At Home with Chinese Cuisine (21 page)
Read At Home with Chinese Cuisine Online
Authors: T P Hong
Recognised as a man of letters and gourmand, SuDongPo (1036–1101) is a household name when it comes to pork dishes. There are pork dishes that are named after him. Among them, Dong Po pork is undoubtedly the best-known one. With his recipes of slow-cooking pork dishes, he was credited with making pork a popular commoner’s meat.
Mr. Su came from the background of a land-owning, upper-class family. He was a court official in his early career life but was banished many times because of his uncompromising stance against his political adversaries among the powerful. During his time of exile, he lived among commoners and took life philosophically. The rows of chrysanthemums, with the support of bamboo canes planted outside his cottage, were said to be the reason for the connection between him and the flower that symbolises a gentleman’s refusal to advance his career against his conscience and could live at ease with an uncompromised spirit.
Among the choice of pork, mutton, and beef, beef was the most praised meat in ancient China. By the Southern Song Dynasty in the twelfth century, mutton was the meat for the table of the well-off.
In a poem, he described the culinary status of pork from where he was in exile (in today’s HuBei Province). It was of good quality (imagine the organic pigs roaming freely in the countryside in twelfth-century China!), and the price was “dirt cheap”. Rich people did not care for it, and the poor did not know how to prepare it.
Mr. Su described how to achieve the heart-warming, ultimate comfort-food flavour of braised pork in one of his poems. He advised that the pork should be cooked at a low temperature, and with as little water as the cooking process can take. Allow it to cook slowly; the dish will turn out beautifully in due course. When you follow this method, the pork belly does not taste fatty at all. It has a clean, melt-in-the-mouth softness, and the skin has a soft yet springy texture. You can notice the presence of collagen that will seal your lips if you stop talking. One thing you might have noticed from his suggested recipe was that Mr Su did not mention wine for the preparation.
The story continues. Several years later, he was banished again, this time to HangZhou in the ZheJiang Province. As a local official, his hard work won him trust and popularity among the locals, and they gifted him with pork to express their appreciation. Mr. Su asked his servant to cut the meat up to give it to the workers’ cook, and to fetch some wine (the local ShauXing wine) for the workers to go with the meat. The pronunciation of “fetch” is the same as “braising” in Chinese. When the message was passed on from Mr Su’s servant to the workers’ cook, he thought Mr. Su instructed him to cook the pork with the wine. The result was the dish we enjoy today with its extraordinary, rich flavour.
In the West, braising is normally a two-stage cooking process involving an initial browning of the meat. Stock or water is then added, and the meat is cooked slowly until tender. Garnishes such as pan-fried onions, carrots and celery, and bouquet garni (parsley, bay leaves, and thyme wrapped in the green part of a leek and tied with a piece of string) are often added.
In China, preparing a braised meat dish requires the meat to be blanched in water first and then browned in the oil. The process helps to release surface fat and allows the meat to pick up colour and the aroma as the result of the Maillard Reactions. With the lid on, the meat is cooked over a low heat with sufficient liquid until soft. The cooking liquid is then reduced to a saucy consistency to coat the meat. But in this recipe, we are to follow Mr Su’s instruction to braise pork his way. Do not brown the meat in the oil. Use the ShauXing wine as the cooking liquid, with no water added.
There is a common rule with regard to the amount of liquid to add to the pot for braising. It is ideal to have the cooking liquid levelled with the meat. Too much liquid will dilute the flavour of the meat during the cooking process. Too little water will risk burning the meat. If you are faced with the need to add more water in the middle of the cooking process because the water has depleted so much before the meat is tender, it is an indication that the heat needs to be lowered. In the event of topping up with water in the middle of the cooking process, only use hot water.
For the best flavour, the pork is cooked in traditional earthenware called a sand pot. The clay donabe from Japan is a viable alternative. A 24 or 26 cm cast iron casserole is fine as well, so long as you keep in mind that the flavour of the pork will be different when prepared in pots made of different materials. Similar to the cast iron casserole, the sand pot and the donabe can be used on the hob in direct contact with the flame or in the oven. Traditionally, a latticed bamboo mat
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is placed at the bottom of the pot, with the meat resting on top to prevent it from getting stuck to the base after long hours of cooking. A layer of spring onions and ginger pieces are then placed between the bamboo mat and the meat; the herbs impart extra layers of flavour to the dish.
In the restaurant, the pork piece could be tied with straw for easy handling. The cooked meat is transferred to a small, heatproof pot for individual serving. It is then steamed over high heat before serving to bring out the aroma and to give the meat its melt-in-the-mouth texture.
This recipe relies on the dark soy sauce to give an enticing red-brown colour, but some brands of dark soy sauce are ink dark. If so, reduce the volume of the dark soy sauce. In addition, taste the soy sauce to find out how salty it is before using it. Some of them are incredibly salty.
