Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Pork stir-fry

I've been cooking a lot of Japanese food lately, but when I thawed out some pork for tonight's dinner, it was almost inevitable that I'd go Chinese. My original intention was to make some Sichuan spaghetti, but I decided I felt too lazy to chop up ginger tonight (it's been a long week and it's only Tuesday). I finally turned to Gloria Bley Miller's The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook and found a recipe for stir-fried pork in oyster sauce that didn't require much chopping.

Having picked a recipe, I started altering it. First, the garlic had seen better days, so I substituted shallots. Then I used porcini soaking water instead of chicken stock, without really considering the radical difference in taste between the two.

It's a simple recipe: stir-fry your onion of choice in oil, then stir-fry the pork pieces until they're slightly browned. Add a little light soy sauce, then Shao Xing rice wine, and stir-fry for another minute. Add half a cup of (in this case) porcini water and heat, then add the oyster sauce solution (cornstarch, oyster sauce, water, sugar, light soy sauce). Serve with chopped scallions as a garnish.

This was another success. The combination of porcini water and oyster sauce made a rich savory sauce that was a delight. I will have to remember this combination, since it worked so well. Ok, so chopping four scallions for the garnish was definitely overkill, but the sauce was a real treat. I'll probably reuse the leftovers with rice tomorrow for lunch.

1 comment:

Winslow said...

I've got to add that it was even better the next day for lunch.