Pulled Pork Spring Rolls

My daughter in law Gao Shan and I have a good thing going on now that she’s my neighbour down the road in Bray. At least once a week she cooks a meal for us in her house and at least once a week I cook for her, Shane and Dermot. While I experiment with new banneton baskets and shawarmas, she cooks wonderful Chinese meals for us and increasingly tries her hand at preparing western dishes. Meanwhile Dermot wanders around under all our feet, “helping” and giving his two year old views on hao chi – good food. He is already a determined carnivore and has become fascinated with my Big Green Egg, helping me sprinkle rub on cuts of meat, salivating as we check at regular intervals to see how the internal temperature is coming on and proclaiming that the Egg is “hot”. He loves his “big egg”.
Last Friday night Shan served us a fabulous dinner of a starter of grilled prawns with mushrooms followed by a main course of spatchcocked quail to celebrate our wedding anniversary. I have never attempted to cook quail – I’m a bit squeamish about the finicky work of preparing them – but Shan found information on line that taught her how to do it and the result was delicious. I wondered what to do for a reprise.

Shan's spatchcocked quail
Shan’s spatchcocked quail

The glorious weather over the weekend encouraged me to fire up the Big Green Egg again and try out my Chinese take on pulled pork on her. Although pulled pork had taken off among the ex-pat community in Beijing before they left, this was the first time Shane and Shan had tried pulled pork cooked at home and served with Chinese pancakes, apple sauce and hoi sin sauce. They and Dermot gave it an overwhelming seal of approval. Dermot seems to have decided that apple sauce is his new favourite thing.

I’ve finally cracked the secret of cooking pulled pork – low and slow for about 9 hours and the time it takes is so worthwhile. You will find my recipe for Duncannon pulled pork and the story behind it here in the blog archives. Yesterday I didn’t bother with injecting the meat but the five spice rub and spritzing it frequently with the apple juice and cider vinegar spray infused the pork with plenty of melting flavour.  A €12 shoulder of pork cooked like this goes a long, long way.
We were wondering what we could do with the leftovers and Shan suggested that I could use them in a variation on my recipe for duck spring rolls. So that is just what I did. Although tired after a long day at work, I enjoyed the calming ritual of preparing the ingredients. The result was Monday night flavour bombs that got this weeks cooking off to a good start.
Now my next trick is to teach Dermot and his Mum how to make ginger biscuits although Shan is ahead of me on that one having made her first ever batch of cookies this weekend. Competitive? Me? Never… 🙂
Pulled Pork Spring Rolls

(Makes about eight spring rolls serving eight as a starter or four as a tasty weekday supper.)
 Ingredients
2015-03-23 20.47.35

  • About 200 – 300 g of shredded pulled pork – simply bulk out the mix with more of the shredded vegetables if you have less pork)
  • 1 large carrot cut into thin julienne strips
  • 1 large red onion thinly sliced
  • 150g bean sprouts, washed and patted dry
  • 2 tbs oyster sauce
  • 2 clove garlic, finely chopped
  • 30g pickled sushi ginger, finely chopped
  • A lage handful of chopped coriander plus additional coriander to garnish
  • Salt and pepper to season
  • 12 sheets of spring roll pastry 215 mm/10’’ square*
  • Sunflower oil for deep-frying
  • Sweet chilli jam to serve

*available in the freezer section of your local Asian market
Preparation
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  1. Shred the pork shoulder or cut it into thin matchsticks and mix with all the other prepared ingredients. Taste and adjust the seasoning to taste.
  2. Take  1 ½ sheets of pastry for each spring roll. Place a full sheet down and a half on top from one corner.
  3. Fill the doubled-side, near the centre with some pork mix. Starting at the doubled corner, roll to half way then fold in the sides and continue rolling to the end.
  4. Brush some water on the far corner to stick the pastry together if necessary.
  5. Fill a wok about a third full with sunflower oil and heat until a cube of bread turns golden in a few seconds. Deep fry the spring rolls two at a time until golden.
  6. Slice each spring roll in two on the diagonal and serve with chilli jam and garnished with coriander.

 

From Duncannon via Beijing – Shananigans Pulled Pork

Well hello there. I’m the pool of liquid on the sofa in Shane and Shan’s Beijing apartment trying my best  to reconstitute myself into human form. I am back in China for a second time in as many months and it is hot, hot, hot. Summer has arrived with a vengeance. The temperature rises from 28 degrees C at 6 am to a humid high of 36C in the early afternoon and then slowly drops again overnight. Even now at 11 pm on a Saturday night it has barely slipped down to 32C and the timid air-conditioning in this 21st floor apartment is making little impact. I am nearly as well cooked as the slow-cooked pulled pork in the recipe below.
It is my fifth visit to Beijing in less than two years and I am reminded how definite the seasons are here – the cold, sharp winter followed by a short Spring, a long stifling summer and a short autumn. The locals adapt. “Beijing air-conditioning” is the preferred attire of the menfolk with their t-shirts rolled up to allow any breeze to cool their bellies. The women carry home enormous water melons tied up with string to eat in wedges or press into juice. The streets in this residential area are teeming with people and makeshift stalls have sprung up all over the place selling juices and yoghurt drinks. Girls in pretty short dresses carry floral umbrellas to ward off the sun’s rays. The skies are uncharacteristically clear of smog and a soft wind rustles the trees providing limited shade on the uneven sidewalks. In the evenings groups of every age gather in any open space they can find to perform exercises to music.

Exercising in Beijing - a long way from Duncannon Beach
Exercising in Beijing – a long way from Duncannon Beach