700 g square piece of belly pork (ideally with the minimum of 5 layers of fat and lean meat layering interchangeably, about 70% lean meat and 30% fat) | Place the whole piece of belly pork, skin side down, in a pot with sufficient cold water to submerge the meat. Over a low heat, bring the water to a gentle boil and cook for about 5 minutes. Bring the pork out and cut it into 5 cm square pieces (weighing about 75 g each). |
10 spring onions 20 g ginger, thickly sliced 1 bottle ShauXing wine 4-6 T dark soy sauce 25–40 g crystal (rock) sugar salt and pepper stock or water (optional) For the garnish: Shredded spring onion green, fresh coriander leaves, blanched baby pak choy, or cooked broccoli florets (optional) | Have a heatproof pot or casserole ready, and place a latticed bamboo mat at the bottom. Arrange a bed of spring onions and thick slices of ginger on top, followed by the meat skin side down to fit snugly in a single layer. Pour in half of the soy sauce and enough wine to half-submerge the meat. Add the sugar gradually until you get a balance of taste you like. Over a medium heat, allow the liquid to bubble gently for the meat to pick up the colour of the soy sauce. Check the colour of the meat and adjust the quantity of the dark soy sauce accordingly. Adjust the quantity of the crystal sugar to give the cooking liquid a savoury taste with an underpinning sweetness. Do not use salt at this moment. Pour in the hot stock, hot water, or more wine so that the liquid is levelled with the top of the meat. Taste to adjust the seasoning on the light side, because the liquid will be reduced during the cooking, and the tastes will become more concentrated later. Over a medium heat, allow the liquid to boil gently; skim off the scum. Turn the heat down to let the liquid simmer gently for about 1 1/2 hours with the lid on. For cooking in the oven, it will take just under 1 1/2 hours at 160°C. After one hour, turn the pieces of meat upside down and continue cooking. It is done when you can insert a chopstick into the meat with ease. The liquid should have been reduced. Remove the lid and skim the fat floating on top. Place the pot or casserole over medium-low heat. Let the liquid boil gently to reduce to a sauce of double cream consistency. Taste to adjust the seasoning. Put the meat skin side up into a heatproof serving pot, a large casserole, or small casseroles for individual serving. For the individual serving, pour 1 T of the sauce over the meat. This dish can be prepared in advance up to this stage. Before serving, place the pot or casserole with the lid on in a steamer over high heat and steam for 30–40 minutes until the meat is piping hot. Garnish to serve if desired. |
In a book musing on Chinese cuisine, I must introduce you to the red-braising pork dishes for which the Chinese have an ingrained fondness. If you ask why Chinese love them so much, the answers will most likely be about the eye-pleasing, saliva-inducing meat of amber colour and red hue with the gloss from the reduction of the cooking liquid; the smooth and gooey mouth feel of gelatine converted from collagen by slow cooking; the blend of sweetness and saltiness; and above all the taste of umami that are all present in such a harmony.
Red-braised pork was my father’s favourite. The dining room became very quiet when this dish made its appearance because Mother succumbed to days of hinting and nagging. With his absolutely satisfied look, Father munched away while we stared in silence and wondered about the flavour. Before we children freed ourselves from Mother’s warning that consuming too much pork fat was not good for our health, nobody joined my father in his feast apart from my younger sister. She was my father’s shadow when the cooking aroma of the dish filled the kitchen. They held a bowl of steamed rice each and licked away the glistening fat on their lips. They were the first ones at the table and the last ones to leave. The bonding between them bore witness to the addictive nature of the flavour. If food is to be scored according to sensuality, I have no doubt that a properly prepared and attractively presented red-braised belly pork dish will score highly. And if the satisfied look on my father’s and my sister’s faces are a criterion to go by, red-braised belly pork will get a full mark for its desirability.
“Red” is the expected colour for red-braised meat. To be more precise, it should be an amber colour with a red hue. There are three cooking techniques to give the redness of the colour to the meat. The traditional way of producing the proper colour is to caramelise sugar (granulated sugar and crystal (rock) sugar are the most common choices). The Chinese call it “stir-frying for the colour of the sugar”, the equivalent of making caramel in the West. With this technique, soy sauce is redundant as a colouring agent. Mao’s Red-braised Pork is a well-known example of using this technique. It is said to be Chairman Mao’s favourite dish. As he did not like soy sauce but loved belly pork, his chef used this technique to prepare the red-braised belly pork for him.
Considering how much Beijingese love the flavour of fermented bean products (such as bean paste and soy sauce), there seem to be more of them who know how and are willing to practice this “stir-frying for the colour of the sugar” technique for the colour of red-braised meat than Shanghainese. In Shanghai, dark soy sauce is used to give the colour that tends to be browner. Further down south in GuangDong and FuJian provinces, red yeast rice (monascus rice, or HongQi, as mentioned in the discussion of YongChun Aged Monascus Vinegar) is preferred as an alternative to the soy sauce and the caramel. Here the colour of the cooked meat is much redder.
The Chinese make wet caramel by stirring gently sugar and oil in a wok over a low heat. This method of stir-frying for the colour of the sugar gives a more intense dark redness to the caramel. For 750 grammes of pork, we need 60 grammes of sugar and some oil. Place the wok over a low heat. Pour the oil into the wok, swirl around to coat the wok and pour the residual oil away. Put the sugar in and stir non-stop. When the sugar turns syrupy, continue to stir and be vigilant. When the syrup turns foamy, we put in the blanched pork pieces (that have been pat-dried thoroughly) straightaway. Continue to stir-fry and the meat will soon pick up the colour of the caramel.
