INTRODUCTION

When I worked in the corporate world, i travelled and entertained a lot..I remembered this is such a common cold dish served in the restaurant but I really cannot recall in which region.. Possibly in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Malaysia or Singapore.

I have tried to trace the origin of this dish and apparently all major Chinese dishes category (Sichuan, Cantonese, Teochew, Shanghainese ) have this dish listed in their cuisines.

Well, whatever it is, i can assure reader that this is a nice dish a bit like ham. It was usually slice thinly and served with various type of sauces and what i am sharing today is a simple dipping sauce well liked by Teochew.

I hope readers can recognise this dish and give this recipe a try. I have nothing much to say about this except it suits my taste bud. Preparation is very easy but you will need to pay a much higher price if you ordered from the restaurant. When you are hosting dinner like Chinese New Year eve, you can always prepare this dish to impress your guest.

WHAT IS REQUIRED

Servings: 4-5 adult servings

• 1 medium size deboned pig trotter
• 2 slices of ginger
• 2-3 bay leaves
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 liquorice
• 2 cloves
• 2 star anise
• 1 tablespoon of sugar
• 1 tablespoon of Chinese cooking wine
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt

For dipping sauce

• 1/2 red chilli, chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• pinches of salt
• sugar to taste
• 2 tablespoon of dark or white vinegar

STEPS OF PREPARATION

• Clean the pork trotter, drained, add salt, sugar and Chinese cooking wine. Rub thoroughly and let it marinate for at least 15 minutes.

• Wrap the pork trotter using a piece of clean cloth AS TIGHT AS POSSIBLE. You have to ensure that it is not loose, otherwise, the final meat slices will have lots of holes.

• Put all other ingredients (ginger, star anise, cloves, liquorice, cinnamon and bay leaves) in a pressure cooker, place the meat and add water until the water cover the meat. Pressure cook the meat for about 30 minutes. If you do not have a pressure cooker, you can boil the pork trotter over the stoves for about 1 hour.

• Drain the pork trotter, cut open the strings and the cloth and let it cool completely before cutting. For best result, chilled in the fridge overnight before cutting.

• To prepare the dipping sauce, put all the dipping ingredients together and stir until well combined.

• Best served chilled with the dipping sauce as an appetizer in a typical banquet setting.

Note:

• When you buy the pork trotter in the wet market, you can request the store owner to debone for you. Otherwise, you will have to cook the whole pork trotter for a while until you can cut the meat and debone. From here you will proceed from the recipe here.

• You can also have an additional step to smoke the rolled trotter and it will give you a smoky taste. You can refer to this post:  Zhao An (Chawan) Smoked Chicken (诏安熏鸡). Another variants you can use the braising sauce from braising duck etc. so that you have a dark soya sauce rolled meat.

CONCLUSION

I am sorry I can’t tell you much about this dish.. My memory all mixed up throughout the year but I honestly believed it is very common in Teochew restaurant. Last, I am very surprise that Finnish does have a rather similar dish called RullaSyltty / Mausterulla and if you like you may want to Google the recipe though they are using pork belly meat instead.

Hope you like the post today. Cheers and have a nice day.

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