Week Nineteen – Dong Po Rou

Week Nineteen of my challenge took me outside of my comfort zone once again as I attempted to cook the Chinese pork dish of Dong Po Rou.
This recipe had been kindly sent to me by @InsaitableEater and is a dish that is traditionally served around Chinese New Year.

So I toddled off to the Chinese supermarket, (not that many in Kent !) and gathered up my ingredients.

I set about cutting my pork into squares of about 4-5″, now to tie these porcine parcels.
I reached in the drawer for my cooking string.., doh.., no time to go and get some so I crossed my fingered and hoped it didn’t fall apart.

I brought a pan of water to the boil and placed my pork in the bubbling liquid.

I boiled the meat for 5 minutes and then after taking them out patted them dry with some kitchen paper and brushed them with the oyster sauce, making sure they had a good coating.

Now to fill the house with some heady aromas.
I put the oil in my deep pot and cooked off the ginger, spring onion, star anise and the Chinese cinnamon.

Once the air was fragrant with the scent of the spices I added some of the water and added the pork.
Now it was time to mix the soy sauces and add them to the pot.
I turned up the heat to bring the pot to a boil and once I had achieved the desirable rolling boil I put the lid back on and reduced it to a simmer for 20 minutes.

Now it was time to add the remaining water and the yellow rock sugar.
I used two small plates to keep the pork submerged and I left the dish to gently simmer away.
After about 90 minutes I turned the pork so that it was skin side down to help give it that lovely burnished look and set the time for its final hour of cooking.

2.5 hours later I had a lovely yielding, gelatinous, (yes that fat is full of flavour and it hadn’t fallen apart), pieces of burnished meat that looked like they had been prepared in a China Town restaurant.

I set about reducing my stock to make the accompanying sauce and keep the pork warm ready for serving.

I cooked up some rice and it was time to finally plate up

The pork was so very tender and the spiced soy cooking liquor had perfectly permeated the meat.
It was very tasty and I was very pleased with how it had turned out.

This dish is not for everyone, the fatty cut of meat cooked in this way is a somewhat acquired taste, however a little is more than enough to give you that flavour of the orient.

As always I had cooked too much, and whilst the @InsaitableEater has an excellent suggestion for left overs I went for something a little more rudimentary.

I removed the majority of the fat from the left over pork and I heated the meat through in my smoking hot wok, (make sure you do this thoroughly!!!), once the meat had taken on a crispy texture I added some cooked rice and two eggs.

Some may say to remove the meat and make the egg fried rice, but I wanted some of the rendered pork fat to have coated the rice before I added the egg.

This made for a very quick Monday dinner and was a tasty way to use up all the left overs.

As always what follows is the actual ingredients list and method. It may look a little daunting to some, but give it a go tagging your images #52weeksofeatingmytl

Enjoy

Si
@twohungrymen

Ingredients/method

1.5kg of pork belly
7 fat spring onions cut into three inch lengths, plus another, sliced to garnish
3 star anise
5 slices of ginger
10g Chinese cinnamon
Soy sauce paste or Oyster sauce
200ml soy sauce
50ml dark soy sauce
2tbps Yellow Rock Sugar – it may come in a block so grind it in a mortar
200ml Taiwanese rice wine
2tbsp vegetable oil
800ml water

Serve with steamed rice and your favourite Chinese green.

What you do
1. Cut your pork belly into squares of 4×4 or 5×5 inches.
2. Tie the pieces with cooking string.
3. Bring a large saucepan of water to the boil and drop in the tied pork. Boil for 5 minutes.
4. Drain the pork pieces and run under cold water. Pat dry. Brush the pork pieces with soy sauce paste.

