Recipes
Shanghai red-braised pork with eggs
If you're looking for something to make for the Chinese New Year try this marvellous recipe from Fuchsia Dunlop's Land of Fish & Rice (Note: Fuchsia recommends you make it a day ahead.)
Fuchsia writes: Red-braised pork, in which chunks of belly pork are simmered with soy sauce, rice wine and sugar, is beloved across China, and there are many regional variations. In Jiangnan, and especially Shanghai, they like theirs dark, sleek and seductively sweet. The pork is only cooked for about an hour in total, so the meat and fat retain a little spring in their step. A secondary ingredient is often added, such as bamboo shoot, deep-fried tofu, cuttlefish, salted fish or, as in this recipe, hard-boiled eggs. The dish is a perfect accompaniment to plain white rice; I do recommend that you serve it also with something light and refreshing, such as stir-fried greens.
At the Dragon Well Manor restaurant in Hangzhou, they call this dish Motherly Love Pork because of an old local story. Once upon a time, they say, there was a woman whose son had travelled to Beijing to sit the imperial civil service examinations. Eagerly awaiting his return, she cooked up his favourite dish, a slow-simmered stew of pork and eggs. But the road was long and the travelling uncertain, so her son didn’t arrive when expected, and she took the pot off the stove and went to bed. The next day, she warmed up the stew and waited again for him, but he didn’t arrive. By the time her son actually reached home on the third day, the stew had been heated up three times, and the meat was inconceivably tender and unctuous, the sauce dark and profound.
Shanghai red-braised pork with eggs - shang hai hong shao rou 上海红烧肉
6 eggs, small if possible
20g fresh ginger, skin on
1 spring onion, white part only
750g pork belly, skin on
1 tbsp cooking oil
1 star anise
A small piece of cassia bark
3 tbsp Shaoxing wine
700ml stock or hot water
2 tbsp light soy sauce
1½ tbsp plus 1 tsp dark soy sauce
3 tbsp caster sugar or 40g rock sugar
Hard-boil the eggs in a pan of boiling water, then cool and shell them. In each egg, make 6–8 shallow slashes lengthways to allow the flavours of the stew to enter. Smack the ginger and spring onion gently with the flat side of a Chinese cleaver or a rolling pin to loosen their fibres.
Put the pork in a pan, cover with cold water, bring to the boil over a high flame and boil for 5 minutes. Drain and rinse it under the cold tap. When cool enough to handle, cut the meat through the skin into 2–3 cm cubes (if your piece of belly is thick, you may want to cut each piece in half so they end up more cube-like).
Heat the oil in a seasoned wok over a high flame. Add the ginger, spring onion, star anise and cassia and stir-fry briefly until they smell wonderful. Add the pork and fry for another 1–2 minutes until the meat is faintly golden and some of the oil is running out of the fat. Splash the Shaoxing wine around the edges of the pan. Add the hard-boiled eggs and stock or hot water, along with the light soy sauce, 1½ tablespoons dark soy sauce and the sugar. Bring to the boil, then cover and simmer for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Pour into a pot or a bowl, allow to cool, then chill overnight. In the morning, remove the layer of pale fat that has settled on the surface. Tip the meat and jellied liquid back into a wok, reheat gently, then boil over a high flame to reduce the sauce, stirring constantly. Remove and discard the ginger, spring onion and whole spices. After 10–15 minutes, when the liquid has reduced by about half, stir in the remaining dark soy sauce.
Shortly before you wish to serve, bring to the boil over a high flame and reduce the sauce to a few centimetres of dark, sleek gravy. Turn out into a serving dish. Then go and welcome your son back from his imperial civil service examinations!
If you have any leftovers – unlikely, in my experience – you can reheat them with a little water and some dried bamboo shoot, winter melon, tofu knots, deep-fried tofu puffs or radishes. In fact, you might wish, like some of my Chinese friends, to red-braise odd scraps of fatty pork just to cook vegetables, because it makes them so delicious.
Shanghai red-braised pork
Omit the eggs and increase the amount of pork to 1kg. Use only 1½ tbsp light soy sauce, 1½ tbsp plus 1 tsp dark soy sauce, 2½ tbsp sugar and 500ml hot water.
What to drink: I'd serve a ripe Aussie grenache with this, maybe even an amarone.
Recipe taken from Land of Fish and Rice, published by Bloomsbury, £26. Photo © Yuki Sugiura
White onion and bay leaf soup with Ogleshield and hazelnuts
I ordered this amazing soup at one of my favourite local Bristol restaurants Wallfish (now Wallfish & Wellbourne) and begged the recipe from the chef, Seldon Curry. It's tastes like the sweetest of oniony fondues and is soooo delicious.
Serves 6-8 (it's rich so you only need a small bowl)
125g butter
1250g white onions, peeled and finely sliced
5g salt
2 bay leaves
25g plain flour
600ml full cream milk plus extra if you need it
175g grated Ogleshield or Raclette cheese
For the garnish
3-4 tbsp rapeseed oil
75g roughly chopped roasted hazelnuts
2-3 tbsp finely chopped parsley
Melt the butter in a large pan and tip in the onions. Stir thoroughly to coat with butter then add the salt and bay leaves. Put a lid on the pan and cook over a low heat for about 45 minutes until deliciously soft and sweet.
Sprinkle over the flour, stir and cook for 5 minutes then gradually add the milk, stirring until smooth and continue to cook over a low heat for about 15 minutes. Remove the bayleaves, add the Ogleshield then take off the heat and pass in batches through a blender until smooth. (You can sieve it for extra smoothness if you want). Return to the pan, check the seasoning, adding a touch more milk if you need to thin it down.
