Hong Shao Rou (紅燒肉) (Chinese braised pork belly)

6 Jan

Garlic string beans, Cantonese vermicelli lobster, Braised pork belly

I’m not exactly sure how my friends (Elisa, Lisa, Mike) and I decided to cook a Chinese themed dinner, but it was a total success. For all the cooking I’ve done, I don’t venture much into Chinese food, partly because I don’t own a fire pit / wok and Chinese restaurants are very affordable, but mainly because I have my mom / dad make Chinese food for me when I’m at home. However, without the parents around, we decided to make Chinese food, featuring garlic string beans (Lisa), Cantonese vermicelli lobster (Elisa, with Mike killing the poor lobsters), braised pork belly (me), and dumplings (not pictured here). Dessert was raspberry sorbet because Lisa failed to deliver on egg tarts that she promised she’d make.

Profile of pork belly, a thing of beauty

Chinese braised pork belly, or hong shao rou in Mandarin, is my favorite Chinese dish of all time (really, any pork belly dish, but this one in particular). It was also Mao ZeDong’s favorite food (you make the connection). My grandpa and dad used to make this dish for me while I was growing up, so that might be part of the reason I love it so much. The pork belly is braised in a mixture of sugar, soy sauce, and Shaoxing wine or mirin for a little over an hour and then laid over a bed of white rice. The pork belly is soft and tender, and the fat melts in your mouth with each bite. Pair each bite of pork belly with a chopstick portion of soy sauce soaked rice and you have yourself one of the most delicious bites of food imaginable.

Hong shao rou

I looked online for some recipes and this one is the one I found to be best. The follow up tips to this recipe are also pretty awesome and found here.

My tips:

1. You must use pork belly. No other cut of pork will work as well.

2. You can substitute mirin for Xiaoxing wine, or look for Xiaoxing wine substitutes (a fruitier wine should work)

3. Add a chunk of ginger into the recipe found above

4. Make sure you control the heat when you are caramelizing the sugar. If your dutch oven or pot is too hot, oil and fat will splash everywhere (which is dangerous and annoying to clean up).

5. Enjoy with white rice. There is no better complement to this dish than white rice.

Hong Shao Rou (reproduced from http://redcook.net/2009/03/01/red-cooked-pork-redux/)

Preparation time: 20 minutes

Slow cooking time: 70 minutes [I would extend the cook time to 60 - 80 minutes so the meat becomes more tender]

1 1/2 lb. pork belly meat

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 tablespoons sugar

3 cloves of garlic peeled

2 scallions cut into 2-inch long pieces

3 whole star anise

2 tablespoons dark soy sauce (老抽)

1/4 cup Shaoxing wine (紹興料酒)

1 1/2 cups clear stock (or the liquid from the par-boiling step) or water

Put the pork belly in a wok containing enough boiling water to cover the meat completely. Continuously skim off the scum as it forms on top of the boiling water. Boil for about 20 minutes then drain the pork belly and place on a plate to cool. The boiling liquid can be reused for braising after filtering through a fine sieve. When the pork belly is cool to touch cut it into pieces of about 1.5 inches cubes.

Melt the sugar and the vegetable oil in a wok over medium high heat. Continue heating until the sugar is slightly brown. About 3 minutes. Add the cubed pork belly and brown it with the caramelized sugar. About 8 minutes.

Put the garlic, scallion, star anise, dark soy sauce, rice wine and clear stock into the pot. Cover the pot and simmer over low heat. Cook for about 40 minutes. Stir the meat every 10 minutes to make sure the pork at the bottom of the pot does not get burnt. Remove the cover and turn the heat to medium high. Cook the meat for another 10 minutes until the sauce reduces to a smooth consistency.

You can serve this dish right away or keep overnight and reheat the next day before serving. Plate it in a shallow bowl and garnish with shredded scallion and sprigs of cilantro.

