Char siew

Char Siew (Chinese BBQ pork) is one of my favourite meat dish. If I have Chicken rice back home, I would always order Char Siew with it. I rarely order just chicken with my rice. If I have dim sum, my must have would be Char Siew Pau or Char Siew Soh. When my Dad buys dim sum for breakfast he will always gets me Char Siew Pau when the rest of the family will have their Big Pau or Loh Mai Kai. Since I can't get my usual fix of good Char Siew in Luton, I decided to learn how to make them. First time I did it, I used chicken and it turned out alright (see previous post). This time I did the 'real' thing by using pork. I guess the other difference was I used HoiSin sauce this time instead of the LKK Char Siew sauce. Both tasted good but you can't beat pork when it comes to taste. I made quite a bit of Char Siew this time because I wanted to make Char Siew Soh as well. Will post the Char Siew Soh on my next blog entry.

Ingredients:
Marinade

1 kg of pork (Belly or shoulder)
4 tablespoon of Hoisin sauce
2 tablespoon of light soy sauce
2 tablespoon of dark soy sauce
5 tablespooon of sugar
1 tablespoon of five spice powder
A few dash of pepper
1 tablespoon of ground ginger powder
Fried garlic
Other ingredients
Honey
ShaoXing wine

How I did it:
1. Marinade the pork with all the ingredients stated in the 'Marinade'. Add about 50ml of water and give it a good mix to make sure every piece of pork is coated. I left it over night to make sure all the wonderful flavour is absorbed by the pork. I guess you could get away with 2-3 hours of marination.


2. Place the pork on a baking tray (lined with aluminium foil) and cover it with another foil. Pop it in the oven for 15 mins at 200 degrees Celcius. Remove the top foil and dip every piece of pork into the excess marinade. Pop it back to the oven again (this time without the foil) for another 15 minutes. Remove the pork and dip it in the marinade again. Pop it back in the oven again. While the pork is cooking in the oven, pour some ShaoXing wine and 2 tablespoon of honey into the excess marinade. Heat up the marinade until it starts to bubble. Continue to reduce the marinade with low heat until it becomes quite thick. Take out the pork and coat the pork again and put it back in the oven. I turned the heat up to 220 degrees Celcius. The Char Siew will be ready when the pork is slightly charred. Your pork should now look like a Char Siew. If you have extra marinade just use it as Char Siew sauce for dipping or just pour it over your Char Siew.

We had wantan noodles to complement the delicious Char Siew. It looks pretty authentic ya. I must say, Steph has really captured the essence of my cooking. Just blogging about this dish makes my mouth water. I wish I had made more. As promised, I can't repeat any of my recipe for the rest of the year .....Argh.....what a stupid promise since I can't enjoy this for another year.
-Adrian