Weekend Cooking ....Taiwanese Braised Pork Noodles

I love noodles.
Of all sorts.
With all sorts of sauces.
So when I saw a recipe for this dish, my interest was peaked!

 

Pork...a flavorful sauce...noodles!
OK, it seems this dish, which is referred to as classic, everyday dish that every Taiwanese mother has her own version of, can be served on either rice or noodles. But, as much as I like rice, yes, I went with the noodles.
You could use any sort you like. I happened to have a wide 'lo mein' dry noodle on hand, so I used that. But you could use linguine, or egg noodles or any sort of Asian noodle, udon, rice, ramen, fresh or dry. Or, yes, even rice.

 

 

For most of the recipes I saw, the sauce is fairly similar. Soy, vinegar, a little brown sugar  and the wonderful smelling five-spice powder.
Shallots or onions, garlic, ginger again, usually appear. Many recipes call for Chinese fried onions, which I admit I made no attempt to find. On the other hand, I doubled up the mushrooms when I realized I had bought both the dry and fresh. In my mind, the more mushrooms the better and it was certainly not too many in relation to the pork.
In my mind.

 

Taiwanese Braised Pork Noodles

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup chicken broth
• 2 tablespoons oyster sauce
• 3 tablespoon soy sauce
• 2 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
• 2 teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder
• 2 tablespoon brown sugar

• 2 teaspoons cooking oil
• 3 shallots, thinly sliced
• 1 pound ground pork (or ground beef/chicken/turkey) 
• 4 cloves garlic, finely minced
• 1 1-inch piece of ginger, grated
• 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• One 8-ounce can bamboo shoots, drained and diced
• 4 ounces fresh shiitake mushrooms, diced
• or/and 4 oz. dried shiitake, soaked in boiling water, drained and sliced. Retain soaking liquid
• 2 stalk green onion, chopped
• 1 pound noodles or rice of your choice

Directions:

1. In a small bowl, combine the chicken broth, oyster sauce, soy sauce, vinegar, five spice powder and brown sugar. Set aside.
2. Heat a wok or large saute pan over medium-high heat. When hot, swirl in the cooking oil. Add in the shallots and cook about 2 minutes. Stir in the ground meat and cook until brown, breaking up large pieces. Push aside the shallots and ground beef to one side of the pan to create a small spot to fry the garlic, red pepper flakes and ginger for 1 minutes until fragrant. Add in the bamboo shoots and mushrooms. Toss everything in the pan together.
3. Pour in the broth/soy sauce mixture and pork and bring to a simmer. Lower heat, cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Check liquid level and if it become dry add additional broth or reserved mushroom liquid. Stir in the green onions just before stirring.
4. While pork is simmering, cook the noodles or rice according to package instructions.
5. Serve the ground beef mixture over the noodles or rice, garnished with chopped cilantro if desired.

 

They say it freezes well, the perfect thing to have on hand for a quick dinner.
I don't know because over a few days, I ate it all.
The last day, I actually made a soup of it, with the noodles, the thick saucy meat, a bunch of shallots and some stock I had on hand. It was tummy warming yummy!!

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This is my contribution this to this week's Weekend Cooking.
"Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend."
Be sure to check out the other entries this week. As always, hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

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