Dong Po Rou!

I know! What is that gibberish in that title? Well, literally, it means Dong Po's Meat ;D.

*disclaimer: please leave your filthy minds somewhere else

It is a Huangzhou dish which is made by pan-frying and then red cooking pork belly. Red cooking is a slow braising cooking technique that imparts a red color on food.

So now it's STORY TIME!!!!
Dong Po Rou is named after the famous Chinese poet/writer Su Dongpo. Legend has it that while Su Dongpo was banished to Huangzhou, he made an improvement of the traditional process. He first braised the pork, added Chinese fermented wine and red cooked his pork. He  then slowly stewed it on a low heat setting. This dish was first launched in Huangzhou, then spread to Hangzhou, the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty, flourished, and then became one of Huangzhou's most famous dishes (yea, check Wikipedia).

Now that you're well educated on the history of this dish, I present to you MY VERSION of this classic dish.

Evan's Stupendous Dong Po Rou!!!! 

Ingredients:

2 small bunches of green onions, chopped up into 2 inch strips. (The recipe calls for 5 stalks of scallions, but y'all know me -- I love my green onions)

5 pieces of ginger -- smash them with your knife

1 1/3 cup of soy sauce -- I mix dark and light soy sauce -- my grandpa taught me about dark soy sauce. It brings the taste of soy sauce to a totally different stratosphere.

4 lbs of fatty "Berkshire pork" -- yes you will clog up your arteries, but you can make this an annual event, like me
(recipe calls for 1.3 lbs, but you know me again ...)

3/4 cups of wine -- I use whatever cooking wine I could find in the fridge. This particular brand is called "Shao Shing" wine

12 heaping tablespoons of sugar!!!

1) Boil a big pot of water. Once the water is done boiling, CAREFULLY dump the slabs of Berkshire pork into the water. I don't want anybody burning their hand off on account of my blog. I don't want that on my conscience.  Bring the pot to boil again. Boil all that fat off the pork for about 20 minutes

 2) After 20 to 30 mins, take the slabs of fatty pork out. Let them cool and then cut them into 1 centimeter strips.... Well I'm lazy so this looks more like 1 inch strips.
Now is the time to preheat your oven to 275 degrees. The recipe asks for you to simmer things over a hot stove for about 2 hours or so, and you have to watch over this process so nothing catches fire. Fuck that! I'm creative and lazy, so I decided to utilize my oven instead.

3) In a fancy wok or Dutch oven (it has to be something you can stick in an oven), heat the ginger and scallions using a medium- high heat.  when you smell the aromatic concoction, add in the fat pork strips and wine.  When the concoction starts to boil, add in soy sauce...(Whoops, I forgot to take a picture of one of the most important ingredients:  a bottle of dark Guinness beer, plus half a cup of water!), the beer and the water....when this new concoction boils again, lower the heat to medium. Then add sugar.

* A dutch oven is a thick-walled (usually cast iron) cooking pot with a tight-fitting lid. It is NOT the urban dictionary definition....

4) Then cover the Dutch oven and stick it in the oven, like so. Stick it in there for 2 hours or so, taking it out to stir the contents halfway through. Your house will smell so great, it will make your dogs salivate and bark....

*seeeecxxxxxaaaayyyyy!!!!

5) Once the 2 hours have elapsed, take out the Dutch oven, take a giant whiff of the delicious aroma, and celebrate. The dish is now complete!

* the finished product, complete with stir-fried romaine lettuce!!!

Yummy. I cooked myself a feast and must now indulge in the fruits of my labor. Toodles.