Pork preparation sequence
5. In a deep Le Creuset-style pan, heat the oil and gently fry the ginger, spring onion, star anise and Chinese cinnamon. Once it becomes fragrant, add the rice wine and 200ml of the water then sit the pork pieces on top.
6. Mix the soy sauces together and pour into the saucepan. Now turn up the heat to a boil.
7. Once it reaches a boil, cover, turn the heat to low and simmer for 20 minutes.
8. After 20 minutes, uncover and add the remaining 600ml of water and sprinkle in the Yellow Rock Sugar. The point here is to ensure the pork is covered by the liquid so you may need more or less water depending on the size of your pan. The pork has a tendency to float too, so put a small plate on top to keep it submerged. Cover and simmer over a very gentle heat for 2.5 hours. You may need to turn the heat up a little at first to get the simmer going again, but ultimately you just want gentle bubbles to caress the pork. Try not to lift the lid too much, particularly for the first 45 minutes. You may want to turn the pork after an hour so that the skin side is down which will help with the burnished, lacquered effect on the skin.

Aromatic ingredients; braising sequence
9. After the 2.5 hour simmer, check the pork. A chopstick should easily slide right through the meat and the skin should feel sticky and gelatinous.
10. Remove the meat and keep it in a warm place. Now it’s time to reduce the sauce, so turn up the heat and boil. You could also take out a few ladles of the stock and place in a small saucepan and reduce. It’ll be faster than boiling all of your liquid. The trick here is to keep tasting the sauce as it boils because you want it slightly reduced but not too salty. Really it’s a personal taste thing, but I think that the fatty pork can handle a slightly saltier sauce than you might think.
11. Now it’s time to serve. Traditionally, the string on the pork is cut at the table with some shears with the pork hacked into more bite-size pieces so that everyone can dig in. It can be easier though, to slice the pork into thickish slabs that you can easily pick up with chopsticks. Whichever way you choose to present the pork, drizzle over some of the reduced sauce, coating the skin. Sprinkle with some chopped spring onions and serve with a bowl of rice and a Chinese green like stir fried pak choy. Something fresh and green really helps to cut through the richness of the pork.

Sent from my iPhone

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Week Eighteen – Butter bean and cabbage stew

Week eighteen of my challenge and this week I have cooked a butter bean and cabbage stew courtesy of @coffeeshopchat .
Catherine – the real woman behind the twitter moniker, is a friend of ours from Ireland, and when she knew I was looking for recipes sent me this favourite of hers and her husband, Craig.
I must admit to lack of questioning on my part when it came to the ingredients.
As the title suggests, this is a mixture of butter beans and cabbage as the main part of the stew, but I immediately opted for red cabbage – maybe not what the recipe called for, but it looked good.
Anyway.
I assembled the ingredients and set about preparing the dish .

I emptied the two tins of butter beans into my oven proof dish and brought them to the boil.
I couldn’t get, (nor had time to make) tapenade so I used red pesto in my version. Along with this I added the vinegar, halved tomatoes and hot sauce and left it to simmer for about 10 minutes.

Now was the time to add the wonderful red cabbage.
I let this cook down before adding the breadcrumb and parmesan topping.

I put this in a hot oven, about 200 degrees celsius, for 25 minutes.
As a tasty addition Catherine suggests a griddled chicken breast, however seeing as I had some lovely Italian sausage left over from my holiday, I fried this up until it was crispy and added it to the finished dish.
What I was eventually presented with was a lovely crusted dish with a spiced filling of butter beans and tasty cabbage.

This along with the crispy sausage made for a delicious and contrasting meal.

I must admit that when I saw the recipe I was a little apprehensive, as was Mrs Two Hungry Men, however any reservations we had soon disappeared when we started eating – as did the stew, demolished over a couple of sittings, (made a great lunch the following day too !)

As always, what follows is Catherine’s actual recipe, give it a go and tag your photos #52weekaofeatingmytl

Simon
@twohungrymen

Ingredients / Method

2 tins of butter beans with water
Baby tomatoes (about 12 but more the merrier)
Knob of butter
Table spoon of red pesto or black olive tapenade (Jamie says pesto, I love the tapenade)
Dash of hot chilli sauce
Red (or white) wine vinegar (big old glug)
Cabbage
Breadcrumbs
Parmesan cheese
Chicken (lemon & garlic)
Salt

Ok so open the tins and put the entire contents (including the water) into a big pan (oven proof if you have one), add the knob of butter, bring to the boil.
Chop the tomatoes in half and then add them to the beans, turn down to simmer.
Add in the pesto/tapenade (if you have a good tapenade I think it’s tastier than pesto), hot sauce and vinegar, leave to simmer for 10 minutes.
Pinch of salt. You can mash it a bit if you like or liquidize a cup or so… but I tend to not bother all the time.
Then add in the thinly chopped cabbage, cook for 5 minutes, take off the heat, add the breadcrumbs and grate a little parmesan over the top, pop it in the oven to get a crispy top.

