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Wednesday 23 November 2011

We do eat at home...occasionally!

Most of our home cooking is based on simplicity, quickness and the ability to fill-up 2 chickadees with hollow legs. But when on our own SP and I like to mix it up!


Over the last year we have been on a mission to master the humble fried rice. It started when we read Gilbert Lau's recipe for fried rice. He talked about the magic of simple flavours, the right ingredients and taking the time to do it properly - which in the case of fried rice is quickly (you can read the article and recipe here.)


We have made the recipe a number of times over the past year to great acclaim. But each time it has been minus the char siu as it has been too hard to source.


So we decided to make our own.


The first problem was settling on a recipe for the marinade! Google char siu and be swamped by old family recipes, new favourites and everything inbetween.


In the end we found a char siu sauce at the supermarket and topped it up with Chinese five-spice, fish sauce, hoisin sauce, honey, pepper and sesame oil.

We then marinaded the pork fillet for 24 hours.


To cook, we lined a baking tray and sat the pork fillet on a tray. The marinade drips a lot and caramelises - the foil saved us a huge cleaning up job.


The pic to the right looks very wrong I know! But it smelt so good as it was cooking. Every 10 mins or so we turned it and basted it with more marinade.


At the end, we sliced it (& tasted it - mmmm) and got ready to make our special fried rice. The char siu was sweet, sticky and tender. And the fried rice was light, wholesome and extra tasty with all the ingredients finally coming together beautifully.



To say that we were delighted with our end result is an understatement. It was worth the wait; worth the effort and definitely worth doing again.









1 comment:

  1. Wow, this sounds amazing!!! Where is my dinner invitation?

    ReplyDelete