Free Chinese Recipes

Ingredients

• 675 g (1 1/2 lb) lean and fat pork
• 15 ml (1 tablespoon) salted soy paste or yellow bean paste
• 15 ml (1 tablespoon) soy sauce
• 15 ml (1 tablespoon) hoisin sauce
• 3 cloves garlic, crushed and chopped
• 3 slices root ginger, shredded
• 30 ml (2 tablespoons) dry sherry
• 22 ml (1 1/2 tablespoons) sugar
• 1 ml (1 teaspoon) five-spice powder
• 3 stalks spring onion
• oil for deep-frying

Batter:

• 45 ml (3 tablespoons) flour
• 1 egg
• 60 ml (4 tablespoons) water
• 45 ml (3 tablespoons) corn flour

Serve 6-8

** Free Chinese Recipes **

Method:

1. Cut the pork into strips 5 cm (2 in) long and the thickness of one chopstick and put them in a basin. Add the bean paste, soy sauce, hoisin sauce, garlic, ginger, sherry, sugar, five-spice powder and spring onion cut into shavings, and mix well. Leave them to season overnight. Place the pork, together with the seasonings in a casserole.

2. Heat the casserole. When it is hot, put it into a preheated oven at 190°C(375°F)/Gas 5 for 1 hour. Break or loosen the pork into individual strips.

3. Mix the batter ingredients together thoroughly, and dip the pork strips one by one into the batter to take on a coating.

4. Heat the oil in a deep-fryer. Place a quarter of the strips of pork in a wire basket. fry them for 3-3 1/2 minutes and drain. When they have all been fried and drained, place the whole lot in the wire basket and give them a final frying of about 1 1/2 minutes. Drain and serve.

Note: These crispy strips of pork are served in a pancake, supplemented with shredded spring onion and cucumber, and brushed with piquant Peking Duck Sauce, in the same manner as Peking Duck. In fact, this popular north China dish can be described as the poor man’s Peking Duck.