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Week Seventeen – Vegetarian Lasagne

I had been chasing this person for a recipe for my challenge for literally MONTHS – from the very start of the research process and I eventually got the reply saying, “did you want something for your challenge?” – YES!!!
Some friend.
And she is, so this week’s recipe for butternut squash and spinach lasagne comes courtesy of my dear friend @annadunphy
This is a dish that Anna has previously made for my wife, so I already had something to live up to, although Anna had already told me that I wouldn’t make it as well as her…, the gauntlet laid down.

I collected up the ingredients and set about putting the dish together.
Here I made my first faux pas.
I washed and halved the butternut squash, cleaned out the seeds, put it on a baking tray, oiled and salted it.
What I should have done was chop it up into chunks however I think I got away with it, almost.

I then stir fried the spinach in batches in a little olive oil and garlic until slightly wilted and put it to one side to cool.

Now it was time to make my béchamel. I had already infused my milk with onion, peppercorns and a bay leaf, so in a pan I melted some butter and added plain flour and cooked it out a little.

I then slowly added the infused milk until I had the correct consistency – and enough for the whole dish.
I then added the goats cheese, whisking it until I had a rich creamy texture.

Now it was time to put it all together. As I’ve already alluded to, I made a mistake in the butternut squash preparation, so I took the halves and roughly crushed them up in a large mixing bowl. Having left the skin on, (this goes quite sweet during the roasting process), I have a lovely chewy mixture that was going to be perfect for layering up. Anna uses dried pasta in her recipe, so I lined the bottom and put the first layer of butternut squash down. On top of this I placed the cooled spinach and then added a later of the cheesy sauce. I repeated this process until I was out of squash and spinach, adding a final later of pasta, béchamel and then topped it with the parmesan that I brought back from Italy.

I had already pre heated the oven to 180 degrees Celsius, so I popped the dish in and I set my timer for 45 minutes. When the timer went off I pulled this golden crusted dish from the oven and was immediately hit by the heady aroma of goats cheese. I put the lasagne to one side to cool slightly, so the contents aren’t so molten that it just delaminates across your plate.

I cut two hefty slices and served dinner.

The lasagne was tasty and quite unlike anything that I had made before. If I have to be critical about my execution of this recipe – apart from not chopping up the BNS correctly – I would say that I maybe hadn’t made quite enough sauce or added quite enough goats cheese, but I was still happy nonetheless.
This is something that I will certainly cook again, as well as experimenting with some of the contents and added spices.

What follows is Anna’s rough recipe, I have given some approximate weights and quantities, but these can be adjusted to your personal preference.
Give it a go, tagging your images #52weeksofeatingmytl

Si
@twohungrymen

Ingredients / method

2 x medium butternut squashes
2 x medium bags of spinach
4 x cloves of garlic
Sage leaves
Dry lasagne
200g of goats cheese
Enough grated parmesan to cover the top of the dish

For the béchamel;
Half and onion
Bay leaf
Peppercorns
Whole milk
Plain flour

Chop and deseed a couple of medium butternut squash, leave skins on so make sure you wash them.
Roast in oven until soft with some chopped garlic and sage.
Put to one side to cool.
Stir fry a couple of bags of spinach (do it in batches) in a saucepan with olive oil and garlic and again put aside to cool.
Make a basic white sauce basic and add about 200g of soft goats cheese, rind cut off. Make sure you have enough sauce.
To make the lasagne, layer everything up in a dish, starting with the butternut squash at the bottom. Use dried lasagne sheets – the fresh will cook too quickly. Finish up with a layer of lasagne and white sauce and cover with some parmesan before you cook in the oven.

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