Recipe: Braised Pork with Wood Ear Fungus

Elephant ears?

I'm sure you are quite familiar with the story of the annoying tag along - the younger sister who wants to go everywhere, do everything, and meet everyone that her older sister knows. Well, I used to be quite the pesky little rodent.

Truth is, my older sister Elaine has always been incredibly sisterly, she took me under the wing the moment I popped out. When we were kids, she tolerated my incessant appetite for trying just about everything that she had acquired, whether it be piano, or ballet or tae-kwan-do. I was so impatient to grow up. We shared so many things together back then - not just extra curricular activities, but space as well as friends, and I realise now that I never thanked her for being so generous in letting me be part of her world.

Do you know how memories from your childhood are often a collage of blurred images, sounds and emotions. In response to something you may see or feel, the mind sharpens a particular image from the past. I was thinking about my sister the other day as I was taking the MRT to Sommerset. Well, for whatever reason, I have this memory of me tagging along to one of my sister's play dates at her friend's house. I must have been only 8-9 years old. Up to that point the kitchen had always been somewhat of a forbidden place. But on this particular occasion, I snuck into the kitchen and found my friend's mother cooking.

The Chinese pepper their food with a play of imagery, symbolisms and analogies, perhaps more than any other cuisine that I know....Buddha jump over the wall, ants climb a tree, pock-marked lady's tofu, etc. It sparks the imagination. I asked her what she was making and she told me that she was making a dish of elephant ears. I went home that evening and tried to ask my mother whether I had really eaten elephant ears. While she assured me that I hadn't, I wondered for many years about what that chewy, rubbery thing I had eaten was. Turns out, it had been wood ear fungus, a common ingredient in Chinese cooking and one that lends itself well to braised dishes because of its neutrality and texture. It is a vegetable rather than an animal, and I love it to this day.

Here is a recipe that I made yesterday called "Hakka char yoke." The critical step in this dish is making the sauce from scratch and marinating and deep frying the belly pork first to retain its moisture. I adapted it from Lily's Wai Sek Hong.

Ingredients:

Nam Yue Red Sauce

8 pieces fermented red bean curd (nam yue)

3 tbsp chopped garlic

3 tbsp chopped shallots

1 tsp chopped ginger

2 star anise

5 cm cinnamon stick

3 tbsp oyster sauce

2 tbsp sugar

1 tsp sesame oil

2 tbsp shao xing wine

500ml water

4 tbsps oil

Heat oil, sauté chopped shallot and garlic until fragrant. Add in the remaining ingredients and bring to boil on low heat until thick. Remove the whole spices and keep bottled, in the fridge for up to a week. I used half the portion and froze the rest.

Braised Pork with Wood Ear Fungus

Ingredients: 

400g pork belly, sliced thickly

A handful of wood ear fungus, soaked in warm water to soften. Remove hard bits and cut into large pieces

2 tbsp Hakka Nam Yue red sauce

2-3 cloves of garlic, smashed

2 shallots, sliced

1 tbsp oyster sauce

Soy sauce and pepper to taste

2 cups water

Marinade:

2 tbsp Hakka Nam Yue red sauce

1 tbsp plain flour

1 tbsp corn flour

1/2 tsp pepper

1 egg

5 cups of oil for deep frying

In a medium sized bowl, whisk together flours. In separate bowl, beat your egg till lightly mixed. Add to the flour and beat until combined. Add your pork belly and marinade, preferably overnight. 

Heat oil in deep-fat fryer or wok. When oil is hot, add a few pieces of pork belly,  and deep-fry until golden brown. Make sure you shake excess marinade before adding the pork to reduce spluttering. Fry in batches. Dish and drain on paper towels.

In a claypot or skillet, heat 2 tsps of oil, add the garlic and shallots and fry until fragrant. Add Nam Yue sauce.

Add  pork belly, fungus and water and bring to a boil. Add oyster sauce and stir well. Lower the heat and simmer, covered, on low heat for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until the pork is fork tender. 

Adjust seasoning and add additional soy sauce and pepper, if necessary.