Fried hard-boiled eggs? How weird, right? But it’s quite a popular dish from Padang from West Sumatra. I quite like it with steamed rice which enhances the eggs’ special texture.

There are many variations of the dish: some of the sambal do not use belachan but I like a little more depth in imine. Some make theirs with a lot of liquid, almost curry-like, but I like mine dry and slightly oily. Do as you like.

Ingredients:
8 hard-boiled eggs (my sure-fire method is to put cold eggs in cool tap water and bring to boil.  Boil for 7 minutes  (from the moment the water boils) and promptly remove the eggs into a bowl filled with cool tap water.  Peel immediately.  The white-egg will be hard-boiled but the yolk is still creamy)
2 cloves garlic
3 shallots
2 big red chilies, cut into sections
2 tomatoes
1 cm cube belachan
1 tbsp tomato paste
Salt, sugar and pepper to taste
Water
Oil for frying


Directions:
Heat oil in a pan and fry the eggs until crispy and brown all over. Set aside.

Blitz the garlic, shallots, chilies and tomatoes in a food processor. Heat oil in the same pan as above and fry the belanchan at low heat until crumbly. When done, add the spices plus the tomato paste until cooked, darkened, and fragrant. Loosen with spoonfuls of water (and if desired, oil) to reach the desired consistency and adjust the flavours with salt, sugar and pepper. It should be spicy and slightly sour.

Lastly, stir in the eggs and coat them well with the sauce. Best served the next day.

Otoro, the fattiest tuna belly is an entirely different animal from the sour, muscular, and dry tuna pieces sold in fish stores here.  The pale pink slices quiver on the plate and melt in the mouth.  It is fatty and very rich so you don’t need much to be satisfied.  It doesn’t taste like fish at all.  With the Swiss aversion to anything fatty - their meat cuts are notoriously dry - I doubt I can find this in the sprouting sushi restaurants here.

So I was really surprised when I found it in Nishi, the Japanese shop in Zurich.  Although it was frozen, I bought it as I wanted to sate my longing for otoro.  It wasn’t bad although I’d much prefer a fresh piece. 

The shop, by the way, is amazing.  They carry proper Japanese rice, produced in Japan and North-America, as well as various condiments from soy-sauce of unreadable labels to shaved bonito flakes.  They also have utensils such as bento boxes and shabu-shabu pots.  They have rare items such as konyaku and natto.  But they’re not cheap.  Their Zojirushi (elephant) brand of rice cookers cost more than CHF 400!

But I do wish I could cart those items away.  

I’ve done char siew/char siu before using Chubby Hubby’s recipe. Delicious as it was, it lacked the complexity I couldn’t pin point. So I did further research and experimented with a combined recipes from "I eat I shoot I post" and Rasa Malaysia . Gaah! It was good. Together with Charmaine of Tasty Treat’s recipe , I should be cured of my cravings of this Asian staple of char siew, siu youk, on a bed of fluffy hainanese chicken rice and crisp, cleansing cucumber.

Now, the details.

Rasa Malaysia encourages the use of molasses but I don’t think it warrants my stocking it. Google advises me on several substitutes and I choose brown sugar. I want the sugar to be in liquid form as I find granulated sugar often doesn’t dissolve well in sauces and therefore, melts only at cooking time. So I added the extra step of making melted brown sugar. BTW, to ensure the caramelized sweetness, we want to use 3 tbsp (or more) of liquid brown sugar and not 3 tbsp of the granulated version so make more and keep the rest for other use.

Oyster and Hoisin sauce, to me, are not the prime ingredients as they all taste the same. The five spice and bean paste are as they add the elusive yet enticing flavours to good Char Siew. I used Lee Kum Kee’s garlic bean paste for this purpose.

Lastly, the grilling. To achieve that glazed, charred look, it’s best to baste the meat, prior and during the grilling with the thick, original marinating sauce and not the thin liquid left over after the meat is removed. Of course it’s ideal to grill the meat on outdoor barbecue. Rasa Malaysia suggests a combination of roasting and pan-grilling. Both are not viable for me so the instruction below caters for apartment dwellers with only oven at their disposal.

PS: I eliminate the use of red colouring. I wonder why it has to be red, what original ingredient was used that made this dish red. My mother said it was Fungkiuk.

Ingredients:
1 kg pork neck with good proportion of fat & meat, sliced to long strips with 1.5 cm thickness.

Marinade / sauce:
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
6 tbsp brown sugar
5 tbsp water
3 tbsp honey
3 tbsp hoisin sauce/oyster sauce
3 tbsp soy sauce
3 tbsp bean paste (dou jiang)
2 tbsp rice wine
white pepper powder
1 tsp five spice
1 tsp sesame oil

Directions:
Place the chopped garlic in a glass casserole and set aside.

Mix the brown sugar and water in a saucepan and melt the sugar until it turns into chocolate-brown, rich and glossy liquid. Switch off the fire and add the rest of the marinade into the saucepan (the left-over heat should encourage mingling of flavour or so I theorize). Mix well.

Layer the meat on the glass container with garlic. Pour 2/3 of the marinade and ensure each piece is coated well with both garlic and marinating sauce. Reserve the rest of the marinade and marinate the pork in the fridge overnight.

Remove the meat from the fridge about 30 minutes before grilling. Preheat oven at 250 degrees Celsius. Brush garlic pieces from the meat and place the meat pieces on a grilling rack (I improvised using my fish grills, see picture below). Brush the top-side with the thick, original marinade.

Place the grill-rack on the top 1/3 of the oven and grill for 10 minutes. Flip, baste (with the thick sauce) and grill for another 5 minutes to char.   If the cooking time seems too short for you, please feel free to adjust as the cooking time depends highly on the type and thickness of the cut.  If it’s not charred enough, increase the heat to 275 degrees for the next batch. Either char this batch on a stove-top grill or just live with it. Cooking the meat further results in tough and dry char siu. Don’t ask how I know.

Repeat until all the meat pieces are cooked. Set them aside. Meanwhile, pour the remaining original sauce, the marinade liquid, and the pan dripping into a clean sauce pan. Simmer this concoction, stirring constantly to prevent all the sugar from burning at the bottom of the pan, until thick (ie. the sauce coats the back of a spoon) and glossy. Strain and drizzle on the sliced Char Siew when serving.

Afterthoughts:
I was telling my mother about my foray into char siew making and she told me to use Wu Hua Rou instead of pork neck. I have no idea what to call that in English although researching, I see some people use spare-ribs instead. For background reading, a page from "I eat I shoot I post" is very informative for the different types of pork cuts, including the lovely Bu Jian Tian made famous by Kaca Mata’s legendary honeyed roast pork.  But I think my pork neck is fine for now.  I am not ambitious enough to explain this cut to the butcher in German.