Cooking Experiment: Sweet'n'Spicy Pork, plus Bonus Japanese Curry Pic

[tuftears]

You get a recipe this time!

Maybe you remember my previous attempt at making char siu pork loin.



This version turned out much better. Unfortunately I don't quite remember where I got the original recipe, but here's what I did for this.

I bought a 1.75 lb pork loin roast, and cut it *lengthwise* (along the grain) into strips. Some of the strips I used for a different recipe, but almost half of it I used for this recipe. This is good because when you cut them into bite-sized slices, each slice is cut perpendicular to the grain.

I froze the strips and then when I was ready to make this, I unpacked them, made this marinade, and then vacuum-sealed them and put them in to marinade overnight.

For 1 lb of pork (3 servings):

7 Tbsp soy sauce
10 tsp brown sugar
1/4 tsp garlic
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper
1 tsp five spice powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground black pepper

Then I sous vide'd the pork loin strips (in their marinade-filled pouches) for about 6 hours at 137F. You could probably go lower, like 135F, if you want a little pink in the inside. I turned them around several times during the process. Sous vide is very forgiving that way.

Then I put the meat out into the refrigerator to cool down while I prepared the veggies-- sliced baby bok choy and sautee'd chicken-apple sausage. (yum!) Once they were ready, I heated the frying pan to searing, and cooked the strips for a minute on each side. Looks great! Definitely a recipe I need to do again.

Otherwise, kagetsume is out in the Bay Area this weekend, so today we went to Curry House. Yum!



This is their 'special' ground chicken and tofu curry, served with spinach/garlic rice. It's flavored with extra cloves over their usual sweet'n'spicy curry. It was actually quite delicious and exotic; I'd definitely order it again.

(worried that I'm not eating enough veggies? I had the house salad to go with this. They make a really good Asian-style vinaigrette dressing.)

We went around the corner to Bitter+Sweet and I had this:



This probably was too much dessert for me, after the curry. Should've gone for the ice cream instead! Next time. :) The cake was extremely dense, halfway between a cake and a chocolate bar. Tasty, but now I am full, full, full. -_-

Comments

[cjthomas.livejournal.com]

"Depleted Choconium" is the best dense-cake-description line I can come up with so far. I'm open to suggestions =^.^=.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Sounds about right! I was actually expecting the cake to be ... hollow and raspberry filled, like a truffle.

[rowyn]

I am keeping that term for future use. Mmmm. :9

Also, if I have ice cream this evening, it is your fault, Tufty.

[okojosan.livejournal.com]

Japanese curry is so good! But that cake looks amazing, I'm drooling over it.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Next time I would probably go for the hazelnut mousse. :) I had their tiramisu last time, it was... not bad but not awesome. Snacking my way through their dessert lineup, one dessert at a time!

Japanese curry is pretty tasty. The basic 'chicken katsu and curry sauce' seems old hat to me by now though, which is why I was looking at their other options. I wish they had the option for half-and-half orders, like half chicken katsu, half veggies curry.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Ah, it's a rare place where I can find decent tonkatsu for some reason. But I'm fortunate enough that I'm near a Japanese restaurant (Bikkuri Sushi of Orlando) that has some oddities on the menu from the Kansai region: okonomiyaki ("shredded cabbage pancake," or other things I've heard it called, but none of them do it proper justice), and takoyaki (fried squid with "fish bacon" shreds, festival booth style), for instance. They also have a really good "hot pot." I don't usually find those on the menu at Japanese-styled places.

I don't think I've seen any local Japanese (or Japanese-style) places serving "Japanese curry." Now I'm curious. :)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Weirdly, Curry House only seems to be around the California area.

I did a quick search, I don't know that you have any curry-dedicated restaurants but this came up:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/aki-restaurant-orlando?osq=Japanese+Curry

Bikkuri Sushi actually seems to list "Golden curry" on their menu, as well.

[xyzzysqrl]

Every few years I come back to this post to look at that lovely "stick" of pork loin and the perfect little rectangle medallions cut off it.
...
Here I am again.

[tuftears]

<3

I make sous vide char siu every now and then, it's still great.