Stewed Pork Belly Rice 鹵肉飯

Due to hubby's work, we'd stayed at Taipei for 2 months while little girl was 2+.  One of the dish or rice we ate quite regularly was this stewed pork belly rice, or the well known 鹵肉飯.  I had a chinese recipe book on this dish, going to give it a try and I believed hubby would be happy to have it for dinner.

(yield 6)

Ingredients:

600g        pork belly

300g        pork skin

10             shallots

3 stalks    spring onion

20g          dried shrimps

10 cloves  garlic

Seasoning ingredients:

2 tbsp       cooking oil

360ml       soy sauce

3 tbsp       sugar

1200ml     water

1 tsp         mushroom stock seasoning (substituted with oyster sauce)

1/2 tsp     salt

2              star anise (optional)

1. Boil pork belly and skin in a pot of hot water til color change to pale white (about 3 minutes).  Spoon out the meat and skin quickly, give them a cold bath under running tap water.  Cut thinly and set a side.
2. Slice shallots thinly.  Dice spring onion.  Soak dried shrimp in water for 5 minutes, drained and cut into tiny pieces.  Wash garlic, dried, set a side.
3. Heat pan, put in vegetable oil, turn heat to low, fry shallot, spring onion and garlic individually til golden brown.  Drain oil and set a side.
4. Heat pan, put in little vegetable oil, turn heat to low, stir fry dried shrimp til fragrant, add in soy sauce and sugar.
5. Put in meat and skin, stir fry for 5 minutes, add in water, boil, add in mushroom stock seasoning, salt and star anise, cook for 1 minute.
6. Add in fried shallot, spring onion and garlic into the meat mixture, stew under low heat for 30 - 40 minutes.
7. Serve with steaming hot white rice.

You may need to cook extra rice for this dish, as it's so delicious, u will definitely eat more!  If u r on diet, sorry to say, u have to skip this dish, it contains lot of fats but it was this fat that made it so yummy!

Made this for little girl, but she happily took out the furakake when she saw the white rice, dipping on furakake instead of savoring with the pork :(

A big bowl of rice top with the stewed pork belly and sauce  *  drooling  *