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

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. -_-