Another method of making the caramel is by stir-frying sugar and water in a wok over a low heat until an amber colour with a red hue is obtained. The ingredients include 1 portion of sugar to 2 portions of hot water. For 750 grammes of pork, 60 grammes of sugar are about right. A wok is ideal for the job because the ingredients stay together at the rounded bottom due to the gravity, which makes stir-frying easy.
Pork, beef, poultry, and fish are the common ingredients for red-braising. Pork belly and knuckle with skin attached are the ideal cuts for this cooking method for three main reasons. The light colour of the pork picks up colour easier, and meat for slow cooking needs to have layers of fat to prevent it from drying out. Furthermore, a cut with the skin attached is important in order to benefit from slow cooking, because the heat and the moisture convert collagen into gelatine to give the red-braised pork its melt-in-the-mouth sensuality.
In this recipe, we make wet caramel by using sugar and hot water. Resist the temptation of adding the soy sauce if red-braising pork using soy sauce is what you are used to. This dish has a comparatively lighter and drier (dark spices) spicy flavour.
750 g belly pork (with layers of fat in between layers of lean meat, similar to how streaky bacon looks like) 60 g granulated sugar 120 ml hot water 3 spring onion whites, thickly sliced 10 g ginger, sliced 5 star anise segments 3 cm cassia bark 2 T rice wine salt and pepper cooking oil | Prepare the colouring liquid first. Have a clean spatula, a clean wok, and a jug of hot water ready. Place the wok over a low heat. Pour the sugar into the wok and mix in 30 ml of hot water. Stir gently and nonstop to mix. Observe how the mixture bubbles away, and then how the sugar turns into something like wet sand. Continue to stir nonstop, and the mixture soon will become syrupy. Be vigilant at this stage. Carry on stir-frying until the syrup becomes foamy and is golden in colour. With a foamy surface, it will soon pick up the colour of caramel. Pour the rest of the hot water into the wok immediately, you’ll have an amber-red colouring liquid. Stir to mix well and switch off the heat before the mixture starts to bubble. Leave the colouring liquid to cool in a bowl. Cut the meat into 4 cm square pieces and blanch them in hot water for 1–2 minutes. Ladle them into a bowl of warm water to rinse and pat dry. Heat the wok until hot. Pour 15 ml of cooking oil into the wok and put in the meat. Turn the heat down to low and stir-fry the meat for 10–15 minutes until the meat picks up colour and some pork fat has been rendered. Drain the meat in a colander. Heat the wok over a medium heat until hot. Pour 15 ml of the cooking oil into the wok, followed by the ginger, star anise, cassia bark, and spring onion whites. Stir-fry until the aroma of the herbs and spices is released, but do not let the spring onion pick up too much colour. Put the meat in and stir-fry. Drizzle the wine around the rim of the wok. Add the colouring liquid and sufficient hot water or stock/broth to be level with the meat. Once it’s boiling, turn the heat down, put the lid on tightly, and cook until the meat is tender, about 1 1/2 hours. Or you can transfer the meat to an ovenproof casserole dish and slow-cook the meat at 160°C for about 1 1/2 hours. Check after an hour and add some boiling water if the level of the cooking liquid is low. Insert a chopstick into the meat. The meat is done when the chopstick goes in with ease. Add salt and pepper to taste on the light side because the liquid will be reduced further so the tastes will become more concentrated. Reduce the cooking liquid to a sauce consistency that coats the meat pieces. Serve the meat hot, warm, or cold. Leftover red-braised meat can be steamed to reheat, or it can be reheated in the wok or pan with about 3 tablespoons of warm water over a low heat with the lid on, until the meat is heated through and the added water evaporates. |
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Lard
In China, animal-based fats were the main sources of cooking oil as early as in Zhou Dynasty three thousand years ago.
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Fats from the domestic animals such as pigs, chickens, ducks, geese or goats were easily accessible. It was not until the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 25) that plant-based cooking oils came on the culinary scene. Among all the choices, lard remained the preferred choice for its aroma, its viscosity, its clean taste and its ability to carry flavour better. Surf and turf is the combination that often appeared in fish recipes. For steaming the fish, small dices of fat were often added. For braising the fish, the fish has to be deep-fried first. Chefs from the old school prefer to use lard to do the job because it gives a crisp texture with a clean taste.
In recent years, the general public in China seems to have taken note of the message from nutritionists linking the consumption of lard with the increased risk of heart disease. The pendulum might swing the other way with some recent researches showing positive health effects with the consumption of saturated fats. Lard has been found to contain around 40% of monounsaturated oleic acid (higher than butter, tallow and most of the plant-based cooking oils with the exception of olive oils). Oleic acid can reduce the bad low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol in our blood and help to increase the good high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol. The lard lovers who have reluctantly given it up in recent years might start contemplating its renaissance in the names of flavour and the newfound health benefits.