A Look at Stewed/Minced/Braised Pork Rice (滷肉飯)

Braised/stewed pork is an absolute favorite of mine.  Even though I grew up in the US, I have always had a huge love for stewed pork with rice (lu rou fan, 滷肉飯) from Taiwan.  Every time I go back to Taiwan to visit, I eat this almost every day.  It is my go-to when out shopping or when I'm at home and nobody wants to cook.  All my relatives know that all I could ever want to eat when I visit is bowls of stewed pork with rice.  (Click here to see the millions of images of different ones.)

The most common meaty parts that people use to make stewed pork is often the pork belly (or bacony part).  The nice and fatty cut of pork that renders so well after stewing for hours.  Lu Rou Fan is one of Taiwan's most famous dishes next to their beef noodles.  So what makes it so good?  It's simply a bowl of white rice topped with soft and tender pork with a savory sauce.  It's not only available from various small restaurants, it's also all over the night markets in Taiwan too.  Oh yes, it's also quite cheap at a bowl for about $1-2 USD!  People typically have it just so or with stewed eggs or pickled veggies on the side.

From http://reviews.noobcook.com/formosa-chang/

If you're ever in Taiwan, try Formosa Chang's (Hu Xu Zhang 鬍鬚張), which is supposedly the best one.  I've had it and I don't know if I'd rate it the "best", but it was delicious nonetheless.  Another way to find a good Lu Rou Fan is to hit up a busy restaurant district and see where there are long lines.  Oftentimes, the small shops with the longest lines have some of the best, hearty meals!  My uncle showed me this during lunch one day and I could see they'd bring out the huge stew pot and rice pot to the front and just keep scooping lunchboxes of it.  And of course, when in doubt, follow your nose!  The meaty stew that smells wonderful definitely tastes wonderful!

My own renditions of it.

  

Enough about the Taiwan ones now... I've attempted to make it on my own many, many times and I just can't ever get it quite as excellently soft and flavorful as the ones I've had in Taiwan.  It's a hard recipe to master if you're really trying to make the best melt-in-your-mouth stew!

Here are a few recipes I found online:

• http://www.food.com/recipe/lu-rou-fan-taiwanese-stewed-pork-with-hard-boiled-eggs-497671
• http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/07/taiwanese-meat-sauce-recipe.html
• http://taiwanduck.com/braised-pork-on-rice-lu-rou-fan-taiwanese-style-food/

Each recipes talks about similar ingredients for creating a flavorful stewed pork.  My uncle in Taiwan cooks an awesome stewed pork.  He learned cooking from a talented grandma and he has his own restaurant in the Shanghai area now.  When he was cooking it one time, I watched him.  I was only in middle school at the time so I couldn't remember much.  The one thing I remember is that he cut up a huge amount of shallots and fried them in a layer of oil.  Then he scooped out all the fried shallots and fried the meat in the flavored oil.  Oh, it smelled wonderful!

While the meat can be ready in as little as 30 minutes, the trick is to let it simmer for hours so that it's very tender and flavorful.  Someday, when I perfect mine, I'll post a recipe.

Chinese Turnip Cakes (蘿蔔糕)

Today I'd like to introduce you to one of my dim sum favorites!  Every time I go back to Taiwan or China to visit my relatives, I always order these to eat.  Mmm!

Pronounced luo buo gao, it's a comfort food that is starchy and crispy.  Chinese turnip cakes are often available for dim sum in restaurants and often found as a snack on the streets of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and elsewhere.  It is typically served with a thick, sweet soy sauce.  It is made from shredding up turnip and mixing in dried shrimp, Chinese sausage pieces, and mushrooms to add flavor to it.

Making it from scratch is actually fairly easy but I always go with the store-bought pre-made block.  You can typically find it in your Asian supermarket's refrigerated aisle.  It's convenient and costs about $4 for a block (similar to the size of a tofu block) and you can cut it up into 14-16 slices of medium thickness, then fry it in a pan.  Perfect for two people to share.  As pictured, I only used half a block for a midnight snack.

I heat up the pan over medium heat with a little bit of oil and then just lay in the slices.  You let it cook for 5-10 minutes until brown and crisp on one side.  Then, flip 'em over for the other side to crisp up.  I also like to turn the slices so that they stand on their side and crisp those edges as well!

Sauteed Shrimp and Scallops

This one is an easy one, especially if you have pre-peeled shrimp.  The ones I had were tail only so once I peeled those off, I was pretty much ready to go.

Ingredients:
- 1/4 lbs medium shrimp
- 1/8 lbs scallops
- 4 cloves of garlic (minced)
- sliced scallions
- Hoisin sauce

The first thing you prep is to defrost your shrimp and scallops.  If you use fresh, great, but I use the conveniently frozen packs.  I let them soak in a tub of water until they are soft.