To serve ladle the soup into warm bowls, drizzle over the rapeseed oil and sprinkle with chopped hazelnuts and parsley.
What to drink: You could either drink a crisp white wine like a chablis or an albarino or a dry cider.
Baked chicken with garlic and sherry
This is the most delicious way of cooking chicken which basically creates sticky, sherry-flavoured chicken nuggets. It comes from my friend Charlotte and I’ve been cooking it for about 20 years
Serves 4
A medium-sized chicken or 1 kg chicken thighs
1 head of garlic
extra virgin olive oil
about 3 sprigs each fresh rosemary and/or thyme
100ml fino sherry or white wine
Salt and pepper
* Take a medium-sized chicken and chop/joint it into pieces - slightly bigger than bite-sized - leaving it on the bone or chop each thigh in half with a sharp knife or cleaver. DO NOT REMOVE THE SKIN!
* Sprinkle salt (and pepper) over the chicken pieces
* Take a head of garlic, separate the cloves and, leaving the skin on, smash with the flat side of a knife.
* In a large, thick-bottomed, shallow pan heat a good glug of decent olive oil and sauté/seal the chicken til golden brown (skin-side down first)
* Throw in the garlic and a couple of sprigs each of fresh rosemary and thyme and turn the heat up, whilst stirring
* Add a small glass of fino sherry or white wine, quickly bring to the boil and then put into a pre-heated oven (180°C/350°/gas 4) for 30-45 minutes until the chicken is cooked and sticky with the caramelised garlic and juices
* Serve with a bitter leaf salad and roasted new potatoes or crusty bread to mop up the juices in the base of the pan.
What to drink: Well, you could carry on drinking sherry but I think that might be overdoing it. I'd go for an oaked white rioja or a white Côtes du Rhône myself.
Want more ideas for pairing with sherry? Download my ebook 101 Great Ways to Enjoy Sherry here.
Oktoberfest Chicken
This recipe which I edited slightly from the version in the Oktoberfest Insider Guide by Sabine Kafer, comes from my beer and food book An Appetite for Ale. The secret is the lavish last minute slathering with butter.
Serves 2
1 small chicken (about 1.2kg or 2lb 10 oz. Geitl stresses the importance of this being dry-plucked)
Salt and pepper
A good handful of fresh parsley with the stalks
50g (2 oz) unsalted butter
An hour before roasting season the chicken generously with pepper and salt “so that even the preparation makes your mouth water” Wash the parsley, shake dry, chop roughly and stuff inside the chicken. If you have a rotisserie attachment in your oven preheat the oven to 220°C/425° F/Gas 7, skewer the chicken on the spit and roast for about an hour.
Alternatively preheat the oven to 200° C, and put the bird breast side downwards in a roasting tin. (Geitl recommends not using a fan oven or fan oven setting for this as it will dry the meat out. Not sure I agree about that.). Roast for about 30 minutes then turn the bird breast upwards and finish cooking (allow 25 minutes per pound in total - just over an hour for a bird of this size.)
Either way - and this is crucial - 15 minutes before the end of the cooking time the bird should be coated with fresh, soft but not runny butter. Repeat this process 4-5 times. To check if the chicken is ready stick a skewer or the point of a sharp knife into the thickest part of the leg. The juices should run clear. Cut the chicken in half down the breastbone and serve half a portion each.
Best beer matches: At the Oktoberfest it would be served with a light Helles beer but I prefer it with a classic Oktoberfest Märzen or a golden lager like Budweiser Budvar.
Do also make this delicious Oktoberfest potato salad
Photograph © Miredi at fotolia.com
Drowned tomatoes
Before summer finally disappears here's a brilliant way to make use of the last of the season's tomatoes from chef Florence Knight's lovely first book 'One'. Good tip about skinning garlic cloves too!
Serves four to six
550g mixed heritage tomatoes
4 garlic cloves
1 bunch of thyme
2 or 3 bay leaves
1 tsp sugar
a pinch of salt
about 250ml extra virgin olive oil
These tomatoes are swimming, or even drowned, in olive oil, which accentuates their sweetness and depth. Especially pleasing through crisp salad leaves, toppled over a soft poached egg on toast or even steamed with clams. You can use any variety of tomato to make this recipe, from golden cherry to sweet baby plum, but I find that heritage work particularly well.
Preheat the oven to 170ºC/gas 5.
Run the tomatoes under cold water and pick out any stalks.
Place the garlic cloves in warm water for a couple of minutes – this helps to loosen the skin. Pop them out of their skins.
Slice the tomatoes in half and gently lodge them cut-side down in a pan or casserole dish that can go in the oven. Thinly slice the garlic and scatter it over the tomatoes. Drop over the thyme and bay leaves, and sprinkle with the sugar and salt. Pour over the olive oil until the tomatoes are sitting in about half a centimetre of it.
Bake for about forty-five minutes until the tomatoes are soft, a little wrinkly and blistered and have absorbed most of the olive oil.
These will keep for a few days in a jar or airtight container stored in a cool place or, if cooled first and kept under a layer of olive oil, up to a week in the fridge.
What to drink: It's hard to recommend a match without knowing what way you're going to use these but you should be pretty safe drinking Italian - Chianti if you fancy a red or almost any kind of dry Italian white like a Verdicchio or Vermentino.
Recipe extracted from ONE: A Cook and her Cupboard by Florence Knight, out now published by Saltyard Books, £26. © Florence Knight 2013. Photography © Jason Lowe.
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