Hunan Style Cauliflower Pork

Two days before Chinese New Year is not the time to go to the local large Asian grocery store hoping to find holiday ingredients still on the shelves. It was exceptionally hard to find fermented black beans, which is weird, because it's an ingredient for specific dishes. Though, it is winter and these salted, fermented black soybeans are typically paired with chili oil, garlic, and ginger. It brings a level of umami (savoriness) to a dish that you can't easily replicate just by adding more salt. Anyhow, I had to go there to get fresh pork belly because I didn't want an enormous package of pork belly that one could get from Costco. The only way to do that in this metro area is to go to an Asian store with a fresh meat counter.

I first tasted this dish at a restaurant in southern California called Dong Ting Spring which features Hunan cuisine. It took some web searches to find a recipe ratio that looked comparable to what I ate, having only "Hunan" and "cauliflower" as keywords to go on. Sometimes this dish is called "Hunan Spicy Cauliflower" but the restaurant named it "Big Wok Cauliflower".

Another first? Yeah, first time buying cauliflower. Anyhow. Onto the recipe.

The Foodening Blog - white cauliflower and you should probably cut these smaller

Also, if your pork belly comes with the "skin" part still attached, slice that chewier part off before frying.

Ingredients

1 cauliflower head, florets cut into half or quarters
1 lb pork belly, cubed and/or sliced thin
2 tbsp olive oil, for frying
2 dried chili peppers, seeds removed if you don't want it spicy
2 tbsp fresh ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp rice wine
1 tbsp fermented soybean paste
1 tsp sugar, optional

Directions

0. In a large pot of boiling water, blanch the cauliflower florets for 1-2 minutes, then set aside in a colander to drain.

1. In a wok or large frying pan, heat olive oil and add garlic, ginger, and dried chili peppers. Fry for a few seconds. Add pork and fry until slightly browned and no pink remains. You can remove one of the chili peppers at this point if you want. I removed one, but only because it was starting to burn.

2. Add soy sauce, rice wine, and fermented soybean paste. Stir fry until the pork is coated in the sauce.

3. Add the cauliflower and fry until the cauliflower is tender.

4. Remove from heat and serve hot.

The Foodening Blog - Hunan Cauliflower Pork

Kitchen Notes: Crispy Pork Belly

I had visual aspirations for this food experiment. I thought it would resemble the real thing. But sadly, it seems that how my oven performed versus what it looks like from a restaurant are radically different in taste, texture, and overall appearance. I think the start of the #fail began when I picked up a random portion of pork belly from Fubonn. There was a lot of fat on the cut I got and it should have had more meat. Aside from the very top layer of the pork belly, the skin, the other two layers should be relatively equal in distribution: fat and meat. Just a thought, really. My pork belly had twice as much fat as meat. Also, I don't believe that 465 degrees F is the right temperature for the second baking phase.

What pork belly looks like after the second roasting;
the skin is really, really hard

This recipe process did not work for me: http://kirbiecravings.com/2014/08/crispy-golden-pork-belly.html

It could also be that I had the pork belly in the freezer for several months instead of using fresh pork belly. The fat content of each slice is too much for me. Ugh. #fail