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Hey guys, Jeremy here from School of Wok, Covent Garden.
It's Wok-less Wednesdays, it's the Year of the Pig, Gung Hay Fat Choy, so we're doing
a fermented tofu red braised pork!
So with this dish, you can use sort of a whole slab or square of pork belly, or pieces like
this.
So long as it's a good bit of pork belly: not too much fat, just enough marbling.
We're gonna sear it first in the base of the pan.
Try and get the skin down in that hot oil.
So whilst that's searing, you wanna boil some eggs.
I've hard boiled these eggs, and they're for later on.
This is a slow cook dish, nice and slow braise so get that glaze.
The glaze, it comes from this sauce.
Now, it's quite a unique sort of flavour and texture with this sauce.
I feel like my shoulder's about to pop out!
It's quite a unique sort of flavour and texture, and that comes from this fermented red tofu.
You can get this from Chinese supermarkets.
You can see sort of the cubes of tofu that come out.
Now, if you like the flavour and texture and you want a little bit more red colour, then
use a little bit more but one to two sort of, small cubes...
I'm gonna put one more in because they're relatively small; and you'll see when I sort
of push into this, how soft and pasty it becomes.
Now what this'll do, is you'll create this sort of feeling of like, silkiness in the
sauce.
If you can't find red fermented tofu, quite a unique ingredient, you can do this by sort
of almost velveting some of the egg yolk - the whole solid hard boiled egg yolk - into a
paste, and mixing it with the sauce.
What you also get is a really deep savoury flavour from this tofu, and actually the liquid,
that fermentation sort of, water, is good to add to that too.
Red: very lucky colour!
My pork here, because it seems like it's really sizzling away.
Yeah, nice.
The searing of the pork skin is really important, because it's kinda in the first part of breaking
down that fat, so I want the fat and every part of the pork to take in the flavour of
the sauce.
You can see the colour there of the crisped up pork skin.
Back to my sauce: very simple from here on in.
For the most part, dark soy sauce is a caramelised version of light soy sauce, so we use it for
colour and texture, and usually I say just a dash here or a dash there, but for this
I really want that sort of glazed, dark, maroon red finish, so I'm gonna go for two whole
spoons of dark soy.
It's gonna interact with the red fermented tofu nicely.
Every other ingredient is pretty much one of - so, a tablespoon of sugar, to get that
sweet, savoury flavour.
A tablespoon of Chinkiang black vinegar, so a slight sweet sour base to this sauce, but
not too much sweet and sour.
Give that a good mix, and a teaspoon of sesame oil: slight nutty flavour.
And that sauce is pretty much ready.
Now what a lot of people do, or don't do when they're braising things, is really caramelise
the sauce before they add any water.
I've got some garlic here, which I'm gonna add to my pork.
Give that a good sort of, stir through.
And what I mean by caramelising flavour when you're braising things is before you add any
water or liquid at all, you wanna caramelise your sauce, whether it's this sauce or any
other sauce, around your meat or your veg.
Even if you're cooking aubergine, I would sear the aubergine first, caramelise the sauce,
and then add your liquid.
That is what braising is rather than just boiling.
So what we're trying to do here is wrap that caramelised sauce around every piece of meat,
and this caramelisation will make a big difference to the way the dish is finished.
That silky, smooth texture around the sauce, and that great glaze.
So now that the porks had a good sort of three, four minutes of just caramelising in that
sauce, it's time to add the water.
Hot water, over the top to fully cover the meat.
You'll think, okay that sauce looks really thin right now, but that's gonna go for a
good hour and a half.
The longer you cook it, the better it tastes.
Slow cook it, bring it to a simmer, and then just cover it with a lid, and we're ready
to go.
Okay, so onto the boiled eggs: they're hard boiled eggs.
Quite a weird addition to the dish, but it is quite traditional, and this is the dish
that my dad would always make when he comes home.
What we do, is we sort of slice into the egg, a few slits in the egg, so that the sauce
runs through the egg and into the hard boiled egg yolk.
Just sort of, poke your knife in, three or four times, so you hit the yolk but don't
cut all the way through.
So back to the pork, it's been cooking for a good hour... actually about an hour and
a half.
The sauce is thickening nicely, but it's still not like super thick, so we're gonna get the
eggs in here for the last half an hour.
We wanna make sure the eggs get fully immersed in that sauce.
I'm gonna boil that up.
Now from this moment onwards, I'm gonna keep the lid off, and bring that to a better sort
of, simmer.
It's had it's slow braise, now we wanna simmer away and almost sort of reduce that sauce
over the next twenty, thirty minutes.
So close to being able to get stuck into this dish, and it looks delicious.
It smells absolutely brilliant.
So a good half hour later, we can see this great silky texture of the sauce.
The pork belly is super succulent and melt in the mouth.
Your eggs, you can see now, you've got this great colour on the outside of them.
Actually, whole boiled eggs is one of these things that my dad always used to tell me
about.
In the old days, when they grew up in sort of refugee camps in Hong Kong, you wouldn't
really have much to eat, so you'd usually have just plain rice with some chilli oil,
and once a year, they were allowed a boiled egg for their birthday.
And so, cooking it like this, just with some soy... dark soy, perhaps a little bit of tofu
if they could get hold of it, would make that egg extra special!
You can see, great texture of that sauce.
That'd really wrap around, sort of boiled, steamed rice.
And some con... con con... colli... cong'sthis?
Colliander...?
Coriander!
Some coriander, works really nicely, that earthy sort of flavour to garnish.
So, my glazed pork belly, red fermented, slow braised pork belly with whole eggs.
Mmmhmm.
I'm gonna go for spoon and fork for this, just so I don't make a fool of myself.
You can see how soft that pork is from that nice long cooking process.
Mmm.
I'm a savoury kinda guy, and that is deep savoury.
Super tasty.
I know a lot of you joke about everything being my favourite dish, but this really is
one of my favourites, and it's one of those dishes that just reminds me of my dad, my
home sort of cooking, and learning process.
If you like learning like I do, and you wanna learn more, don't forscet...
If you...
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