My visit this time is part business, part family reunion and it comes with the unparalleled pleasure of knowing my grandson Dermot is sleeping soundly in the next room. In the six weeks since I last saw him he has changed again from toddler to small boy. He has the same impish sense of humour but it now comes with a patter of conversation in Chinese and I’m struggling hard to learn new words as fast as he does. By our next reunion he will have will have long passed me out and he already understands what is said to him in Chinese and English.
I will fill you in on some of my dining experiences on this trip over the next few blog posts but first I owe it to my loyal followers to post the recipe for barbecued pulled pork which I have been working on for the last while.
When I started the blog in the Summer of 2012,  my first original recipe was for Sichuan Seafood Duncannon Style, named for the little fishing village in the south east of Ireland where I like to spend my weekends.  The recipe was subsequently included in Goodall’s A Modern Irish Cookbook, which was recently awarded “Best in the World” at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. This is a book of recipes from Ireland’s thriving food blogging community and represents what Irish home cooking looks like today in all its diversity. All the profits are donated to Cork Penny Dinners and Crosscare charities and it can still be downloaded from www.goodalls.ie for €2.99.
Anyway the excitement about the award reminded me that it was about time that I came up with a new recipe. I wanted to create one that would use the best of Irish ingredients, have at least a hint of Chinese flavours, be influenced in some way by Duncannon and be capable of being cooked on the Big Green Egg as, after all, that’s where I do most of my BBQ cooking. Cue Twitter to the rescue. My friend Sinead @BumblesofRice happened to mention the fabulous pulled pork she had tasted at Roches Bar in Duncannon during our #Funcannon June bank holiday weekend.
A tweet to Cindy @RochesBar was all it took to get hold of the recipe their chef Craig Power had used. He has recently returned from England to his family home in nearby village of Slade and he cooks his pork shoulder in the oven for 12 hours at low temperature using a five spice rub and Stonewell Craft Cider. Like all good chefs he doesn’t use measurements so the recipe below is my own interpretation of his basic idea adapted for the barbecue. Along the way I consulted other Twitter friends and BBQ experts – @bbq_joes and @RoomOutside – and of course I can never fire up the Egg without reading every relevant recipe from @AdamPerryLang – my favourite BBQ guru.
This day last week, Summer Solistice -夏至 or xia zhi in China- was the perfect day to try it out. It was a glorious day in Ireland and one that made me dream forward to when Dermot comes to live in Ireland and can roam free in the clear, fresh air of an Irish summer in our Duncannon garden. 
So with thanks to my Twitter friends for the inspiration, here goes. This could be cooked on any covered BBQ using indirect heat. Just allow yourself plenty of marinading and cooking time, starting with rubbing the pork the night before and getting your BBQ on early the next morning for an evening dinner. It needs very little minding but including the time it takes to light the BBQ and rest the pork it takes about 11 hours.  Believe me, it’s worth the wait, it tastes delicious.
Shananigans Duncannon Pulled Pork
Pork shoulder ready for a long slow-cook
Pork shoulder ready for a long slow-cook

Ingredients

  • 1 bone in whole pork shoulder, fat scored
  • 2 bottles Stonewell Craft Cider or any dry cider
  • 4 star anise

Injection (optional)

  • 1 cup apple juice
  • ½ cup water
  • 2 tbs light brown sugar
  • 1 tbs salt
  • Dash of soy sauce

Rub

  • 3 tbs soft brown sugar
  • 3 tbs Chinese five spice powder
  • 1 tbs salt
  • 1 tsp ground pepper

Cider Mop Spray

  • ½ cup apple juice – I used Crinnaghtaun but any tart apple juice will work
  • ½ cup water
  • 2 tbs cider vinegar

Wrap Mix

  • 6 tbs honey
  • 2 tbs apple juice

Glaze

To serve

  • Hoisin sauce
  • Homemade apple sauce – simply peel and chop a large cooking apple, add a tablespoon of  water and sugar to taste. Simmer gently in a saucepan or cook for 5 minutes in a covered bowl in a microwave until softened. Stir before serving and adjust sweetness to taste.
  • Chinese pancakes (the type used for wrapping Peking Duck which you will find in the freezer section of your local Asian market)

For the BBQ

  • Oak lump wood
  • Apple wood chips (optional)

Method
The night before

  1. Combine the rub ingredients and mix well.
  2. Pierce the pork fat all over at about 3 cm intervals by inserting a small blade deep into the flesh and twisting aggressively to create small holes.
  3. If using the injection, mix the injection ingredients until the sugar is dissolved and inject the mix deep into the pork butt with an injection needle.
  4. Season the pork all over with the rub and massage it into the holes, reserving any leftover rub for later use.
  5. Let it stand in the fridge overnight, on a plate or in a covered bowl, to absorb the flavours.

Prepare the Big Green Egg

  1. Remove the pork from fridge and allow to come to room temperature while the Big Green Egg is heating up. Sprinkle with the remaining rub.
  2. Prepare your grill for indirect cooking using oak lumpwood and heat to 130 degrees c. Soak some apple wood chips if you have them and drain them and add to the Big Green Egg when it has come to temperature. Insert the plate setter with legs up and place a drip pan under the grill rack. Add a bottle of cider and the star anise to the drip pan.
  3. Place the pork butt, fat side up on the grill. Mix the ingredients for the cider mop spray and place in a spray bottle. After about 3 hours, when a nice crust has formed on the pork, spritz the pork with the spray. Spritz it at hourly intervals thereafter. Cook for about 6 hours before wrapping in foil.

Pork before spritzing with cider mop
Pork before spritzing with cider mop

Six hours later

  1. After 6 hours get two large sheets of foil and place them on top of one another. Remove the pork from the grill and place it on top of the foil. Combine the honey and apple juice for the wrap mix. Drizzle the wrap mix over the pork. Wrap up the pork to make a sealed parcel. Return it to the grill and cook for 2 hours or more until an instant read thermometer reads 88 degrees C.
  2. Remove the pork from the grill. Wrap the foil package in heavy towels and rest for at least one hour.
  3. Carefully unwrap the pork, reserving the honey and apple juices.  Spritz with the apple spray. Drizzle the reserved juices and some hoisin sauce over the pork and return it to the grill for up to 30 minutes to tighten and carmelise the glaze
  4. Serve the whole shoulder of pork on a platter. Pull the melting, tender pork apart into shreds and chunks with two forks or “Bear Claws”. Serve with apple sauce, hoisin sauce and pancakes on the side and allow your guests to help themselves by spreading some of the sauces on each pancake and wrapping them around the pork shreds.
Pulled pork ready to serve
Pulled pork ready to serve

Gan Guo Tu Duo Pian – Hunan Spiced Potato and an easy Chinese dinner party menu

I’ve started Chinese lessons. Once a week Wei Wei, who was Shan’s bridesmaid, comes to my house. We spend a few hours poring over her notes while I try to get my head and tongue around Chinese phrases, echoing the sounds and tones familiar in Beijing. My dream is to surprise Shan’s Ma Ma, my qing jia mu, with a text message in Mandarin characters and by addressing her in Chinese the next time we meet. I’ve a long, long way to go.
The language lesson finished, Wei Wei and I roll up our sleeves, get out the cleaver, chopping board and wok and she teaches me a new recipe. To start with she is helping me to recreate some of the dishes I came across on my last visit to Beijing. It’s fun, the hours fly by and I am learning at all sorts of levels.
Wei Wei writes her own blog MyChineseKitchen.com and is an accomplished Chinese cook. Her Mum and Dad taught her basic techniques from a very young age in her home town of Tianjin and she has wielded a cleaver for as long as she can remember. Next week her parents are coming to visit her and her husband Oisin in Ireland for the very first time, no doubt bearing a suitcase full of ingredients like Shan’s family did at Christmas.
Last weekend our friends Brenda and Jimmy were coming to Sunday dinner. I wanted to serve a meal like Shan and her Ma Ma would cook, a selection of dishes for sharing, some spicy, some light. Gan guo tu dou pian was on my mind – a potato dish that I had tasted in our favourite Chinese Duck Restaurant XiHeYaYuan in Beijing and which I wrote about hereGan guo translates loosely as  “dry wok”. It is a style of cooking that comes from Hunan Province where the food is rich and spicy and in restaurants in China it is served in a little cast iron pot at your table over an open burner. As well as gan guo made with slices of fried potato and smoked Hunan pork, I had also enjoyed gan gou niu wa,  made with bull frog, at our Hunan dinner at Pindian in Wangjng.
As luck would have it, Wei Wei also loves the dish which she and Oisin used to have every time they visited a local Hunan restaurant they called “The Cheap Place” in Beijing . She has come up with her own recipe for gan guo potatoes which tastes exactly as I remember it in Beijing and she has set out the steps for making it in detail here on her own blog. We used her recipe for my first cookery lesson and as we worked she taught me the Chinese words for the ingredients and helped me improve my knife skills and cooking techniques.
The next day I made the dish again working without a recipe, using the instincts Wei Wei had helped me develop to balance the flavours. My proportions were a little different to Wei Wei’s so here is what I did.
Hunan Spiced Potato – Gan Guo Tu Duo Pian

