My apologies for the name of the dish. Honestly, I don’t know what to call it. It’s nothing like I’ve ever tasted before and it’s not even a real dish as far as I’m concerned.
I was having a bad case of monthlies (I still am, actually) but dinner needed to be cooked. I opened my fridge and the bottles of hot broad bean sauce and tamarind paste happened to be right in front of me. I couldn’t even muster up the strength to push the bottles away and check out what other ingredients were behind them.
Not to mention, I should have used chicken stock or something but my legs were so wobbly I wasn’t sure if I could stand long enough to dissolve some chicken stock cubes in water so I ended up using apple juice instead. Which, of course was conveniently located right next to the bottle of tamarind sauce.
The result was a dish of tender pork cubes submerged in a rich, flavoursome, sweet and sourish sauce with a bit of heat to boot. Surprisingly quite a lot of depth of flavours for something cooked under the influence of blood loss and pain killers.
For the marinade:
- 300 grams of pork, cut into cubes
- 1 tablespoon of corn flour
- 1 tablespoon of chinese rice wine
- 1 tablespoon of oyster sauce
For the sauce:
- 1 tablespoon of hot broad bean paste (dao ban jiong)
- 1/2 tablespoon of tamarind paste
- 1 tablespoon of garlic, minced
- 1 tablespoon of shallots, minced
- 1 tablespoon of ginger, minced
- 100 ml of pure apple juice
# – First, marinade the pork for at least 1 hour in the chinese rice wine, corn flour and oyster sauce. Keep chilled in the fridge till ready to be used.
# – In a pan, fry up the minced garlic, ginger and shallots.
# – Add a tablespoon of hot broad bean sauce.
# – Followed by half a tablespoon of tamarind paste.
# – Next, throw in the pork. Stir.
# – Add the apple juice. If you don’t like too much sauce, reduce liquid by half. Stir till pork’s cooked through.
# – Hate it or Love it Pork Supreme, DONE!
The sauce was appetising and wonderful with rice. As the title goes, you may either hate or love this dish. I say this because it’s a very interesting and unique flavour (no, not in a repulsive sort of way hahaha). My best suggestion is to try it out and then decide for yourself.
That said, the next time I make this dish (yes, I’ll make it again), I would make a few changes though. For one, I will cut the pork into thin square slices rather than cubes and brown them in a pan first before chucking them into the sauce…purely for texture & aesthetic reasons.
Have a good week peeps!