon which provides a delicious sauce to spoon over rice.

Ingredients
• Equal quantities of pork belly, chopped into cubes and daikon, cut into 4cm chunks (I got approximately 1.5 kg of each)
• Peanut oil
• 4-5 slices of ginger
• 2-3 shallots, roughly chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, smashed 
• 5 small red chillies, sliced open with some of the seeds taken out
• 1 ½ tablespoon caster sugar
• 2 tablespoon dark soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon ground white pepper
• 1 ½ teaspoon of salt
• 1 tablespoon fish sauce
• 1-2 teaspoon oyster sauce

Method
Par-boil the pork cubes and rinse with cold water.

Heat peanut oil in wok. Add in half of the ginger, garlic, shallots and chillies, and fry for a bit until fragrant. Then add in the pork cubes and fry for a few minutes until the pork pieces are slightly brown. Transfer the pork to a 4 litre heavy based pot. 

Heat peanut oil in wok. Add in the rest of the ginger, garlic, shallots and chillies, and fry for a bit until fragrant. Then add in the daikon and fry for a few minutes until slightly brown. Add the daikon to the pot with the pork belly.

Over a low heat, add 1 ½ tablespoons of sugar into the wok and 2 tablespoons of dark soy sauce. Once the sugar has melted and the mixture starts bubbling, add in 1 cup of the water (I used the water that the pork was parboiled in). When the soy sauce mixture starts to boil, turn off the heat and add into the pot with the pork and daikon. 

(soy sauce mixture morphing into some alien embryo?)

Bring the pot to boil and then simmer on low heat for around 2 hours, stirring occasionally and mix everything together. As the daikon cooks it will release its juices into the pot so you don't need to add any more water.

(Before)

(After)

After 2 hours season with some salt, pepper, fish sauce and oyster sauce to taste. Simmer for another 10-15 minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary.


Serve with rice.

Here are some of my other pork recipes:

• Braised pork spare ribs with pumpkin
• Vietnamese braised pork belly with eggs in coconut juice (Thit Heo Kho Trung)
• Communist pork
• Twice cooked pork (Sichuan style)
• Roasted pork belly - sui yuk
• Kakuni (Japanese Braised Pork)
• Char Sui (Chinese Barbecue Pork) 
• Babi Kecap (Indonesian braised pork in sweet soy sauce)