Braised pork belly with daikon

This is a dish that my mum cooks a lot. My mum told me that she learnt to cook this dish from my grandfather. My mum comes from a family of nine children and I imagine that this would be a very economical dish to cook for a big family as it uses few ingredients and is simple to cook. I only had to buy pork belly and daikon from the shops and all the other ingredients were in my cupboard and fridge.


The pork has a lovely flavour of soy sauce balanced by the sweetness of the daikon. The pieces of pork belly are wonderfully tender after hours of braising with the enzymes contained in the daikon helping to tenderise the pork as it cooks making it almost melt in your mouth. I also love the juices that are released from the daikon which provides a delicious sauce to spoon over rice.

Ingredients
• Equal quantities of pork belly, chopped into cubes and daikon, cut into 4cm chunks (I got approximately 1.5 kg of each)
• Peanut oil
• 4-5 slices of ginger
• 2-3 shallots, roughly chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, smashed 
• 5 small red chillies, sliced open with some of the seeds taken out
• 1 ½ tablespoon caster sugar
• 2 tablespoon dark soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon ground white pepper
• 1 ½ teaspoon of salt
• 1 tablespoon fish sauce
• 1-2 teaspoon oyster sauce

Method
Par-boil the pork cubes and rinse with cold water.

Heat peanut oil in wok. Add in half of the ginger, garlic, shallots and chillies, and fry for a bit until fragrant. Then add in the pork cubes and fry for a few minutes until the pork pieces are slightly brown. Transfer the pork to a 4 litre heavy based pot. 

Heat peanut oil in wok. Add in the rest of the ginger, garlic, shallots and chillies, and fry for a bit until fragrant. Then add in the daikon and fry for a few minutes until slightly brown. Add the daikon to the pot with the pork belly.

Over a low heat, add 1 ½ tablespoons of sugar into the wok and 2 tablespoons of dark soy sauce. Once the sugar has melted and the mixture starts bubbling, add in 1 cup of the water (I used the water that the pork was parboiled in). When the soy sauce mixture starts to boil, turn off the heat and add into the pot with the pork and daikon. 

(soy sauce mixture morphing into some alien embryo?)

Bring the pot to boil and then simmer on low heat for around 2 hours, stirring occasionally and mix everything together. As the daikon cooks it will release its juices into the pot so you don't need to add any more water.

(Before)

(After)

After 2 hours season with some salt, pepper, fish sauce and oyster sauce to taste. Simmer for another 10-15 minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary.


Serve with rice.

Here are some of my other pork recipes:

• Braised pork spare ribs with pumpkin
• Vietnamese braised pork belly with eggs in coconut juice (Thit Heo Kho Trung)
• Communist pork
• Twice cooked pork (Sichuan style)
• Roasted pork belly - sui yuk
• Kakuni (Japanese Braised Pork)
• Char Sui (Chinese Barbecue Pork) 
• Babi Kecap (Indonesian braised pork in sweet soy sauce)