Sweet and sour pork
When I first got interested in cooking in the early 90s I was living in Cumbria, there was not a lot of cultural diversity in local food. For some reason I got a bit obsessed within Chinese sweet and sour and (much to the chagrin of my parents I imagine) I messed on with soy, ketchup and sherry, producing endless dishes of meat cooked in goo. It was one of the first things I ever ordered from a takeaway after I left home only to be disappointed but the large chunks of doughy batter in neon coloured over sweet goop not much better than my efforts.
Years later, I ran across this excellent post on One Man’s Meat for crispy pork deep fried and with a sweet and sour sauce which looked excellent.
Here’s my attempt, mostly having a use up of ingredients I had in the ccupbaord and skipping the deep frying because I save that for chicken.
You will need
- A large pork chop, fat cut away, meat diced
- A tin of pineapple (and it’s juice)
- A couple of peppers (chopped into inch square)
- A large red onion (chopped the same way)
- A spring onion (finely sliced)
- A heaped teaspoon of cornfour
- A large blob of Naughty Ketchup (or regular ketchup and a splash of chilli)
- A heaped teaspoon of lazy ginger (or fine grated fresh)
- A couple of tablespoons of sharp fruit vinegar. I used up some berry vinegar I had left over
Do
Lots of things on the move at the same time here but it comes together quickly at the end. Do all you chopping in advance.
- Cook pork fat in a little oil until cripsy
- Add the rest of the pork (I threw the bone in so I could knor on it later)
- Once meat is cooked through lift to one side (I left the fat in)
- Add the onions and cook until translucent
- Add the peppers and a couple of spoonfuls of pineapple chunks
- Slake the cornflour with pineapple juice, add ketchup and vinegar.
- Once the peppers have softened slightly turn the heat up a bit and add the sauce (it looks vile at this point) and a heaped teaspoon of grated ginger.
- Stir like crazy. The sauce will thicken, try to make sure it doesn’t catch.
- Add spring onions at the last moment.
Results
Apologies for the terrible photos, as the nights draw in the lighting gets worse.
