This month has been a bit of a milestone for yours truly. I’m officially past the half-way mark of my masters program. This also means that I’ve been unemployed for 8 months. Quite an achievement, let me tell you. Something truly momentous occurred too. I uncovered a real windfall in my freezer- a two kilo joint of pork I panic bought accidentally at thanksgiving. Much like a Tory realising that foreign aid has been ring-fenced for three years I seized my opportunity! I rang up Job-Seeker John asking for a recipe and got cooking before anyone was the wiser and tried to use it to feed the less fortunate.
Friends, this may have been our best meal yet. Job-Seeker John and I formed a coalition of culinary talent and produced the following….
Chinese five-spice braised pork with mash and honey/ginger/soy bok choi. While this particularly combination might seem more dysfunctional than a Tory Lib Dem budget it really bloody worked. Evidence? The joint was two kilos and there were three of us for dinner. I only had enough pork left for a sandwich the next day.
The real key to this recipe is to cook the hell out of the pork, on a low heat, for as long as you can. Ours was melt in the mouth. When you’re reducing the sauce be careful. My faux-cruset hasn’t totally recovered from the sugar burns.
I’m assuming you can all make mash. We put lactose free cream in ours and it was lovely. I would recommend creamy mash if at all possible. If I’m honest I don’t totally remember how we made the bok choi, but it was basically steamed in a sauce made from honey, ginger, garlic soy sauce and shaoxing rice wine. We trust you can experiment.
Ingredients
2lt water
250ml shaoxing rice wine (or sherry or white wine)
200ml soy sauce
100g brown sugar
4 star anise
2 cinnamon sticks
1 tbsp five spice (possible to replace the star anise and cinnamon with another tbsp or two of five-spice)
6 cm piece of ginger, roughly chopped
1/2 head of garlic peeled and roughly chopped
1tsp chilli flakes or 2 whole red chillies, stabbed
Method
Place all the ingredients in a pan with the pork and bring to the boil, skimming the scum from the surface. Ensure that the braising liquor entirely covers the joint of pork. When the pan is boiling cover and transfer to an oven at 130 degrees celcius for 2-4 hours. 
Remove the pork from the pan and place on a chopping board covered with foil and tea towels. Reduce what’s left of the braising liquor by ¾, watching to make sure it doesn’t go nuclear.
Cheapness
Thanks to the ring fence, it was very cheap. Not counting the pork all the ingredients came to be about £6. With the pork the meal would have been about £16 at the rate of inflation in October 2013…
Cheers ya’ll!
Cutback Charlie
austerilicious 