We all like to save time and money. This can be difficult in the kitchen when one values creating delicious dishes using local and sustainable meat and produce. To help myself on both fronts I like to use a large, less expensive cut of meat to be the centerpiece of my dinners on consecutive nights. In this case I decided to use a pork shoulder and braise it with Asian flavors allowing me to create a variety of dishes over the next few days. I braised the shoulder with Chinese five spice that I ground and mixed myself for maximum freshness, orange zest, garlic, ginger, thyme, ginger vinegar, and chicken stock.
While the meat was braising and my apartment was beginning to smell quite delicious I decided to take a modern American approach to the dinner for that night. First I cooked off some short grain Japanese rice that had been polished in the Kapika method. Kapika creates a smoother, more lustrous finish to each grain that results in a wonderful texture to the cooked rice. I then combined the cooled, cooked rice with a beated egg and formed the mixture into rice patties That would be pan fried. Then I made a light slaw of nappa cabbage, daikon, red grapefruit, and cilantro. I added stir fried green beans to the other elements. The sauce is simply a reduction of the braising liquid finished with butter.
Braised pork shoulder, crispy rice cake, and stir fried green beans with spicy slaw
I planned the next meal to be a noodle soup with broth made from the braising liquid. I added some Asian Veggies along with some fresh mussels that, at only five dollars a pound, added a great bang for the buck. For two servings only a quarter to a third pound of mussels are needed.
Chinese five spice udon noodle soup, sliced pork shoulder, mussels
For the third day I decided to go away from noodles and rice and use the pork as a filling for bao, a traditional Chinese steamed dumpling. I minced the remaining pork and combined it with blanched carrots and snow peas along with roughly chopped cilantro. Then I reduced the remaining braising liquid until nearly all of the water had cooked out, added some Sriracha and lime juice then mixed the resulting sauce with the meat mixture. Finally, I made a whole wheat yeast dough flavored with sesame oil. The bao are quite simple to assemble. Using your fingers you form a piece of the dough into a disc about five inches wide then add a mound of the filling in the middle of the dough that fills a circle with about half the diameter of the disc of dough. Then pull the edges of the dough up aroung the filling and then twist the ends together to secure the top. Once the bao are formed let them rest for about ten minutes and then steam, refrigerate for up to a day, or freeze for up to a month. I've found that I never really need to freeze bao, because they tend to be eaten the day they were made.
Pork bao
