Saturday, May 1, 2010
Red-Braised pock hock with shitake mushroom
I have been delaying cooking this dish because I could not figure out which part of the pig, pock hock belonged to. Of cause I could not take the chances of walking into an Asian butcher and taking home the correct piece of pig's body. So I did my due diligence and asked the google master. It referred to it as pork shank, from which I gathered it will be the leg. When I did approach the Asian butcher and asked for a pork hock, she reached over and grabbed undoubtedly the correct anatomy of the pig. She held it by the foot with its hoof pointing up like a ballerina's foot in the air (pigs have big toes!) and asked whether I wanted it to be chopped this way or that way or leave as is. I didn't care how it was chopped as long as it was rendered unrecognisable. The less evidence of where it came from, the better it would be for someone who will be handling it and cooking it. Pig's foot, however remained what it is. A piece I will be offering to my mother or my sister-in-law who like to eat anything from fish eyeballs, to animal kidneys (and it doesn't matter which animal the kidneys belong to).
This is one dish I must have spent the longest time cooking. For whose benefit I wondered greatly at midnight while I was waiting for the stock to simmer. The stock and the hock had to be refrigerated overnight in order to get rid of the layer of fat. By the time it came to reheat the hock and simmer the stock until only 500ml of the sauce remained, I was truly getting sick of anything that had to do with red-braised. My husband's face popped up several times. I hate it when he is right. May be I shouldn't have followed the recipes page by page.
The pieces of pork had disintegrated into pieces by the end, which left the hock truly unrecognisable. The only saving grace was the shitake mushrooms, which I nearly forgot to put in. This is a dish specially reserved for die hard pork lovers... hmm not me.
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Your description of the ballerina-pig reminded me of Olivia the Pig from the children's books. You're a brave person - I don't think I could've handled that dish!
ReplyDeleteI miss your posts :(
ReplyDeletePlease start cooking again soon!