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–+ servings

Ingredients

Yields: 4

Braised pork

  • 45 ml oil
  • 2 shallots - minced
  • 1 garlic clove - minced
  • 12 dried shiitake mushrooms - rehydrated in water for 30 minutes, then diced into 1cm (½-inch) cubes
  • 1 kg pork belly - sliced into 0.5cm x 0.5cm (1/4-inch x 1/4-inch) long pieces
  • 80 ml Shaoxing wine
  • 60 ml light soy sauce
  • 30 ml dark soy sauce
  • 30 g rock sugar
  • 1 L water
  • 1 cinnamon stick
  • 2 star anise
  • 3 cloves
  • 3 bay leaves
  • 2 pieces tangerine peel
  • 1 thumb-sized piece of ginger - sliced into 3-4 chunks

Rice

  • 300 g Japanese short-grain rice
  • 400 ml water

Extra sides (optional)

Method

Make the eggs

  • If you’re making the soft-centered eggs, please make them the day before as they’ll need to steep overnight. You can read the full recipe here. But I also thought to condense it for your convenience: Cook the eggs in a boiling pot of water for exactly 6 minutes, making sure the water is constantly simmering. When done, immediately transfer the eggs into an ice bath to cool down. Meanwhile, prepare a mixture of 60ml soy sauce, 15g brown sugar, and spices (1 star anise, 1 cinnamon stick, and 2 cloves), and bring this to a boil, then add the 240ml of water to it. Peel the eggs, and place them in a container together with the soy marinade, and refrigerate for at least 3 hours, or overnight.

Saute everything

  • Add a tablespoon of oil into a pan together with the minced shallots, and saute it for 2 minutes, then add in the minced garlic. Saute both until nicely browned. Then remove the shallots and garlic from the pan, leaving a light coating of oil in. Saute the mushrooms in the same way, for 2-3 minutes, then set aside. Add the pieces of sliced pork belly into the pan, and stir-fry for 5 minutes, until they’re slightly caramelised and light brown. It’s best to do this in 3-4 batches to avoid overcrowding the pan; remove each batch of pork from the pan as they’re done. When all the pork has been seared, deglaze the pan with Shaoxing wine, and reserve the liquid.

Braise the pork

  • Transfer the shallots, garlic, mushrooms, pork, and deglazed wine into a deep pot, and add in the rest of the ingredients—light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, rock sugar, water, and all the spices. (Alternatively, you can also add in the soy marinade you used to soak the eggs in; just reduce the appropriate amount of soy sauce and water. Also, you could wrap all the spices in a cloth bag for easy removal later on.) Bring the whole thing to a boil, then turn the heat down to low, and let it simmer gently for 2 hours, until the meat the fork tender and the liquid has thickened into a shiny, pork-coating sauce.

Cook the rice and vegetables

  • As the meat is braising, this is the perfect time to cook your rice and vegetables. Cook the rice your preferred way—in a rice cooker, or in a pot over the stove, or (god forbid) in a microwave. (Here’s a straightforward recipe if you don’t have a rice cooker. And if you do, you probably already know how to cook rice, so you do you!) As for the vegetables, I give my choy sum a quick, 30-second blanch in salted boiling water, then plunge them in ice water to stop the cooking and retain its colour, before fishing it out of the ice water and setting it aside while waiting for the pork.

Serve

  • When the pork is done, ladle your rice into a bowl, and flip it out onto a larger bowl so it’s shaped into a mound. Then, pile on your pork, and serve with the blanched vegetables and soft-centered egg. Eat for comfort.