Slow-Fried Pork Meat With Potatoes

“Home-tasted dish that never fails you!”

I am not a pork lover. In fact, seldom eat it. However, I really loved this particular pork meat dish!

It is so “motherly” taste, I shall say. Just close your eyes, flash back your childhood moment where your mum’s home-cooking scent emerges in the air that you can even smell it at the door step upon reaching home from school. Yes, that it is. From my mum.

Loved the fragrance and taste of this dish which I’ve learnt from my mum (smile).

The ingredients and condiments used in this dish were simple, in fact. It’s the cooking technique.

I fried the potatoes beforehand, to crisp it a little. The texture of the pork meat was also a little crisped instead of soft and tender kind. Crispness makes the bites more interesting, indeed.

See how I prepared it:

Ingredients
300 gram of lean shoulder butt pork meat, thinly sliced
3 medium potatoes, sliced
1 tablespoon of black bean paste
1 tablespoon of oyster sauce
1 tablespoon of dark soy sauce
3 chili padi, cut
Pinch of sugar (less than half a teaspoon)
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 thin slice of ginger, thumb size big
1/2 cup of cooking oil (for frying potatoes)

Method:
1) Heat wok with 3 tablespoon of oil over high fire. Add sliced potatoes, and shallow-fry it till slightly browned. Drain on kitchen towel, and reserve for later.

2) Remove excessive oil and leave only 2 tablespoon of oil, reduce heat to medium-low fire. Add garlic, ginger and chili. Stir-fry for 30 seconds, or until fragrant. (Beware of pungent scent from chili)

3) Add black bean paste and pork meat, stir-fry for 1 minutes. Add oyster sauce, and sprinkle sugar. Reduce heat to very low fire. Stir-fry the pork meat gradually till liquid in the wok slightly dries up.

4) Return potatoes to the wok. Combined it well. Add dark soy sauce. Continue to stir-fry till liquid totally dries up. Heat off. Serve.

The main key in yielding crisped meat is to simmer it with very low heat. It is to extract the liquid from the meat to make it crisped, and yet, without burning the meat. Not to worry, the meat will never too hard to bite, but crisp that make the bites more interesting.

The potatoes were soft with deep/ shallow frying method.

This is not a gravy-ed dish, but due to the “slow and low (heat)” frying method, taste of the meat and potatoes was so intense and flavoursome.

Calories in a decent portion of this dish counts about 400kcal. Yes, it’s not a light dish huh!

Tips: Reduce the amount of chili, if you prefer less spicy, and vice-verse.