Gan guo tu duo pian
Gan guo tu duo pian

(Serves 4 as a side dish or 2 as a main course)
Ingredients

  • 3 firm medium potatoes
  • 4 slices of Hunan smoked pork or pancetta or smoked streaky rashers, rind removed
  • 1 red chilli
  • 1 green chilli
  • a small thumb of ginger
  • 4 cloves of garlic
  • 1 leek
  • ½ an onion(red or white)
  • 1 stick celery
  • 1 spring onion
  • cooking oil
  • coriander to garnish (optional)

For the sauce

  • 1 tbs hot bean sauce
  • 2 tbs light soy sauce
  • ¼ tbs dark soy sauce
  • 1 tbs shaoxing rice wine
  • 2 tsps sugar
  • salt to taste

Preparation

  1. Wash and peel the potatoes and slice them about ½ cm thick. Wash the potato slices twice in cold water to rinse out the starch and pat them dry.
  2. Slice the pork or bacon into thin pieces a littler smaller than the potatoes slices.
  3. De-seed and thinly slice the chillies; slice the ginger, peel and slice the garlic.
  4. Slice the leek, onion, celery and spring onion into julienne strips.
  5. Mix all the sauce ingredients and set aside.

Cooking

  1. Heat sufficient oil in a wok to about 140 degrees to fry the potato slices in batches until golden, setting them aside to dry on a dish lined with kitchen roll.
  2. Empty all but just over a tablespoon of oil from the wok. Over a medium-high heat stir-fry the chilli, garlic and ginger for a few moments to release their aromas being careful not to burn them. Add the pork slices and stir-fry until they turn colour.
  3. Add the leek, onion, celery and spring onion and stir-fry briefly before adding the sauce and mixing well.
  4. Fold in the cooked potato slices and keep stirring until the sauce has almost evaporated, being careful not to break up the potato slices. Season with salt to taste. Serve immediately, garnished with coriander if using.

I had some of the very special cured pork from Hunan Province which Shan used in her home-style dinner. It has an amazing umami flavour and adds an extra jolt of authenticity to the taste. But any good quality cured or smoked pork or bacon can be used, even Italian pancetta.

Hunan Cured Pork
Hunan Cured Pork

This was just one of the dishes I served at dinner last Sunday. Here is the full menu:

Confit Duck Spring Rolls with Tom Chef’s Chilli Jam

*****

Adam Perry Lang’s Beer Can Chicken

Sichuan Dry-fried Green Beans, Vegetarian Style

Broccoli Stir-fried with Garlic

Bai Cai with Ginger, Dried mushrooms and Oyster sauce

Gan Guo Tu Duo Pian

Steamed rice

*****

Strawberry, raspberry and orange tart

We slow-cooked the Beer Can Chicken to moist perfection on the Big Green Egg. APL’s recipe has enough Asian flavours going on to make it a good foil for Chinese vegetable dishes. 

I used the recipe from Fuchsia Dunlop’s Every Grain of Rice for the vegetarian version of Sichuan Green Beans but you can also use the recipe here on the blog and just omit the pork.

Sichuan Vegetarian-style Green Beans
Sichuan Vegetarian-style Green Beans

I had picked up some interesting Chinese leaves from the Asia Market with long green stems and delicately flavoured leaves. Wei We said they were a type of Chinese cabbage – bai cai . Shan had given me some wonderful speckled dried mushrooms which are called xiang gu because of their excellent flavour.
Wiang Gu Dried Mushrooms
Xiang Gu Dried Mushrooms

Rehydrate a few dried mushrooms in hot water for half an hour, then slice them thickly and stir-fry them with a few slices of ginger and spring onion (no garlic) until soft before adding the bai cai until it wilts down. Add a dash of oyster sauce, season with salt and the earthy flavour of the mushrooms combined with the delicate cabbage will transport you to MaMa’s kitchen in Beijing.
Chinese cabbage with dried mushrooms
Chinese cabbage with dried mushrooms

I worked the way Shan had taught me in Beijing, preparing all the ingredients well in advance and lining them up in separate dishes, cooking the lightest vegetable dishes first and then, a quick wipe of the wok and on to the next one so that I was able to get each bowl to the table in quick succession and join in the conversation.
Vegetables prepared for gan guo
Vegetables prepared for gan guo

Dessert was a random find from Twitter – a  recipe from Catherine Fulvio’s blog to which I added a few raspberries. This was a great success and has now been included in my limited repertoire of sweet treats. We loved the crunchy, no-bake base, which was made from amaretti biscuits, and the tang of passion fruit, yoghurt and orange zest in the filling.
No bake strawberry, raspberry and orange tart
No bake strawberry, raspberry and orange tart

Now it’s time to start planning my next visit to China in two weeks time. Nai Nai hugs coming up…

Funcannon BBQs on the Big Green Egg

Our second last meal on our recent trip to China was the Grill Mates BBQ with Shane and Shan’s friends in a hutong on the outskirts of Beijing. While the menu that day had all the hallmarks of a classic American BBQ, the experience of sharing good food with family and friends, everyone helping themselves from a communal table, felt quite Chinese. I arrived home looking forward to a summer of experimenting with my Big Green Egg and to putting into practice what I learnt at Barbecue Joe’s cookery class at Cloughjordan House Cookery School in April.
And so for the last two weeks I have been getting to know my Egg all over again and my go to chef for inspiration is Adam Perry Lang whose recipes push me outside my comfort zone, but in a good way. APL is one of those generous chefs who posts many of his recipes, including from his Serious Barbecue cookbook, on his excellent website. He also picks up on tweets that mention him. Let’s face it, we amateur cooks all get a great kick when the chef who devised a recipe sends us a nice comment on a photo or a tweet.
The previous weekend it had rained non-stop in Duncannon and we were up at 6 am on the Sunday setting up the Big Green Egg to cook APL’s aptly named “Get a book” Whole Beef Brisket for 12 of my family. It took 8 hours but was voted by my little nephew Jack as “the best beef I have ever tasted”.
We also cooked APL’s Beer Can Chicken, sitting two large organic birds over cans of Heineken. This was something I had wanted to try out since I tasted Elvis’ version in Beijing. The result was moist and delicious chicken which fed us for most of the week.

