Posts Tagged 'pork'

Mmmm! Delicious pork noodle soup!

Pork stock is a staple of many delicious asian soups, and in the case of ramen noodles in Toronto, it seems to be the thing that every restaurant gets wrong. I haven’t tried my hand at a truly authentic ramen yet: I’ll have to get some pork leg bones from my butcher as well as some skin to break collagen down from. Not to mention authentic fresh ramen noodles aren’t locally available to cook. However I decided I wanted to make a versatile pork stock with the resources at hand, and work on the flavours from there. By keeping my soup fairly generic, I was able to produce both Koreany and Japanesey noodle soup dishes, pork stock is really awesome.

The ingredients!

I started with a big pork shoulder that was onsale, a little bit of pork belly (for added richness, more on this later), fresh garlic (was far more potent than I’d have gathered by the bulb size), a cooking onion and a giant head of napa cabbage (which was the smallest I could get :D). I began by braising my pork shoulder, just to seal the outside a bit. This was just done by using a stainless steel pan, maximum heat for literally just 30-60 seconds per side to get a nice brown. Tossed that bad boy into the crock pot. Next, I sliced the pork belly into some thick strips, and then braised it also. I then filled the crock pot with enough water to cover those guys and watched the delicious oils seep out into the water. I didn’t keep any of the pan drippings, as they contained a bit of char from the outside of the meat.

Crock pot locked and loaded!

Next up I sliced the lower half (maybe slightly less than half) of the napa, washed it and chucked it into the crock pot on top of the meat. I chose the lower half, which is the thicker half to make my stock from, and saved the leafier half for later. I peeled and quartered the onion, tossed it into the pot. I began peeling the gigantic garlic and tossed it in as well. After the first two bulbs, I tried a tiny slice and realized it was a lot more potent than I had imagined (very impressive for such large bulbs), and kept the third bulb for another day. I filled the crock pot the rest of the way up with water, covered it, and turned it on low for 10 hours, and went to work…

The richness is absurd

When I returned home from work I was greeted by a delicious smelling house and a rich full pot of pork stock. Upon tasting the stock I was shocked by the richness. The shoulder itself was a very rich cut, I probably *didn’t* need to add the belly, but no complaints from me. I added a few healthy shakes of MSG and tasted again, and refrained from adding salt as I wanted some versatility later. We boiled our fresh wonton noodles (the closest thing I could find to ramen noodles, fresh, at Longos) for a minute, drained, rinsed and left them to chill a bit. We took the other half of the napa cabbage and sliced off a bunch of leaves, washed and halved them, then blanched them for about 30 seconds in salted water and drained/rinsed them as well. By doing this we’ll have two textures of cabbage in the soup: both the stewed white parts in the stock and some crispier leaves.

Beginning to stage a bowl of our Korean noodle soup

With the cabbage and noodles ready, we can begin putting a dish together. I took a few leaves of the blanched napa and a handful of noodles and threw them in a bowl. Next I took some ladles of the soup broth, along with the stewed napa, garlic and onion and poured them over top of the noodles. I then hand picked some leaner meat from the pot and put them in the bowl. The shoulder has some very fatty parts, and the belly itself is exceedingly rich when boiled. While I did eat one of the belly slices on its own, it certainly isn’t a texture everyone wants, and definitely not in noodle soup. For the initial recipe, I added a half teaspoon of gochujang to each bowl, which is a sweet/sour spicy fermented pepper/soy/rice paste, stirring it in until it dissolved giving the soup a red tint.

Koreany pork noodle soup

It was a deliciously rich soup, maybe even too rich, but the little bit of spice kick and sweetness from the gochujang balanced it out. I wasn’t 100% happy with the dish, but I was pleased with the stock itself. After the crock pot was cooled, I skimmed off the fat, removed the larger bone pieces, and tossed out the fat cap that had become separated. It chilled in the fridge over night, and I skimmed off the rest of the fat that had congealed at the surface in the morning.

For todays lunch, I packed some more of the leftover blanched napa and noodles to some of the meat and broth in a tupperware. I then added a bit of water, a bit more MSG, and a bit of light soy (not low sodium). Upon a reheat at work I was delighted that I had a very Japanesey, dare I say, shoyu-esque soup! Delicious and definitely even better the second day :)

Shoyu-style ramen-esque noodle soup for lunch!

Pork soup is wonderful, and it’s definitely something I’m going to keep iterating. I will eventually get some bones and skin and do a traditional ramen, but until then I’ll be happily eating these left overs for weeks!

I was pretty worried 3/4 through cooking, but this turned out delicious!

Tonights dinner started when I saw some really gorgeous eggplant onsale and picked a giant one up. One of my favourite dishes as a kid was a spicy eggplant and pork stir fry, I’ve attempted it before but never been happy with the results. However recently I’ve learned some new techniques for Chinese cooking and try my hand at this classic again.

