This is a hot dish, it’s meant to be, it looks like the fiery red pits from hell when cooked, but it’s a little deceiving, the spice hits you hard, climbs up your nose and slaps you round a bit, then the sweetness comes in, gives you a hug and lets you know everything is going to be OK, then it headbutts you and calls you its bitch, and in a daze you slurp down another noodle, scoop another spoonful of rich saucy soup into your mouth as it splashes and flicks burning dots of oily red pain into your eyeballs. But you don’t care, it’s all worth it.
Hot and spicy braised pork belly
This is a little to taste, not precise if any measurements, so trust you palette. The main ingredients are:
500g pork belly, cut into bite size pieces.
2 onions, sliced
1 red pepper, diced
2 tbsp Gochujang, heaped, add more if you like
2-4 tbsp soy, sweet kicap soya*
1 tbsp Korean chilli powder, heaped, more if you want
1 tsp five spice
1 tsp coriander seeds, ground
6 large garlic cloves, minced
1 large thumb of ginger, minced
2 tbsp sesame oil
Salt
2 cups chicken stock**
2–3 tbsp rice vinegar
* add some sugar if you have regular soy
** more if cooking traditionally.
- This recipe is done in a pressure cooker, you could do this in a heavy based pan over a low heat simmering for a couple of hour until everything is tender.
- Heat the sesame oil in the cooker, add a large pinch of salt, toss in the pork and cook until browned.
- Add the Gochujang, dry spices, garlic and ginger, stir through a cook through a little.
- Stir through the pepper, onions and soy, make sure it’s all nicely coated.
- Pour in the stock, bring up to high pressure and cook for 60 minutes.
- Remove from the heat and taste, adjust the seasoning with salt and rice vinegar.
Serve with pulled noodles and some sprouts, wet wipes are handy too!
Hand pulled noodles
The recipe and method can be found covered in the Cheat Sheet and in more depth via couple of posts on this blog, Cumin lamb with hand pulled noodles is a good one.
The basic run down of the recipe is as follows:
- Form a ball of dough from 5 parts flour with 3 parts water, and 1% salt by weight.
- Cover and rest for 15 minutes.
- Knead by rolling in to a log and folding in half and repeating for 15 minutes.
- Wrap and rest for 60 minutes.
- Shape into a log and cut into 1cm slices, coat in oil and place on tray.
- Refrigerate and leave for 60 minutes.
- Pull out of the fridge 10 minutes before cooking.
- Stretch the noodles and cook in salted boiling water for a couple of minutes.