Well you would be sore if your butt had been stuffed!
Beer can chicken hot off the BBQ

And let me confess a little secret. Because the whole beef brisket took so long to cook, we actually cooked the chickens on our old Outback Gas BBQ on indirect heat, covered and with a packet of wet oak chips in punctured tin foil sitting on the lava rocks. There was so much smokiness going on with the brisket and other vegetables that no one even noticed. I also skipped the last stage of APL’s recipe, that called for cutting the chicken in half down the backbone and glazing it with his sweet and sticky BBQ sauce because the skin was already nice and crispy. Instead I just served the sauce on the side. The following day though I reheated half of one of the cooked chickens, glazed with the sauce, under our ordinary grill for a feast of leftovers of sticky deliciousness.
The weekend just gone by was a bank holiday here in Ireland and Duncannon was in fete for a military re-enactment taking place in Duncannon Fort. A brother of my friend Bumbles of Rice, who also hails from these parts, labelled the village #Funcannon for the weekend and got it trending on Twitter.
We travelled down from Dublin in glorious sunshine on Saturday but by Sunday rain was threatening. Undaunted, we invited my family to another barbecue. I had an added incentive to try new recipes. Joanne Cronin who writes Stitch and Bear had given me a tin of Old Bay Seasoning which she had picked up in the States and which features in many of APL’s recipes.
A feat of engineering propping up those ribs
A feat of engineering propping up those ribs

On the menu we had APL’s Reliable Pork Spareribs which I served as a starter. Over seven hours on the Big Green Egg at a low temperature, they were moistened with a mustard spray, drizzled with a spicy rub, sprayed with apple juice and cider vinegar, wrapped with honey, brown sugar and apple juice, coated with BBQ sauce and sprayed with apple mist once more. The result was succulent and delicious and the four racks of ribs, with the tender meat falling off the bones, were gobbled in minutes. My brother’s dogs were the lucky recipients of the leftovers. I hope they weren’t expecting any meat as every last morsel had been sucked off by my hungry guests.
Ribs about to get short shrift
Ribs about to get short shrift

The mammy likes her ribs (great appetite)
The mammy likes her ribs (great appetite)

We followed the ribs with Leg of Irish Spring Lamb based on Adam’s recipe in his BBQ 25 cookbook which I downloaded from Kindle Book Store on my iPad. I scored the leg of lamb in a cross-hatch pattern and marinated it for three to four hours in a mix of rapeseed oil, chopped rosemary, flat leaf parsley, thyme and cumin. I put it on the Big Green Egg, on indirect heat, while the ribs were still cooking which meant the temperature was lower than the recommended by APL and it took longer to cook. I glazed it at intervals with a mix of a half cup of olive oil, lots of crushed garlic, the grated zest and juice of a lemon, a few tablespoons of honey and more chopped flat leaf parsley.
Leg of lamb beginning to brown
Leg of lamb beginning to brown

Once the internal temperature had reached 60 degrees C on my snazzy, new super-fast Thermapen thermometer (or 71 degrees C if you prefer well done lamb) I rested in on a board dressing of Broighter Gold rapeseed oil infused with rosemary and mixed with fresh flat leaf parsley for about 10 minutes before carving. The meat was so moist and tender that we did not need gravy.
Leg of spring lamb ready to carve
Leg of spring lamb ready to carve

We threw a few burgers and steaks on the barbecue for hungry young people . With the beef and lamb we served lashings of Irish new potatoes, baby peas, roasted vegetables, mushrooms cooked with thyme in butter and olive oil and asparagus. I marinated the asparagus tips in a little Broighter Gold rapeseed oil infused with lemon and griddled them on the BBQ for a few minutes on each side. Once they had nice scorch marks on both sides but still had a good crunch I removed them from the BBQ and drizzled them with a little balsamic vinegar. These were greeted with sighs of approval.
Keeping it simple - dessert
Keeping it simple – dessert

Dessert was simple – fresh raspberries, strawberries and peaches served with little meringues and cream and then my nieces and nephews entertained us for a few hours with mimicry and dance and general good humour.
Last night we had a dinner of leftovers in Duncannon – a Lamb Hash of cooked Wexford new potatoes crushed in duck fat to which I added shredded leg of lamb which had been smoked on the Big Green Egg and roasted vegetables from Sunday’s BBQ including peppers, aubergines, courgettes, red onion, tomatoes and mushrooms. When it was all sizzling away nicely and lovely and crispy on the base, I made space to crack in two eggs and flashed the frying pan under the grill to set the egg white and crisp up the topping. A drizzle of Adam Perry Lang’s BBQ Sauce and I didn’t even need to fire up the Big Green Egg to recapture the flavours of our BBQ in the rain.
As we polished off the leftover leftovers today I mused about my Big Green Egg, how it has become like an old friend now, one whose temperament I have got to know and learned to managed so his temperature and mood stay steady. I learnt a lot from my class with BBQ Joe. He taught me to understand how the fibres of the meat react at different temperatures, the importance of the temperature plateau and of resting the meat after cooking. His tips for lighting the BBQ with a Lidl weed burner, using a super fast Thermapen to check internal temperature and oiling the griddle with half a red onion on a fork dipped in olive oil flavoured with spices and herbs, have left me feeling more confident and professional around my Egg. It is a joyous learning experience.
I’ve discovered that barbecuing is a forgiving way of cooking food. A few degrees heat either way makes no difference to slow cooked meats once you eventually get to the correct internal temperature. While the Egg is a magic piece of kit, most of the recipes work equally well on other covered charcoal or gas barbecues. But leftovers from the Egg taste simply wonderful with the traces of smokiness still lingering.
Last week the Goodall’s Modern Irish Cookbook, won the Bloggers’ Cookbook Award in the Gourmand World Cookbooks Awards 2014. The book includes one of the early recipes from this blog – Sichuan Seaf00d Duncannon Style. So on our “Funcannon” weekend, Duncannon was featuring, in a small way, on the world stage.
I think it’s time to develop a special Duncannon recipe for the Big Green Egg, don’t you. Watch this space.
A selfie from my giddy nieces and nephews
A selfie from my giddy nieces and nephews

 

Pork with Pearl Mountain Black Fungus

It’s been a while since I wrote a post lovely blog followers. Life and work got in the way. Meanwhile, over in Beijing, my grandson Dermot has just turned 8 months today and in the past week he has gotten his first tooth and learned how to pull himself up to standing.
Standing man!
Standing man!

