Cooking Experiment: Steamed Pork with Fermented Bean Curd

[tuftears]

This is a *very* homestyle Chinese dish. You won't find this in many Chinese restaurants, and if you did take a yen to cook it, you'd need to go to an Asian supermarket like Ranch 99 to get the fermented tofu. That said, it's a taste of home cooking that I haven't had in a long time, so I decided to try making it myself.



I mostly went by this recipe for steamed pork but I used boneless pork chops instead of pork belly because that was what was available at Trader Joe's. I used fermented bean curd with chili, as well, about three or four cubes worth of the stuff. The zucchini is just steamed with garlic and salt. Well, if you really need the recipe for what I did specifically, I can try to work it out, but otherwise you're best off going with an authoritative recipe.

The pork came out a little more firm than I'd like. I may need to cut the pork thinner, or lower the cooking temperature. This might actually be an interesting application of sous vide cooking for the next time I try this.

Still, it tastes pretty good! Very 'umami', or savory, a flavor that's not quite salty or sweet or spicy. I'm definitely in the right ballpark, now I just need to fine-tune the recipe.

Comments

[centauress.livejournal.com]

Yeah, leaner pork cuts need to be thin in dishes like that.

What a fascinatingly uhh... unappetizing dish ^-^ Reminds me of a few things I've seen in western cooking. Some foods are just not as good looking as they are in memory, eh?

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Hmf. ;) Would it seem tastier if I told you it was a Chinese version of beef stroganoff?