Chinese Slow-Cooked Pork

Thanks to a fantastic half-price offer at Morrisons I did something which is quite rare and bought a joint of meat.  Pork shoulder is a cut I love cooking as it tenderises so well when you have a few hours spare and at £2 something a kilo I thought I would treat Fran to something special ;)

Chinese Slow-Cooked Pork

When we are not talking about food we are generally talking about our fast-approaching little soiree to Switzerland (hence the curiously placed guide book above).   In a few weeks we will be no doubt trying to cook a cheese fondue or something but for now - back to the pork....

I can't really attribute this recipe to anyone as I looked at a few, pinched some ideas but changed quantities, missed some things out and added some others so I guess this is my own creation.  With slow-cooker recipes you don't need to be too accurate on cooking time and we find we often go to the pub until we are hungry.  In this case it added about 3 hours to the planned cooking time so we were left with a "pulled pork" type of consistency which was fantastic actually!  The sauce was very rich but the meat could take it and had we not served it with crackling then it would have been a healthy dish too.

Such a very simple dish done this way:

lkg Pork Shoulder Joint
1 teaspoon Chinese 5spice
1 teaspoon salt

Remove the fat from the pork, rub meat with the 5spice and salt and leave in fridge for 2 hours




For the cooking sauce:

1 Tablespoon Molasses
4 Tablespoons Soy Sauce (Gluten-free)
1 Tablespoon Fish Sauce
1 Teaspoon Crushed Dried Chilli
5 Spring Onions
1 Large Knob of Ginger (unpeeled and finely sliced)
6 Cloves of garlic (peeled but left whole)
600 ml of Chicken Stock (Gluten-free)
Cornflour

In a pan dissolve the molasses into the soy and fish sauce.  Add the stock and vegetables and bring to a simmer.

Put the slow-cooker to high and place the meat in the middle.  Pour over the sauce, cover and leave for 4 hours.  Turn the meat and cook on low for at least another 2 hours.

When cooked, remove the meat, cover with foil and leave to rest for 20 minutes while you prepare the sauce.

Pour the sauce from the slow-cooker into a pan through a sieve.









Turn up the heat and thicken with cornflour until at the required consistency.

Shred the meat and scatter it over stir-fried veg, then drizzle over some sauce.  We also had scratchings (done separately) but they were a bit of a disaster so we won't go there. 

We thought it tasty great.  The sauce was rich and spicy but the meat could handle it.  It was nice to have the stir-fry crunch too.  We plan to buy some more pork while it is still on offer so you may see some more slow-cooked pork ideas (or perhaps you could suggest one!?)

Chicken with Chilli Peppers and Basil

Last night for us saw the return of a book we haven't really used very much: Ken Hom's top 100 Stir-Fry Recipes.  Not really sure why we haven't made more use of it as we love Chinese food - or anything of that elk - having visited Vietnam and Cambodia we are certainly fans of Asian food.  We wanted to find something simple, preferably with ingredients we already had in and this one ticked all the boxes for us. Plus, generally, chinese food (and by that we mean from the local takeaway!) isn't gluten free, so the only way to satisfy the craving is to cook it at home.

Chicken with Chilli Peppers and Basil

It was deliciously rich and spicy and has a good quantity of Garlic - in fact equal measure of garlic to the shallots which surprised me a little.  But then again I think it is easy to be too cautious with proportions and Mr Hom obviously knows best.  We trusted him and tried to use the exact quantities he suggested, albeit scaled down for 2 servings.

The Basil at the end adds a wonderful freshness that I rarely get when stir frying but brought back memories of our South East Asia Soiree of last year.  The only flavour missing for me really was ginger - but it is one of the only recipes in the book that doesn't have ginger so perhaps that was a conscious effort on Ken's part.

Here is how we did it:

You will need:

2 Tablespoons Groundnut Oil
2 Chicken Breasts - cut into chunks.  (Ken said to use thighs but we only had breast so we reduced the initial cooking time accordingly)
1.5 Tablespoons finely sliced shallot
1.5 Tablespoons chopped garlic
1 hot red chilli (use bird eye if you have it)
1 Tablespoon of fish sauce
1 Teaspoon of soy sauce (we used gluten free)
1 teaspoon of sugar
Handful of basil leaves

Heat the wok to high temp and add oil. Stir fry the chicken for a few minutes and remove with a slotted spoon.

Re-heat the wok and stir-fry the shallots and garlic for 3 mins.

Return the chicken to the wok and add the chilli, fish sauce, soy sauce and sugar - cook for 5 mins or so.

To accompany the dish we stir-fried some more veg in a little soy and fish sauce

Stir through the basil leaves at the end and serve with steamed rice and the veg.







We really enjoyed the intense flavours and it has inspired us to dig out our Vietnamese and Cambodian Cooking Book again.  This time for some more challenging dishes or even try and recreate some of the dishes we had there.  We will undoubtedly blog whether its successful or not.