Then, I add vegetable oil to the pan and set it to medium heat.  I mince up the garlic while I wait.  Add the garlic in and let it sizzle for the fragrance to come out.  Then add the shrimp and scallops.  I like to neatly place them in the pan and then flip each one individually.  Once both sides are mostly done cooking, I mix it up with a spatula.  You want to make sure that the shrimp and scallops are dry if you want a good sear.

The last step is to add the Hoisin sauce.  I scooped about two teaspoons of it and mixed everything up.  Let it saute for a bit and then plate it.  Add the sliced scallions for  garnish.

There you have it.  Simple and flavorful.  This is best served with rice and other veggies to complement it.

Glutinous Sticky Rice

Mmm! There's a lot of yummy stuff out there but the food you'll always crave the most is comfort food. The food I usually crave is flavor-filled and stomach-filling.

A lot of prep goes into making sticky rice. You have to presoak the rice, prep whatever you want to add in to rice, and combine it in the end. I googled a rice cooker recipe and then combined all the ingredients in a frying pan. The style I'm used to is Taiwanese style but Cantonese style is great as well.  The most difficult part of making this is getting just the right amount of flavor.  Mine was still a little flavorless even though the soy sauce color came through.  Have to experiment with this one some more!

Steam-Fried Dumplings (Guo Tie) and Xiao Long Bao

An easy go-to to keep in the freezer are dumplings! They are actually quite quick to prepare and so tasty if done right. Typical methods for dumplings are either to boil it in water or to fry them. The method my mom taught me works wonderfully and it's so easy!

1. Add some vegetable oil to a heated pan at medium-high to high.
2. Layer in the dumplings so that their flat bottoms touch the surface of the pan.
3. Add in water to cover the dumplings a little under halfway.
4. Let the water boil until it dries out. This takes about 10 minutes for smaller amounts and possibly 20 minutes for a large pan filled all the way.
5. Once the water dries completely, watch for signs of crisping on the bottoms and take them off the pan when it's fried to your desired crispiness.

Five steps, frozen food, hot pan and oil and water. So easy!

Now, for the mini pork buns (xiao long bao), I tried steaming them as restaurant ones are always steamed. That turned out much harder and to be a lengthy process. I used the same technique as I did for my dumplings (since these were also frozen) and it works just as well for the xiao long bao! The only thing you have to be careful about is keeping the buns placed spaciously in the pan so that they don't touch each other. Once they stick together, it will tear a hole in the skin more easily and then all the delicious juices will escape. So, after steam-frying the xiao long bao with the same technique, I carefully transferred them to a plate. When I bit into them...ooooh so juicy and meaty! I even tried packing some for lunch after cooking them and it turned out just as tasty after coming out of the microwave. Success.

Mapo Tofu

The picture isn't that great, but at least you can see the mix of pork, tofu, and scallions. This is one of many attempts at making the famous Mapo Tofu. I'm not a fan of spicy foods, but this one grew on me. After simply looking up different recipes online and comparing ingredients, I've been making this dish quite confidently now.

Ingredients:
- about 1.5 lbs ground pork
- 1 shallot, finely chopped
- 3 cloves of garlic, chopped
- a good handful of chopped scallion
- one package of tofu, multi-use or firm

For the sauce, I've read many styles of making it. I was a little overwhelmed by the spiciness of prepackaged sauce packets so when I used them, I watered it down a little and add some corn starch to thicken it back up. Nowadays, I use Lee Kum Kee's Chili Bean Sauce (toban jian).

First, fill the pan with vegetable oil and wait for it to heat. When it is hot enough to make water fizzle, add in the chopped shallots and fry until brown around the edges. While you're waiting for the pork, you can start draining the tofu and slicing it up into cubes. Add in the meat and cook until there is no more pink. Once the pork is cooked, throw in the garlic and stir-fry until the pork gets golden brown. Add in scallions and stir-fry slightly. Add in the tofu cubes and two tablespoons of sauce. Mix well but be gentle enough not to break all the tofu up. Let it bubble for a few minutes if you really want the sauce to soak into the meat and tofu before plating and serving.

Chinese Lion Head Soup

In an attempt to make a hearty soup for dinner, I wanted to recreate something that I loved from one of my favorite restaurants, Hunan Cottage. My absolute favorite dish is their Lion Head Soup. Knowing that they probably use a great stock that I cannot imitate, I expected my soup (and the lion's head meatballs) to not be on par with theirs.

I Googled for a recipe and used the first one that popped up in the list because of the picture. You can judge a lot for recipes based on the picture. If it looks like what you want to make, try it. The picture for this recipe looked somewhat similar to the soup I usually have at the restaurant. I followed the listed ingredients and steps with a little alteration in the cooking style. Instead of boiling the meatballs directly in the soup, I fried them in a pan before adding them to the soup.

