Sweet & Sour Pork
- Cooking time90 mins
Calories591kcal
In this episode of Pasher Barir Ranna, Doma Wang, chef and founder of The Blue Poppy, the Tibetan restaurant that was originally housed in Sikkim House on Middleton Row in Kolkata, cooks one of her all-time favourites: her take on her father's sweet and sour pork.
This recipe is a classic example of how recipes pass laterally, from family to family, and from one generation down to the next, evolving, branching out and mutating during the course of their lifetimes.
Doma di's father learned this recipe from his Cantonese friend when they lived in Kalimpong during Doma di's childhood. He in turn taught it to his daughter, who modified it to her own taste and passed it on. Far from the "source", its spirit lives on in that the sight of all the juicy vegetables in a sweet-tangy broth inspires wonder and delight even today.
Here, Doma di uses pork shoulder, although pork belly would work too. This can be made with chicken, fish, prawns, or even just the vegetables! If you are making sweet and sour chicken or prawns, you can skip the boiling step altogether and proceed directly with frying.
Doma di says her favourite part about this recipe is not the pork, but the vegetables—cauliflower, cucumber, tomato, pineapple, etc.—and we agree! It is a scintillating sensation to bite into the crunchy, juicy, sour-sweet vegetables.
Doma di likes to keep the sauce quite thin because she serves this with fragrant, boiled short-grain rice. You can make it thicker if you are serving this with noodles or fried rice.
It is a very easy, very quick recipe to make this holiday season!
Frequently Asked Questions
Ingredients
Boil pork
- 500 g pork (5-cm pieces)
- 4 g salt
- 400 g water
Coat & fry pork
- 20 g corn starch
- 15 g dark rum
- oil for deep-frying
Sweet & sour sauce
- 25 g vegetable oil
- 75 g onions (quartered and separated in petals)
- 150 g cauliflower (3-cm florets)
- 175 g cucumber (3-cm pieces)
- 120 g tomatoes (3-cm chunks)
- 250 g canned pineapples (quartered)
- 100 g tomato ketchup
- 6 g salt
- 70 g sugar
- 40 g vinegar
- 325 ml pork stock
- 200 ml hot water
- 25 g corn starch (made into a thin slurry)
Method
- Boil the pork with salt in water for about 45 mins, or until it's tender.
- While the pork is boiling, prep the vegetables: quarter the onions and separate them in petals; cut cucumber, cauliflower, tomatoes and canned pineapples in 3-cm chunks.
- Once the pork is cooked, leave it to cool and dry over a strainer, and reserve the resultant stock.
[Now, you can either fry the pork, make the sauce and toss the two together; or, if you are making this ahead of time for a gathering, you can get a head-start on the sauce and leave it there, and fry the pork and finish the sauce when it's time to serve.]
- For the sauce, heat vegetable oil in a wok.
- Add onions and fry for 45 secs on high heat.
- Add cauliflower and fry another 45 secs.
- Add cucumber and fry another 45 secs.
- Next, add ketchup, pork stock, salt and sugar. Cook everything together for about 4 mins, covered.
[If prepping the sauce ahead of time, you can pause it here.]
- To fry the pork, coat the boiled pork (by now cooled down and dry) in corn starch and dark rum.
- Deep fry on high heat for 2–3 mins until crisp and golden-brown.
- Set the sauce back on the stove. Add tomatoes, canned pineapples, water and vinegar. Let it simmer for 2 mins.
- Add the fried pork.
- Make a slurry of corn starch and water, and drizzle it into the sauce to adjust consistency.
- Cook it off for a minute before taking it off the heat.