Say hello to Dermot who I will get to see in Beijing this day 3 weeks. Yeah!

And hello to all my new subscribers to the blog. I suspect many of you have joined because of my experiments with all-year round barbecuing on the Big Green Egg. Well I’m at the kitchen table in Duncannon at the moment getting excited at the prospect of cooking my first ever pizza on the Egg later today, helped by my Italian friend Solange. On Sunday I’m going to have a trial run at cooking a turkey outdoors, practice for when Dermot’s Chinese family come to stay. About every second weekend I hope to try something new on the Egg, often with an Asian twist, but in between times I will continue my experiments with traditional Chinese recipes. I hope you enjoy both.

Part of my motivation at the moment is a slightly panic stricken planning ahead for my seven Chinese visitors in December – my daughter-in-law Shan’s MaMa and cousin, her bother his wife and child and first auntie and second auntie who will join us to celebrate Christmas and Shane and Shan’s Irish wedding. None of them have been outside China before and they will be relying on me to feed them for most of the two weeks they are here. There will be between 11 and 13 of us at our small kitchen table most evenings and I lie awake at night trying to dream up manageable meals for us all including some western and Chinese specialties. All suggestions and practical tips that don’t involve ordering in a Chinese takeaway are welcome…
Inspiration came in small packages recently when my young Chinese friend Tiedong brought me a gift from his home town of Harbin in north eastern China. Tiedong is studying for a PhD in Dublin and I first met him during the Dublin City Chinese New Year Festival earlier this year. He managed the website for the Taste of China which I helped coordinate. He is one of those very bright Chinese young people who make such a great addition to our increasingly multi-cultural country. He returned home to visit his family during the summer and he brought me back some boxes of Pearl Mountain Edible Black Fungus Block, a foodstuff for which Harbin is famous. It is found in the forests near Harbin where it grows on wood at the base of trees.
I had tasted black fungus in China where it is sometimes known as “wood ear” or “cloud ear”. It is packed full of nutrients and well known for its health giving properties as it is higher in iron content than green leafy vegetables and is also rich in calcium and amino acids. It is particularly good for clearing the lungs . Tiedong tells me that in his home town back in the 1950s barbers ate black fungus very often as it helped clear the dust they breathed in each day. It is also good for the digestion and circulation – in Chinese Traditional Medicine it is regarded as increasing the fluidity of the blood.
Apart from its medicinal properties, black fungus is prized for its crunchy texture and the “mouth feel” it adds to soups and stir-frys. It is purchased dried and, when soaked in water it swells to several times its volume and the dark frilly clumps resemble “ears” or “clouds”. The texture becomes silky, slippery and almost translucent, a bit like sea weed but without the associated flavour. In fact the fungus has no real flavour of its own but it readily absorbs the sauces and seasonings it is cooked with.

Pearl Mountain Black Fungus
Pearl Mountain Black Fungus

I have found black fungus in the Asia Market in Dublin and other Asian supermarkets where it comes in bags like dried Shitake mushrooms and can be reconstituted in warm water in 15 minutes or so. Sometimes the grittier part where it has been attached to the bark of a tree needs to be trimmed away.
The compressed Pearl Mountain variety that Tiedong brought back to me is of the highest quality. It is packaged in little boxes no bigger than a matchbox and Tiedong recommended soaking a portion in lots of luke warm water for a few hours, then rinsing it several times. Once reconstituted it was ready for use without further trimming.
Tiedong gave me the recipe below which is how he prepares it at home. The end result was full of flavour despite involving only a small number of ingredients and being very fast to prepare. We enjoyed the slippery and chewy texture the fungus added to the dish. My niece Jodie decided that it felt a bit like eating balloons, but in a good way! This dish will definitely feature on the menu for my Chinese guests and could be served alongside other spicier dishes as part of a Chinese meal.
Pork with Black Fungus

Pork with Black Fungus
Pork with Pearl Mountain Black Fungus

Ingredients:

(serves 3 people)
  • 1 compressed black fungus (or a large handful of dried fungus)
  • 2 – 3 carrots
  • ½ a Chinese cabbage
  • 1 pork steak
  • 2 – 3 tbs groundnut oil
  • A thumb of ginger (about 3 cms)
  • 2 – 3 cloves garlic
  • Salt to taste
  • 1 – 2 tbs light soy sauce
 Method:
  1. Soak the compressed black fungus in a large bowl of warm water  for several hours until it has puffed up and expanded in volume. Rinse several times under cold water and set aside.
  2. Slice the carrot at an angle and  blanche by plunging in boiled water with a pinch of salt for 5 minutes or by steaming for 2 – 3 mins. Rinse with cold water and set to one side.
  3. Slice the Chinese cabbage and blanche by plunging in boiled water  with a pinch of salt for 5 min or by steaming for 2 – 3 minutes. Rinse with cold water and set  to one side.
  4. Slice the pork steak into 1 cm slices and then, across the grain, into thin strips.
  5. Heat 2 – 3 tbs groundnut oil in a wok over high heat. Add the pork, then add the ginger and garlic and cook over high heat until the pork has changed colour and the garlic and ginger have softened and released their fragrance.
  6. Add the carrot and cabbage and stir-fry over high heat until the pork is cooked through.
  7. Add the black fungus and stir -fry over high heat until heated through.
  8. Put the lid on for 2 – 3 min, stirring regularly.
  9. Add a pinch of salt salt and a good dash of soy sauce. Stir until very little juice is left , then taste to adjust seasoning and serve with boiled rice.

 

Last of the Summer Barbecues – Xinjiang Street Food


We are getting along better my Big Green Egg and me. I’m beginning to get to know his moods and temperament. He’s hot stuff, he can turn out a large number of perfectly seared steaks in jig time. But last weekend in Duncannon, on a glorious late summer Sunday, I wanted to get a sense of just how versatile he is and how many different cooking techniques I could use, in the course of an afternoon, and still serve the results at one meal.
The lovely people at A Room Outside in Limerick had received a new consignment of Eggs and accessories so I took delivery of a ceramic pizza stone, a half moon cast iron griddle and some cedar planks to experiment with plank cooking. With these new tools, I had a go at re-creating the kind of street food I had in China last summer, particularly the street food of Xinjiang province. I also added Pork Char Siu to the menu which would not, of course, be served with lamb by the Muslim Uighur people of Xinjiang.
On the menu

Xinjiang Chilli Lamb with Spicy Tzatziki Sauce

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Planked Pork Char Siu

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Spiced Griddled  Courgettes and Potatoes

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Naan Bread

The recipes I used are below. I cooked the Naan bread first and kept it warm in a low oven, then the Pork Char Siu and finally I ramped up the heat to cook the lamb chops and vegetables quickly while the pork was resting.

