A Cooking Marathon
Char Sui — courtesy of Recipezaar.com
I thought I’d make a pan of char sui tonight. I had a package of pork belly defrosting in the fridge overnight and whipped up a batch of marinade before going to bed. I threw the defrosted pork into the marinade and back in the fridge for the day. The recipe follows:
Ingredients
- 1 – 3 pieces of pork belly
- 1/4 cup hoisin sauce
- 1/2 cup soy sauce
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 1 tablespoon rice wine
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 1/4 cup honey
- 1 tablespoon sesame oil
- 1 tablespoon red food dye — this is very optional and is only included for effect
Place the pork belly in a non-reactive baking dish. In the meantime, mix all other ingredients in a bowl until combined and pour over the pork. Marinate for hours or overnight, up to 2 hours, turning the pork to ensure all of the pork is marinated.
I got so wrapped up in making the wontons that I forgot to make a vegetable, but I did put a serving of Bhutanese rice in the rice cooker. I saw this rice in the store a few weeks ago and thought I would pick up a package and give it a try. At first look, I noticed it was a short grain rice, but that it had a resemblance to wild rice. The taste was not like rice, but the texture was like wild rice which is actually a fresh water grass. The Bhutanese rice grew on me. It didn’t have a real rice taste, but the texture was interesting. I added nothing but a little butter and salt.
When done marinating, pour the marinade into a saucepan for later use.
Preheat oven to 375ยบ and roast the pork until done, about 2 hours, turning over mid-way. During the last 30 minutes of roasting, simmer the marinade in the saucepan, cooking it for use with the pork. It must be cooked for at least 10 minutes before using on the pork since it was used as a marinade with raw meat.
Don’t be alarmed by the blackened marinade that appears in the pan. There is a lot of sugar in the marinade which will blacken during the roasting process, but can be pulled right off the pork and has no negative effect on the taste.
I decided at the last minute to make fried wontons and that using some of the jumbo lump crabmeat I picked up yesterday was perfect for this on-the-fly side dish. While putting together the filling is not difficult, or time consuming, putting the wontons together and frying them is what takes time and effort, but the end result is so worth it, don’t you think?
Leave a Reply