Braised Pork Belly in Soya Sauce
Braised Pork Belly in Soya Sauce
One of my favourite meat dishes which I grew up eating when we had a maid servant who was Singaporean. I used to call her Ah Soh, and it seems that was a sign of respect. Anyway, it was much later that I realized the term of reference was what my parents called her. I should have used some more polite term.
Anyway she was an excellent cook and would whip up local delicacies some of which I would refer to as our heritage dishes. I call them “heritage dishes” because if we don’t cook enough like our forefathers do and if we aren’t chefs with a passion for local cuisine, then these dishes might become a recipe most suited for the archives, and labeled as “heritage”. Dishes that our parents and their parents brought from where they came from to our shores.
I don’t know if braised pork belly in soya sauce counts as a heritage dish, but I guess if it can’t be found commonly cooked in the homes anymore, it should count as a heritage dish. For example, the delicious bak kwa is considered heritage because nobody in their right mind would attempt making it at home. I might actually make an attempt though, just to see how tough it is to do so.
So I boiled this huge 漂亮 beautiful pork belly last Saturday and I threw it into the freezer, only to defrost it today for such a time as this – to make braised pork belly in soya sauce. It is quite simple to do actually, and because the pork belly is already cooked, making it now is purely assembling all the ingredients together into the pot. So easy.
Recipe
Ingredients:
Boiled Pork Belly *sliced thinly*
2 Chinese spoons x Dark Soya Sauce
5 cm of Cinnamon stick
1 cup Pork Stock
Handful of mini shitake mushrooms
Method:
1. In a pot of water, put shitake in to boil. After mushrooms are soften, discard water.
2. Add cinnamon stick, pork stock, boiled pork belly, two Chinese spoons full of dark soya sauce. Cover lid of Claypot and boil at low heat, stirring every few minutes to ensure pork slices are covered in sauce.
3. Optional: many cloves of unshelled garlic.
Serve with plain congee.
Bon Appetit!