Xinjiang Chilli Lamb

I found the recipe for this addictive, mouth-numbing marinade on line here and it could be substituted for the marinade used to make kebabs in my lamb chuan’r recipe. The marinade was developed by Christina Soong-Kroeger who writes a blog called The Hungry Australian. She lived in Shanghai for three years and this was one of her favourite takeaway meals from her local Xinjiang restaurant. You wont always find Sichuan pepper used in Xinjiang lamb but Shan’s Mum, who comes from that province, adds it to her lamb dishes all the time.

Ingredients

  • 6 – 8 lamb cutlets

 Marinade

  • 2 tbs groundnut oil (or sufficient to loosen the marinade)
  • 2 tbs ground cumin
  • 4 cloves garlic finely chopped
  • A thumb of fresh ginger finely chopped or 2 tsps ground ginger
  • 1 tbs chilli flakes or a large chilli finely chopped
  • 1 tsp Sichuan peppercorns
  • 1 ½ to 2 tsps salt
  • Ground black pepper

Method

  1. Smash all the dry marinade ingredients in a pestle and mortar or grind in a food processor and add enough oil to create a loose paste.
  2. Mix thoroughly with the lamb and marinade over night in the fridge. Bring to room temperature before cooking.
  3. Prepare the BGE for direct heat using the cast iron griddle and heat to about 220C.
  4. Grill the lamb chops, covered,  for 3 to 5 minutes each side depending on their thickness and whether you like them pink or well done (about 4 minutes each side for skewers).

Note
These lamb chops can also be cooked on any grill or conventional barbecue.
Planked Pork Char Siu
Pork Char Siu is something you come across as street food in Beijing and other parts of China. It is not normally cooked at home as Chinese households don’t usually have access to barbecues. This special way of rapidly roasting or barbecuing meat that has been marinated is typical of the southern Cantonese and can be applied to all good cuts of meat. Every Chinese cook has their own variation of a Char Siu marinade so feel free to use your personal favourite.  This time I used Rozanne Steven’s Barbecue Sauce from her Relish BBQ book. You could also use a jar of Pat Whelan’s great new BBQ sauce available from James Whelan Butchers in Avoca, Monkstown and Clonmel.
Cedar planks are available from A Room Outside. They can also be picked up from The Butlers Pantry for €3.95 each. These planks create a subtle smoky flavour when used with fish and meats that reminds me of the aromas and flavours of a Beijing street market. For me the big discovery was that cooking on a plank also has the effect of making the meat melt in the mouth tender. The outer skin of the pork doesn’t get crispy when cooked in this way but the meat is moist and delicious. When sliced across the grain, the rapidly cooked pork has a darker rim of well cooked pork with a dark crust of marinade surrounding a more lightly cooked and tender centre.
Ingredients:

  • 2 large pork steaks
  • 1 cedar plank

For Rozanne’s Chinese Sticky Marinade and Basting Sauce



  • 8 cloves of garlic, crushed or finely chopped
  • 2 thumb sized pieces of ginger, grated or finely chopped
  • 250 g dark brown sugar
  • 200 g honey
  • 250 ml hoisin sauce (a good shop bought version such as Lee Kum Kee)
  • 250 ml Shaoxing rice wine
  • 200 ml light soy sauce
  • 200 ml sweet chilli sauce
  • 50 ml groundnut oil (or sunflower oil)
  • 2 tbs Chinese five spice powder

 Preparation

  1. Soak the cedar plank for at least an hour or preferably over night.
  2. Mix all the marinade ingredients together in a pot and simmer, covered, on gentle heat for 10 minutes.
  3. Once cool use sufficient to cover the pork steaks and marinade in a ziplock bag or dish at room temperature for at least an hour or preferably overnight in the fridge. [You can use the remainder as a marinade for pork or chicken or to baste chicken wings, sausages and vegetables on the barbecue. It keeps well in an airtight jar in the fridge.]

Cooking

  1. Preheat the BGE for direct heat and heat to about 180C.
  2. Place the soaked plank on hot grill and heat for 3 minutes.
  3. Remove pork from the marinade and discard remaining marinade.
  4. Flip the plank and place the pork on the heated side of the plank.
  5. Grill with the lid closed for about 20 minutes or until the pork reaches an internal temperature of 65C. You do not need to turn the pork during cooking.
  6. Allow to rest on a shallow dish for 5 minutes, tented in foil. Serve, sliced across the grain, with its own juices. It should be pink near the edges and gloriously moist and tender within.

Note – to cook in a conventional oven:

  1. Heat the oven to 220º.
  2. Place the pork steak on a wire rack over a roasting tin filled with 4 cm of water to catch the drips and roast for 20 minutes.
  3. Reduce the heat to 180°C to avoid burning and roast for another 12 to 13 minutes.

Naan Bread
Naan bread is Asian in origin and resembles pitta bread but is much softer in texture. I loved watching it being made by the Uighur women in Xinjiang Province where they slapped rounds of dough against the walls of  big clay ovens and took it out minutes later golden and steaming. The Big Green Egg’s ability to reach high temperature makes it the prefect environment in which to make this bread and it is great served with lamb and dipped in the spicy Tzatziki sauce.
Ingredients

  • 375g strong white flour
  • 1 tsp active dry yeast
  • 1 tsp table salt
  • 2 tbs sunflower oil
  • 1 tsp honey
  • 190 ml warm water (about 40 to 45C )
  • 4 tbs plain Greek yoghurt

Method

  1. Sieve the flour into a large bowl, add the yeast and salt and mix well.
  2. Make a well in the centre, add the sunflower oil, honey, water and yoghurt and stir well until a dough forms.
  3. Turn on to a lightly floured surface and knead lightly until smooth. Place in a lightly oiled bowl and turn to coat. Cover with a damp cloth or clingfilm and leave to rise for around 2 hours until doubled in size.
  4. Meanwhile set the BGE for indirect cooking with the Plate Setter, legs down and the Baking Stone on top and preheat to 220C. This takes at least 30 minutes.
  5. When risen, turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface, cut into 8 equal pieces. Using your hands, roll each piece of dough into a ball and, with a lightly floured rolling pin, roll each ball into a disc about 1.5 cms thick.
  6. Place the discs on the preheated Baking Stone and close the lid. Bake for 4 to 5 minutes on each side until golden brown.
  7. Serve immediately or keep warm in a conventional oven until the rest of the meal is ready to be served.

