Red-Cooked Pork Belly with Mushroom & Fried Tofu

I made this two weeks ago with a modified recipe from "The Food of China" cookbook. I thought I had better catch up on my blogging now, otherwise I will never catch up!

Ingrediants

500g pork belly, rind on

3 tablespoons Shaoxing rice wine

3 slices of ginger

2 tablespoons of soya sauce (or 3 tablespoons of dary soya sauce)

3 hard boiled eggs, peeled (optional)

25g of white sugar (or 50g rock sugar)

6 - 8 pieces of Chinese shitake mushroom (if bought dried, remember to soak these in water first to soften)

1 stick of spring onion

Serves 4

Instructions:

Cut the pork into about 2 cm strips cutting across the layers so that all pieces have rind on them.

Then I put the pork belly into my thermo cooker with enough water to cover the pieces.

Add the soya sauce, sugar, rice wine and ginger and bring the liquid to a boil. Then simmer for about 10 minutes.

I then remove the cooked pork belly with the sauce into a casserole dish and placed the mushroom, spring onion and eggs in it and simmer for about 15 minutes.

Before serving add sugar or salt to taste. You can add dried chilli to this dish as well if you want it a little spicy. It's great with fluffy short-grain rice... that just soaks the sauce up like a sponge...