INTRODUCTION

I still have quite a number of simple household dishes that are in the pipeline that I want to blog for records. Bear with me if this is too simple for experienced house chefs.

I believed most member will know this dish and may be also cooking it rather often at home. Each will have their own ways of cooking and I am showing you mine.

This is one of the most common dishes that my late mum used to cook. Yes, it is very often and possibly once in two weeks. She usually cooked with pork belly slices. I liked to eat this dish with a weird combination, the belachan chilli condiments. I need no other side dishes, a plate of white rice, a tablespoon of belachan and some salted vegetables would satisfied me..

There is no big deal about this dish, it is a comfort food especially for the Teochew families. It goes very well with white rice or white porridges.  However, there is one critical ingredient which I insisted in the recipe is ginger. We don’t even use garlic for sautéing, just pure ginger. It can either be cooked with minced meat or meat slices.

Our forefathers have wisdom. Traditional Chinese medicine believed that salted vegetable is very cooling to the body, excessive intake may not be good to the body and they need ginger to drive out the “wind” trapped inside the body or warm the body. Moreover, ginger also help to flavour the dish. Therefore for this dish, I usually used a lot of ginger and in fact for all dishes using preserved vegetables, I will have ginger to counter the effect of body cooling.

WHAT IS REQUIRED

Servings: 3-4 adult servings

• 300 grams of minced pork
• 300 grams of salted vegetables
• Dashes of white pepper
• Chicken stock powder to taste
• 5 cm long of ginger, shredded
• 2 teaspoons of corn starch mixed with 4 teaspoons of water (optional)

STEPS OF PREPARATION

• Wash the salted vegetables, slice as thin as possible, soaked the sliced vegetable in a bowl of water for at least 5 minutes. Change water and soak for another 5-10 minutes.

• In a pot, put 1 tablespoon of lard or cooking oil, sauté the sliced ginger until fragrance, add the minced meat and stir fry for 2-3 minutes. If you do not want the meat to become lumpy, you can add some water to the minced meat before you stir frying, this will separate the minced meat. Add the salted vegetable followed by 1 cup of water. Bring to boil and let it simmer until the vegetable are softer which took about 15 minutes. If the water evaporated too quickly, just add more eater.

• When the salted vegetables reach your desired texture, add the starches (optional), chicken stock powder and dashes white pepper. Stir fry until well mixed. Off the heat and the dish is best served with white porridge or rice.

NOTE:

• The thinner the salted vegetable, the better it is . It is easier to get cooked with a crunchier texture.

• Adding water is optional. You can without adding water if you like the crunchier texture and your slicing is very thin. If water is added, you can use high heat to cook until the water dries up or adding starches as above.

• All stir frying shall be high heat.

CONCLUSION

This is a simple dish. I hope this post will remind you of such a dish. It is my habit to keep some salted vegetables in the fridge and when I run out of fresh vegetables, this will be one of the dishes that I cooked. Though this recipes uses minced meat, you can always use meat slices or even minced chicken. Yes, before I forget, remember to soak your vegetables before cooking. No salt is to be added to this dish unless it is too bland.

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