Xinjiang Vegetables
I cooked the vegetables on a half moon griddle pan while the lamb chops were cooked on the cast iron grid beside them.
Cut courgettes into 1 cm slices at an angle, dip in egg white and  then a little cornflour or potato flour. Dust with a mix of ground cumin, salt and dry roasted Sichuan pepper to taste and grill them on a high heat on an oiled griddle tray on the BGE for few minutes, turning once.
Par-boil potatoes slice them thickly and grill them on an oiled griddle,  plain or scattered with the cumin mix.
Spicy Tzatziki Sauce
This recipe came from the lamb pops recipe on the BigGreenEgg.com website. I didn’t have any saffron last weekend so I stirred in a little smoked paprika for colour and flavour.
Ingredients

  • 2 tablespoons hot water
  • 1 teaspoon saffron threads
  • 125 ml plain Greek yogurt
  • 1 teaspoon chopped fresh mint
  • 1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
  • 1⁄4 teaspoon sea salt
 Method
  1. Pour the water into a small cup, add the saffron, and let sit for 10 minutes, then strain, reserving the water.
  2. Put the yogurt in a small bowl, add the saffron water, mint, lemon juice and salt and stir well.
  3. Transfer to a small serving bowl, cover and refrigerate until ready to use.

Braised Pork Rib and the Ritual of Bai Jiu

Our little grandson is due to arrive for his first visit to Ireland this day 3 weeks. He has been growing in our absence. Here he is enjoying his first stay in a hotel room after his first plane journey to the city of Changchun where Shan has her hukou and where they travelled to try and sort out the permits for his journey home. I will explain the complex hukou system of household registration and its ramifications some other time when I have figured it out for myself but for now I’m reminded of the biblical journey to Bethlehem to register for the Census, albeit with more comfortable accommodation and not a donkey in sight.

Dermot enjoying his first hotel room

To distract myself while I await his arrival, I’ve been cooking again and tonight I recreated the braised pork rib recipe that Chef Chao taught me when I attended Hutong Cuisine cookery school in Beijing. This is one of the dishes I served at our Shananigans’ Feast in Sydney the following week where it was a big hit.
It is simplicity itself to prepare but needs to be cooked slowly over a low heat to achieve the correct sticky, melt in the mouth texture. The magic ingredient is a few tablespoons of bai jiu – which translates literally as  “white wine” but is in fact a distilled spirit with an alcohol content by volume of between 40% and 60%.
Bai jiu for cooking

In China, the best quality bai jiu is associated with the practice of toasting gan bei style – the Chinese equivalent of “cheers” which translates as “dry glass”. The liquor can be horrendously expensive with a price of a bottle for a special occasion banquet running to €100 or more but you can by a cheap and socially acceptable bottle for less than a euro. It is knocked back in shot glasses.
My first encounter with bai jiu was when we visited Shan’s family in Urumqi in Xinjiang province last summer. During our visit we attended a number of formal family banquets and on each occasion the ritual of formal gan bei toasts was an important part of proceedings. There is a definite hierarchy to these toasts.  The host will toast the most important guest first, then the next most important and so on. The toaster always stands to make the toast and the glasses are filled to exactly the same level (in practice to the brim) as to do otherwise would imply disrespect. The glasses are clinked gently and low in a manner reminiscent of bowing. Sipping is not an option. Each toast involves the proposer walking around the table to stand beside the person proposed too while the rest listen in respectful silence and then cheer noisily. Mercifully only those directly involved in the toast are required to drink.
The first family gathering held in our honour was an amazing experience. Twenty five people gathered in an ornate private room in a local hotel at a big round table with a lazy susan at the centre. A large screen TV remained on at low volume in the background throughout but for the chatty Gao family this wasn’t a distraction. A chandelier hung over the table and a huge flower display, formed the centre piece.
Family gathering in Urumqi

The family was arranged strictly in seniority order – as honoured guests we were at the top of the circle, Shan’s MaMa to our right, first uncle and wife to our left, 2nd and 5th uncles to either side beyond them with their own direct offspring, their spouses and children if present. Next in order the daughter of Shan’s MaMa’s sister, her sister’s daughter and first cousin and finally any remaining members of that generation. Everyone was addressed by title and family rank rather than name. Nai Nai if you were the granny generation, Ayi for the aunt, Shu Shu for uncle.
The consequence of this table arrangement was that Shane and Shan were a long way away from us leaving us pretty helpless at making conversation as only one of the younger son-in-laws at the far side of the table had any English at all.  Still we got by as the food started to swirl around the lazy susan, hot and cold dishes of local fare and what they called “hotel fare”. Shan’s Mum, who I had only just met at that stage, was trying to teach me the names in Mandarin for tofu, pork, beef, lamb, chicken, noodles, dumplings and many vegetables I didn’t then recognise.
It wasn’t long before the ritual of bai jiu started.
First Shan’s Mum proposed a toast of welcome to us, then, with our permission, she passed the responsibility of host to first uncle. Second uncle repeated the ritual with the same challenge to “gan bei”. And so it continued around the table as, one after the other, each branch of the family said their piece and made us welcome with Shan translating every speech.
Generally speaking only the men were required to toast but Derry was off the hook as he doesn’t drink alcohol. Instead he responded with a perfectly pitched speech on our behalf, and managed to make Shan cry as she translated it. Meanwhile I decided to do my bit for the family honour and quickly earned a reputation as being li hai (deadly) by downing two shots of bai jiu in a row. The truth is that I swallowed the first one fast to avoid the taste and was immediately proffered another one. I quickly migrated to red wine in tiny glasses but by then the Uncles had decided I was good fun and insisted on telling the entire family of my prowess with bai jiu for days to come.
Shane had the bigger challenge. As someone entering the family on marriage, he had to make an individual toast to each of the uncles and male family members present – no shirking for him and I’m astounded he was still standing by the end of 10 toasts and able to walk home in the summer heat.
Toast number one – first uncle

Toast number 9…

Shane ended by toasting Shan, the woman he loves, making her cry again and then her brother Gao Feng spoke in his capacity as head of the immediate family, asking us to take good care of his sister who he loves very much – more tears and by this stage we were all emotional wrecks.
There was much talk of welcoming us into their family and of making their already large family an international one and huge appreciation of our coming such a long way to visit them and saying how easily we fitted in. There was even a toast for me from First Auntie when she realised I had once worked for the Department of Transport in Ireland because she works for the equivalent Department in Xinjiang province.  Another was needed between me and one of the cousins when the lazy susan stopped with the whole fish pointing head to me, tail to the other end of the table. I made a brief toast to Shan’s Mum at the end thanking her for making me feel so welcome and like a sister and saying how special Shan was. Cue more tears.
Eventually we were asked about the proper way to bring a family gathering like this to a close in Ireland and we explained there was none so the honour fell to First Uncle to make a final toast and invite us all to dinner on our last night in Urumqi so that we could do it all over again. He enquired if we were Catholics and if that meant there were any foods we couldn’t eat and on having been reassured on that score they planned another Chinese meal.
The meal below is more like Chinese comfort food than banquet cooking but the use of bai jiu brings back happy memories indeed, especially now that Dermot has arrived to cement the family relationships.
The bai jiu I used is one I picked up for about 70c on my shopping expedition with Shan’s MaMa in Beijing and is 42% proof. If you cant get a bottle of it in your local Asian market, substitute vodka (or potcheen which is closest to the flavour!!) The eagle-eyed among you will recognise it as one of the 10 ingredients featured in the recent competition on the blog.
Braised Pork Rib with Soy Sauce and Sugar – Hong Shao Rou
Pork gently cooking