I began by slicing the eggplant into broad slices and soaking it in salt water for a solid 10 hours. Generally I’d have even done this even longer, over night in fact, but I was too tired from a busy night of Yakuza 3 the night before. This technique removes the bitterness, and is generally key to doing many eggplant dishes.

Marinating our delicious meats

We took a pound of lean ground pork, put it in a large mixing bowl, added 2 tablespoons of light soy sauce (as in table soy sauce, not the low sodium stuff), 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 2 tablespoons of canola oil, a teaspoon of cornstarch (key in getting that nice texture Chinese meats enjoy), 2 tablespoons of water and then a few cranks from a pepper grinder. We stirred that mix thoroughly and left it to sit for 20 minutes. While that was marinating we began cooking calrose rice on the stove. Specifically we did 1 cup of rice, and a cup and a half of water, simmering for 20 minutes.

Blanching our bok choy

Next we took an entire giant head of bok choy and blanched it, though slightly differently than our nappa cabbage. We boiled a giant pot of water with a tablespoon of canola oil, a pinch of salt AND a pinch of sugar. We dunked the bok choy in for about 30-60 seconds and took it out and put it in a strainer. Also unlike our dumpling cabbage, we did not flush it with cold water, to let the insides keep cooking further. I took the time to slice our eggplant pieces up into strips.

At this point we had a pretty full kitchen! We began frying our marinated pork in a bit of canola oil at medium high heat (6-8/10 depending on your stove). When 80% of the pink color was gone, I tossed in the eggplant. The rice should have finished cooking a little while ago, so we can begin making fried rice. The trick to making restaurant style fried rice is two fold. First pour some canola oil into a big pan, then take our entire pot of rice and dump it on top. Scramble two eggs and pour it on top evenly.

Our fried rice is coming together

Now mix the entire mix of rice and raw eggs up, and turn the stove up to a high temperature 6-8/10. By mixing it thoroughly first you won’t get any egg chunks. This will require quick hands and a decent amount of attention, stir/flip the rice around constantly. Thankfully Eva took care of this pan whilst I tended to the pork. Once the egg is pretty much cooked onto the rice, add a tablespoon of dark soy sauce (the thick stuff!) to the mix. This will give it that restaurant color and flavour. Continue mixing it continuously while keeping the heat high. When it becomes crispy but before it becomes dried out (taste a bit!) take it off the heat and leave it aside, you now have perfect fried rice!

Bok choy enters the mix!

In our skillet with the pork, our eggplant and pork should be cooked, and there shouldn’t be too much liquid in the bottom. Add our blanched bok choy in and keep stirring it rapidly and two teaspoons of crushed garlic from a jar. Increase the heat (8-10/10 depending on your stove) and keep it moving quickly, make sure all the liquid leaves the mix. Keep cooking until the water comes out of the bok choy and evaporates, we don’t want a watery pan. Once the liquid level is down, add a tablespoon of sesame oil (pure flavour) and two tablespoons of sriracha (rooster sauce!) and keep mixing quickly. Chop some green onion (to taste) into strips (vertical) and toss it in too. Once everything is mixed in and theres no large amounts of liquid bubbling away in the bottom, pour the skilet into your pan of fried rice. Mix everything up and serve it while its HOT! The flavour is rich but not overpowering, and the textures of everything should be perfect (the fried rice won’t be soggy). An awesome experiment, and a delicious meal, next time I would probably use baby bok choy instead, as its easier to plate and eat :)

Our finished product!

I did one of my favourite dishes tonight, sesame pork. This was one that my mom makes frequently (UPDATE: and from talking to her, my suspicions turned out to be correct and it was indeed one of her moms recipes, although mine is quite different than both of theirs it seems). Like with most of my cooking, I generally do it to taste, as I find that more fun than using a recipe. The real key is good pork tenderloin, in this case supplied by Costco. To speed up the cooking I cut the pork up in the morning and tossed it into a large freezer bag. I added enough soy sauce to completely soak the meat, a head of garlic, and a decent amount of ginger, say 8 2cm slices off of a normal root. Shake it all up, roll the bag up so everything is saturated in its own juices and leave it in the fridge for 6+ hours. (Over night would be good too) Upon coming home from work, I added in sesame seeds (that I was missing from the morning), shook the bag up one final time before pouring it into an 8×8 bakeable Pyrex dish with the top covered in tin foil. With the oven preheated to 350F, I cooked it for 1.5 hours, checking on it every 30 minutes to stir.

The meat came out perfectly tender, with good flavour. Low sodium soy sauce would probably be a good change to make. The dish was served with rice and steamed heirloom carrots. Delicious.

The heirloom carrots are fun, they actually do all taste quite different. The white one is not a parsnip, in fact the yellow ones taste more parsnip like, while the purple ones have a parsnip texture. Amusingly, the water from the carrots was a dark purple colour, despite never coming in contact with the carrots!

Aside from the 30 minutes of prep work in the morning or night before, this is a dead simple recipe to pull off. As long as you don’t mind eating at 7:30 or so, it can easily fit into a normal work day. Total effort: less than an hour, total cooking time: 1.5 hours.