Pork stew, first dish after regaining appetite

Finally, I regained my desire for food this week. I purchased some decent streaky pork from the butcher and made a pot of pork stew for myself on Wednesday. As I couldn't really scarf down all of it nor would I leave it in the fridge for more than two days, yesterday Rebecca came to help me bring the stew to a good end.

It is no difficult task to do pork stew, but what make these pork chunks lip-smacking in my pot are the creative spice and sauce mixture and some other subordinate ingredients:

• Carrots, tomatoes, Granny Smith apples and close cup mushrooms
  
• Anise, freshly ground pepper, crushed sun-dried chilli, oregano, garlic and ginger
  
• Soya sauce, honey, balsamic vinegar and salt

The whole cooking process took me almost two hours:

1. Cut streaky pork into chunky cubes and marinate them in the spice and sauce mixture.
   
2. While pork is in marinade, cut Carrots, tomatoes, apples and mushrooms into pieces of desired sizes.
   
3. Quick stir-fry pork cubes, together with the marinade, in a wok on high heat, and then transfer them to a pan.
   
4. Put carrots, tomatoes, apples and mushrooms in the pan and add enough boil water to cover all the ingredients.
   
5. Bring to quick boil, turn heat down and simmer for one and a half hours.

The most important thing is to stir-fry the pork cubes properly to seal in the juices in the streaks of lean as well as squeeze out excessive grease in the streaks of fat. When stewing, the squeezed lard will be well mixed with the juices of other subordinate ingredients, and altogether they turn into good gravy.

For eating healthy and adding a contrast in mouthfeel, apart from carrots, tomatoes, apples and mushrooms already in the stew, one more blanched leafy vegie (I strongly recommend Chinese leaf cabbage) can be served at the same time. This dish is best served over rice.

Yummy beyond description was probably what Rebecca could say. It's a pity Hong-Lin didn't join us, although I was sure there wouldn't have been enough for three had she come.