This is a strongly aromatic main course, and is really good with just some plain rice. Deird doesn’t like me cooking this because the house smells of star anise for a couple of days. You have to cook it for a long time (2-3 hours) to get the pork to be tender and fall-aparty.
The weird thing about this recipe is that you marinade the pork in soy sauce, then when you fry off the pork before stewing, it turns a dark red. Some of the pork juices and marinade will probably stick to the pan- which is good, because that makes the stock look good later on. If the pork has a bit of fat in it, then this adds to the flavour. Don’t use too lean a meat.
Once it’s all cooked up, you need to sieve the sauce because it can be bitty from the bits of garlic, ginger and star anise floating round in it. The sauce should be thick, rich and sticky, and well condensed down.
Diced pork, about 1lb (1 fillet)
Dark Soy sauce (enough to marinade pork)
1 Onion, sliced into ½ rings
Ginger root- size of thumb
2 garlic cloves
2 star anise
Orange peel- potato peeled from ½ an orange (or mandarin, for authenticity.) Any spare peel- dry it for use later)
2-3 tablespoons of honey
Corn flour to thicken
In a frying pan, Fry pork and pour off juices
Add onion and soften
Add soy sauce from marinade and water to cover.
Add garlic (crushed) orange peel, star anise, peeled crushed ginger and honey
Stew for 60-90 mins
Remove pork, sieve sauce, and thicken with corn flour. Reintroduce pork and serve.