Stir-Fried Pork Belly with Kimchi

Thinking of recipe names or rather, cool recipe names, isn’t my forte. But here’s another of my recipe that is extremely easy to follow! All you need is just a few ingredients, seasoning, and about 20-25 minutes to spare (excluding the marinade).

What you’ll need:
– A slab of pork belly, 1 kg
– Gochujang (Korean red pepper paste)
– Gochugaru (Korean red pepper powder)
– Kimchi (Get the ripened ones if possible!)
– Salt
– Pepper
– Onions, sliced
– Garlic, finely chopped
– Sesame Oil
– Carrots and cucumbers, julienned

To marinate:

1. Slice the pork belly into bite-sized pieces and place them in a large bowl.
2. Add salt, pepper, gochujang, gochugaru, garlic, and sesame oil. Mix well!
3. Put it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

To cook:

1. Heat up a large pan with a slightly deep base and add 2 – 3 tbsp of oil.
2. Fry the meat until both sides are seared nicely.
3. Add the onions and fry until it softens. When that is done, add the kimchi and fry for about 5 – 10 minutes more.
4. You can add either water or stock. Stock is very much preferred as it adds even more flavour to it!
5. Let it bubble away for 15 – 20 minutes.
6. Serve it immediately with a bowl of rice, some julienned carrots and cucumbers on the top.
7. Happy days.

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Roasted Garlic Sour Cream

Another recipe to mark the last day of 2017! Potatoes are pretty much a frequent staple in parties. Roasted, boiled, mashed, on a pie, deep-fried into chips etc. These are great methods to cook them but what about the sauces? Chilli and Ketchup are common favourites but they might get boring after a while.

I’ve improvised a sour cream recipe that was inspired by Nigel Slater. His Salmon and Roasted Garlic Cream recipe involves blending double cream together with roasted garlic and ladling the mixture over salmon that are on crispbreads.

Ingredients:

• 1-2 garlic cloves, skins on
• A pinch of salt and pepper
• Approx 1 tbsp lemon juice, to taste
• Grated lemon zest
• A small tub of sour cream (200ml)

Steps:

1. Roast the garlic in a 180°C oven until it is soft.
2. Spoon out the sour cream into a medium-sized bowl. Mix it gently to loosen the cream.
3. Squeeze the roasted garlic into the sour cream and dispose of the skins. Make sure you mash the garlic.
4. Add the lemon juice, zest, salt, and pepper.
5. Mix well.
6. Eat it with boiled potatoes, spread it on bread with egg slices and bacon, use it in salads too!

This is extremely easy to make, full of flavour, and can be totally customised. To make it more luxurious, add a few drops of truffle oil to give it “boomz”. This can be used as an appetizer: a bowl of it in the centre of the table with breadsticks around it, or a dollop of cream over smoked salmon.

Tender Pork Chops!

There are times when you head out for Western food and you find that the pork chops are either overcooked, lacking in flavour, too thin or worse, undercooked. However, one of the methods that will ensure a tender chop is brining. Brining is to treat food with a salt solution for a period of time before consuming or cooking them. Salt + water is the foundation of the brining solution, but the solution can be flavoured with various spices as well as fruit.

I made these chops a while back. The recipe is posted on Instagram but I figured that I type it out proper on my site so that it is easier to refer to!

Ingredients:

• 3 cups of water
• 3 tbsp salt
• A few garlic cloves
• Peppercorns
• Herbs of your choice (Sage and Rosemary works best, IMO)
• Lemon zest (I have not tried orange zest but I believe it will work well too.)

Steps:

1. Heat up 1 cup of water (don’t let it boil), and add the salt to dissolve.
2. Add the flavouring of your choice. In my case, I added lemon zest, garlic cloves, peppercorns, rosemary, and star anise.
3. Pour in the rest of the water and let the herbs and spices infuse.
4. Once the water has cooled down a bit, pour it over the pork chops in a large bowl.
5. Cover with foil and let it sit in the fridge. I brined my pork chops for a good 6 hours.
6. Pan-fry them for 3-3.5 minutes per side.
7. Results are shown below 🙂

Brining is not limited to pork chops. You can brine a whole chicken/turkey for a few hours before you roast it to ensure a succulent bird. Chicken breast can be a nasty cut of meat as it tends to dry up if not cooked properly thus brining is a good method.

Try it!