Tags: braised pork belly, chinese, dumplings, hong shao rou, lobster, string beans, wok

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Categories Recipes
Author winston

NEXT Restaurant – Sicily – Chicago

5 Jul

NEXT Restaurant, Sicily menu

Disclaimer: If you are thinking about going to law school, just know that studying for the bar is absolutely miserable. If you’ve studied for the bar exam before or are studying right now, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Anyways, I had the opportunity to go to NEXT Restaurant recently for their Sicily menu. I’ve had the opportunity to go to every other NEXT menu (went to Paris, skipped Thailand, went to Childhood, skipped El Bulli, and went to Sicily). The overall experience of the Sicily menu was very pleasant, but the dishes for this menu were very hit or miss for me. There were some dishes that were simply amazing, while some dishes were just not good. I won’t bother you with pictures of the dishes I didn’t like (mainly, the 2 pasta dishes and a few of the appetizer dishes were mediocre). The two stars of the night were undoubtedly the two main entrees — a pan-seared swordfish with a mint jus and chickpea side, and then a sous vide roast pork shoulder with tomato sauce. Everyone in my party agreed that these two dishes were fantastic, and the highlights of the meal. The grilled artichokes to start the meal and the desserts to finish the meal (cassata cake and canolis) are worth an honorable mention. My favorite dish was the roasted pork shoulder, which according to the waiter, is sous vide for 5-6 hours, and then braised to finish (presumably in a dutch oven of some sorts). It is the most tender pork shoulder I’ve ever had (more tender than Momofuku bo ssam and all the BBQ places I’ve been to). Time for me to get an immersion circulator… (if anyone gets one for me I’ll cook you a months supply of sous vide pork shoulder).

*Only 4 of the 12 courses are pictured below*

Carciofi Alle Brace – grilled artichokes

Pesce Spada con di Ceci – Swordfish with chickpeas

Spalla di Maiale Brasato – braised pork shoulder

Cassata

Tags: achatz, chicago, next, next restaurant, pork shoulder, sicily, swordfish

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Categories Reviews
Author winston

Great Lake Pizza – Chicago

11 May

Hello everyone! I’ve emerged from my paper writing hibernation to begin a series of posts on Chicago restaurants that I must try before I leave this city. I recently had the opportunity to go to Great Lake, in the Andersonville neighborhood of Chicago and try their pizza. A few years ago, Great Lake was named the number one pizzeria in the United States by Alan Richman of GQ magazine, so this was obviously a place I had to try. In addition, my friend Isaac thinks this place is “solid,” and if a pizza place is solid in his book, you’ve got to go try it. The restaurant is a mom and pop shop, and the pop is the only one who gets to make the pizzas. There is literally one guy who makes all the pizzas, and the rest of the family helps to run the pizzeria. Seating is extremely limited — there is only seating for 12-13 people (I would not recommend going in groups larger than 2 or 3 people), and while they do take out orders, if you get here too late in the evening, the wait for take out could be hours.

Whether this is the best pizza in the country is open to debate, but the pizza was pretty freaking good. I’m not sure how to best categorize it — it’s not a New York slice, and it’s not a Neapolitan pie either. It’s almost somewhere in between — the crust is perfect — there is a very slight crunchy shell, but a chewy inside with very nice air pockets. The bottom of the pizza has a slight char to it, but it’s not baked in a wood or coal burning oven either — just a standard industrial grade pizza oven, with a high temperature setting. Great Lake only offers a few different types of pizza each night, and the ingredients are sourced from independent producers, so generally very fresh and high quality ingredients. The pie I had was creme fraiche with bacon and onions — savory and rich, but not overwhelmingly heavy. A very solid pie all around. There are two drawbacks to Great Lake — one pie will run you close to $30, which is just way too expensive to enjoy this pizza on a regular basis, and the long waits (however, I would try to show up 20-30 minutes before they open so you can be the first seating of the night). Definitely worth a try, but you probably won’t be a regular anytime soon.