Braised Pork Belly with Mushrooms and Dried Oysters 冬菇蠔鼓炆五花腩

Happy 牛 Year! Today's the first day of Chinese new year, the year of the Earth Ox. We started our day at the Buddhist Centre with prayers and Dharma talk, followed by a delicious vegetarian lunch. After lunch, we went shopping for baby stuff (again!), the shopping started a few weekends ago and never seems to end. There's always something to buy every time I walk into the babies section.

Rang my family and relatives back home last night and they were all curious as to what we had for CNY's eve dinner. This is what I cooked - Braised Pork Belly with Mushrooms and Dried Oysters 冬菇蠔鼓炆五花腩. B loves this dish and had 3 helpings of rice. ^_^


Ingredients
700g pork belly
6 pieces Chinese mushrooms, soaked to soften and stalks removed
5-6 big dried oysters, soaked to soften
1 small piece ginger, sliced
8-10 cloves garlic
1 tbsp cooking oil
Water

Seasoning
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp oyster sauce
1 1/2 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 1/2 Chinese cooking wine
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp five spice powder
1 tsp sesame oil

Method
Soak dried oysters and mushrooms separately for at least 4 hours in cold water. Retain soaking liquids.

Cut pork belly into 1.5 inch slices with the fats in between the lean meat intact. Blanch pork in a pot of boiling water for about 3 minutes. Remove pork slices.

Heat oil in a pot, stir fry ginger and garlic till fragrant and slightly brown. Add pork belly, oysters and mushrooms and stir fry for another 3 minutes. Stir in the seasoning and the liquids used for soaking mushrooms and oysters. Add more water to ensure ingredients are covered, and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour 15 minutes.

Serve on Chinese cabbage or lettuce leaves.

Not in picture:
1. I tossed in some hard-boiled eggs to braise the eggs (滷蛋) in the last 15 minutes of cooking the meat.
2. I also cut some iceberg lettuce separately for wrapping the pork slices.