The end result? It was great! Granted, my lion head soup didn't have the same taste as the restaurant, the meatballs' texture and the napa soaking up the flavors were similar in that aspect. I was very satisfied with the results.


Ingredients:
- 1 lb ground pork
- 1 egg
- Cooking (rice) wine
- Soy sauce
- 2 tsp Lee Kum Kee oyster sauce
- 1-2 tbsp cornstarch
- Chinese-style or plain chicken broth (I used about 2-3 spoons of powder and added it to the water)
- Napa or a smaller veggie similar to napa (about 4-5 pieces depending on size, chopped)
- Salt
- 3-4 sliced pieces of ginger, minced ginger for meatballs
- oil for frying the meatballs (I used less than inch of vegetable oil in a small pan)

Meatball mix:
- Add ground pork to a bowl.
- Add in egg, a dash of soy sauce and cooking wine. I didn't add it but you're supposed add minced ginger into the meat.
- Mix thoroughly.
- Add cornstarch and mix.
- If desired, add some salt and other seasoning, like chives.
- Shape into meatballs. I made mine about 1.5-2 inches in diameter so that it cooks better.

Directions:
- Heat a pot of water to boil.
- Add chicken broth, 2 tbsp of soy sauce, and sliced ginger. Add salt to taste.
- Let boil and scoop any scum off the top. Add veggies and let it boil at medium-high heat.
- Heat a pan with a lot of vegetable oil to fry the meatballs.
- Fry meatballs til browned on all sides. Then add meatballs into soup.
- Turn down heat to medium and let it stew for 15-20 minutes.

If you want, cook vermicelli rice noodles separate and add in.

Congee

My favorite get-better-soon meal.

Congee (or rice porridge) is simply rice cooked with a little more than double the amount of water you usually use. Like a good Asian, I always use a rice cooker to cook my rice. The current one at home is a Zojirushi. Our family always bought the "elephant" brand probably because it just works well. We had one of the newer ones without the water on the outside for a while but then we switched back to the older style.

I discovered that I had to cook the rice twice for it to really be soft enough. This probably could've been remedied with just adding more water to the outside of the pot and adding more water to the rice itself as well. I ended up cooking once, adding more water for both, and cooking it again. By the way, congee can also be made on the stove top. It just requires more supervision so that your rice doesn't stick to the bottom of the pot or burn.

Pompano Filleted over Linguine

We made a bold choice in picking up fish at the supermarket. Normally, we don't cook whole fish at home because it's just a hassle to cut, clean, and cook. We picked a smaller pompano fish since it looked simple enough and my sister didn't want to really clean it so she cut out fillets from it. It was a tedious process but we did manage to get two larger pieces of fillet while the rest was smaller chunks shaved off the bone as best as possible.

I took it and patted the pieces dry, thinking we might fry it. Instead, I threw in some parsley, basil, and oregano to season it. Rubbing it down good, I added fresh lemon juice and a splash of white wine. Heated up the pan, seared it nicely over hot butter.

I heated up a little bit of my herb mix with butter to make a small amount of sauce to drizzle over the noodles. The result was, although the portion was small, a pretty nice pan-seared pompano fillets over some white noodles. (Asian-style linguine. Hah!) The fillet was so tender and the flavor hit it just right. A very nice lunch at home!

Chinese-Style Stewed Pork

My mom used to make some wonderful dishes when I was little but as we grew up, she didn't make them as much. In a time where things are hard for everyone, coming home from work, exhausted, means less time to really cook a great meal.

Since I'm on my "winter break" at home for the week, the first thing I did was go grocery shopping. After buying the meats and fish that I wanted to have, I went online to find appropriate recipes. Granted, I don't trust many recipes off the web, but I do use the ingredients list as an outline and go from there.

I bought a savory-looking hunk of what was label as "pork butt" at the local Chinese supermarket. Even if it wasn't really the butt, it was still pork and had great fat lines throughout. They cubed it for me and I cut some of the larger chunks down to size before throwing it in the pot. I sautéed almost a whole garlic in the bottom of the pot in some vegetable oil until they were golden. The aroma was absolutely delightful! From there, I simply tossed in all the pork, added in about two cups of water, poured in a generous amount of soy sauce, a little bit of sugar, and some cooking wine.

Keeping it at a slow boil, I threw in some chopped onions halfway and added some sesame oil. Drop in some hard-boiled eggs and you have yourself a great Chinese stewed pork.

The end result was great for my first time stewing pork. It was soft, flavorful and paired great over rice. What was even better was that I recycled the dish the next day, throwing in more onions and some white radish. I adjusted the water and flavor just slightly to accommodate but the result was still great. This time, I paired it with noodles instead. Mouth-watering!