Steamed Pork Belly with Chinese Sausage, Ginger, Fermented Black Beans, Red Chillies and Shaoxing Wine

Steaming is an art I think. Everyone is telling me that they need to buy a steamer to literally steam. I say 'NO NEED!!!!' Lol...  All you need is one of these - a steamer stand (see image below):

Image taken from sourcingmap.com

Then find yourself a big enough pot with a lid and voila, a self-made steamer. A steamer stand can be bought at almost all Asian supermarkets in London so there should not be much of a problem. They're about £2.50 or so anyway depending on the size so it is definitely much better to buy one of these and convert your pot into a steamer.

So...getting on... the dish in question is something that I remember watching Gok cooking on his tv serial Gok Cooks Chinese but was also a dish that my mom makes somewhat similarly as well back home in Malaysia. We don't consumer as much pork belly back home strangely enough but that is my more prefered cut of meat for any kind of chinese cooking but of course you can use lean meat for the dish too. My mom always preferred steaming anyway versus deep-frying so I decided to take a page out of her recipe book, improvised it and made this:

Ingredients:

About 200gms pork belly - sliced about 1cm thickness

2 medium sized chinese sausages - sliced diagonally

2 medium sized red chillies - sliced diagonally

1 tbsp fermented black beans - soaked in hot water

1 5cm knob of ginger - julienned

2 cloves of garlic - finely chopped

2 glugs of Shaoxing wine

2 squirts of soy sauce

1 big glug of oyster sauce

Method:

1. Firstly prepare your steamer. Grab the biggest pot you can find, fill up the bottom of the pot with water up to about 5cm. Add in the steamer stand and close with the lid and turn on the gas on low heat. Let it slowly come to a boil.
2. In the meantime, prepare your ingredients. In a pasta bowl (as per photo) or a deep dish that fits going in to your pot, lay out the ingredients starting with the pork belly first, and then the rest of the ingredients in order of the recipe.
3. When water is hot enough, lay in the dish and cover. Let it steam for about 20 minutes or until meat is cooked through. That should be about another 5 minutes or so. Not too long otherwise the meat will become tough like old bread that could make you pass out when knocked on the head.
4. Serve with piping hot white rice and stir-fried vegetables on the side.

Mmm...I had this for two days...yes I am only one person so the portions produced could fit for a 4 people actually. Thanks mom for teaching me the wonders of steaming. Lol! Another steamer of a recipe is 'Steamed Egg with Minced Meat' which is actually very peranakan. But that's another blog post.

Until then, look out for the next post on our second supperclub date!

The Innovativebaker