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Two different takes on Fish Fragrant Sauce – aubergine and pork

I’ve been enjoying cooking “fish fragrant” recipes since I started this blog and I have discovered several different ways of creating the salty, spicy, sweet, sour yu xiang flavour which the people of Sichuan love to use in their land-locked region to recall the flavours they associate with fish. The description often causes confusion among westerners as there is no fish or fish sauce used in these recipes.
The first time I made fish fragrant pork I used a recipe given to me by Chef Ricky when I went inside the kitchen of China Sichuan in Dublin and you can read it here. That version used chilli garlic sauce and owner Kevin Hui told me that in the early years they described it as Pork in Spicy Garlic Sauce on the menu to avoid putting off diners!

Chefs preparing fish fragrant pork at Taste of China (Photo by Solange Daini)

More recently I’ve cooked fish fragrant pork using fish fragrance marinaded peppers, as prepared by the chefs of China Sichuan at the Taste of China cookery demonstration. Before I left for China I promised to post the recipe for using this marinade and it is now below.
I know some of you have had these marinaded peppers in your fridge for at least 3 weeks now so it should be nicely flavourful. I used my now 9 week old marinade tonight, this time with chicken, and it was delicious.
Fish Fragrant Chicken with a dash of Chilli Oil

When I visited Beijing recently, I learned how to make a classic fish fragrant sauce based on pickled chillies chopped to a puree with a cleaver blade. The recipe for fish fragrant aubergine below is the one taught to me by Chefs Chun Yi and Chao at Hutong Cuisine in Beijing and is the way Chun Yi learnt to make it when she trained as a chef in Chengdu in Sichuan Province.
Hutong Cuisine fish fragrant aubergine – yu xiang qie zi
Practising Fish Fragrant Aubergines at Hutong Cuisine

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Chairman Mao's Red-braised Pork

Let me start by saying I love this dish, with a passion. There is something about the unctuous golden fat and the carmelised, melting pork which create a taste sensation – umami at its best. I didn’t think it would be possible to create such aromatic magic in a relatively short time with a cut of meat – belly of pork – that often requires long slow cooking.
It was Joanne (@dudara) who first alerted me to the cuisine of the southern Chinese province of Hunan and suggested we seek it out when we were in Beijing last June. Hunan is the region Mao Zedong came from. It is a region of bold, spicy flavours, fond of its chillies, and the fiery food seems to shape the spirit of its inhabitants. We didn’t manage to track down a Hunan restaurant in Beijing but, when I got back, Joanne encouraged me to get hold of of Fucshia Dunlop‘s Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, a seminal book on the food of that region.
When I was in London recently, she pointed me in the direction of Ba Shan Restaurant at 24 Romilly Street, London W1.  Sometimes referred to as Bashan, it has a menu of Hunan dishes and is a sister restaurant to the nearby Sichuan Bar Shu. Fuchsia Dunlop advised both restaurants on their menus and Ba Shan features a number of dishes based on those in her book. See Jay Rayner’s review here.
Laoise (@cuisinegenie) joined me for dinner and we tried Chairman Mao’s red-braised pork which is one of the signature dishes of the region. The recipe below, which features in a Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, came from Mao Anping, a nephew of Chairman Mao. Mao Zedong loved this dish and allegedly ate 2 bowls of it a day to keep his intellect in shape, insisting on it being prepared for him in Beijing.
The Chinese like to attribute medicinal properties to every dish but, to me, this is just aromatic, sticky, treacly and delicious. I was determined to try it out myself and the result was sublime. I actually prefer the recipe below to the version I tasted in Ba Shan which may have been adapted for restaurant use.
Now three months into the blog, most of the recipes I post are Shan’s or my own but, when I started out, I asked Fuchsia Dunlop’s permission to re-print a few recipes from her books. I hope that sharing with you this particular recipe, which is just too perfect to mess with, will encourage you to buy the book which is packed full of Hunan delights.
To make the dish I used a beautiful piece of Irish belly of pork, chosen for me by Fintan at Dunne’s of Donnybrook, Dublin 4 which was recently awarded the Star Shop of the Year by the Associated Craft Butchers of Ireland.
Chairman Mao’s Red-braised Pork – mao shi hong shao rou – 毛氏红烧肉

Chairman Mao’s Pork

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Fish Fragrant Pork Shreds with Shan's Bashed Cucumber

Since I started this blog I’ve been fascinated by the flavours of Sichuan cooking. It would be a mistake to think these are all about hot and spicy dishes, even if numbing Sichuan pepper is currently my favourite ingredient.
In her memoir Shark’s Fin & Sichuan Pepper, Fuchsia Dunlop talks of learning the 23 ‘official’ complex flavours of Sichuan cooking. One of those is yu xiang wei or ‘fish fragrant flavour’ which came about as a result of the desire of chefs in that land-locked province to make more use of the flavourings used in traditional Sichuanese fish cookery. It is a unique combination of salty and spicy, sweet and sour which doesn’t drift over into the more familiar, and sometimes cloying, sweet and sour flavours of Cantonese cooking. It is heavy on garlic, ginger, spring onions and uses soy sauce and sometimes chilli bean paste for seasoning. The gorgeous dark Chinkiang vinegar and Shaoxing rice wine also make a regular appearance.
This is what the Chinese call fu he wei – engaging the palate simultaneously on several levels and is what I most LOVE about Chinese food.
When I cooked Fish Fragrant Aubergines the other night from Every Grain of Rice, I remembered that I hadn’t yet tried Fish Fragrant Pork Shreds – Yu Xiang Rou – one of the dishes Ricky the head chef made for me in the China Sichuan when I visited their kitchen. See Inside the Kitchen of the China Sichuan.

Fish Fragrant Pork Shreds Shananigans style

The owner Kevin Hui gave me their recipe for this dish and I tried it out my own version of it tonight along with Shane & Shan’s recipe for Bashed Cucumber – Pai Huang Gua. The quantity below serves 4 to 6 people. Make the bashed cucumber first and leave it in the fridge to allow the flavours to mingle.while you are preparing the pork.
Bashed Cucumber

I suspect if I had a Sichuan Master Chef standing over me tasting my dishes he would have things to say about the balance of flavours but to my developing palate this tasted just like I remember it in China Sichuan. I love the way the cornflour sauce adds sheen to the dish and the chilli bean paste, dark soy and Chinkiang vinegar give it a rich dark red colour – a feast for the eyes as well as the palate, especially when set against the contrasting bright green cucumber.
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