Asian "Bolognese"

[detlef]

The components:

 

Pork (or veal) cheek (about 10#) browned and braised in chicken broth, sherry, soy sauce, brown sugar, ginger, and star anise. Cook until quite tender (about 2-3 hours)

 

Pork Shoulder (again 10#)cut into 1-2 inch chunks, browned and braised with chicken broth, hoisin, ginger, soy, sherry and brown sugar. Again cook until quite tender.

 

In both cases, I like to put the browned meats into large, deep roasting pans and braise uncovered in the oven at about 350. It will brown on top and I'll stir the top into the braise once or twice during braising.

 

At the restaurant we actually use both the finished products above individually in other dishes so that's why I do them separately. The sauce just sort of evolved from them. If you were just making the sauce all the way, I suppose you could braise them together combining the sauces (hoisin and star anise being the only real differnce between the two).

 

At any rate, fish the braised meats out of the broth onto a sheet pan with a slotted spoon and strain the liquid. Make sure you fish out any bits of star anise from the chunks of meat.

 

To make the sauce, chop 1# of chicken livers finely, and dice 2# of chinese bacon (I suppose regular bacon will also do) into fine dice. Brown both together and add 1 qt of mixed diced onion, carrot, and celery (2:1:1 ratio of the three). Once the veggies have sweated down, add 1 cup each ginger and garlic. Add the braised meats, aggressively stiring to break them up and about 2 qts of the braising liquid along with about 2 qts. tomato juice. Cook slowly for at least a few hours, stirring often, breaking up the meat each time. Finish with soy sauce to taste. Serve over wide rice noodles.

[MojoMan]

Very interesting recipe detlef. One question...sounds like it could be kinda salty. How do you balance this?

 

I was at a cooking class yesterday night. The chef made an interesting comment. He said that all really high quality cooking is the same nowadays. It's just 3-6 ingredients, of the highest quality, expertly cooked. Therefore, whether you go Italian, French, American, Fusion, etc. it's all pretty similar.

 

Comments? detlef, bier, etc?

[Bier Meister]

det-

 

what size mire poix? and, have you done this with carmelized mire poix? what cut on garlic (crushed i imagine)and ginger (shaved, minced, rough chop)? no 425 to brown then back down to 325?

 

 

 

 

Very interesting recipe detlef. One question...sounds like it could be kinda salty. How do you balance this?

 

I was at a cooking class yesterday night. The chef made an interesting comment. He said that all really high quality cooking is the same nowadays. It's just 3-6 ingredients, of the highest quality, expertly cooked. Therefore, whether you go Italian, French, American, Fusion, etc. it's all pretty similar.

 

Comments? detlef, bier, etc?

 

 

i'd have to say no. i was trying to pull up our menu for you, but i am having problems with the site..... a lot of retuarants/chefs will use "french technique" with other cuisine... however you will/should find different ingredients in restuarants. french and italian are very regional and you should see some variation from dish to dish (a provincal dish, vs burgundian, vs basque).... (piedmont vs parma vs umbria vs naples, etc).... when you go out to an asian, fusion restaurant how similar is it to a northern italian..... dramatically different imo. when we talk about chinese vs chinese... we also have to think regional..... cantonese, mongolian, mandarian, etc.. so for comparison sake we need to look at a mandarin restaurant vs another mandarin, etc. and in this case you should see a lot of similarities in ingredients.

Edited October 6, 2006 by Bier Meister

[detlef]

As for Bier- standard dice is fine and while you could carmelize it, I figured there was enough rich, brown elements that I went for a lighter touch. I also found the braised meats took on enough color at 350. Garlic and ginger were both finely chopped.

 

On to the other question. Regarding salt, you can always add less. That said, we're certainly not talking American Heart Association sanctioned grub here.

 

With regards to the comment about foods of the world. I think your chef sort of over-simplified things. Of course making such statements do get people's attention. Distilled to a deep enough level, most of the world's best cuisines can be quite similar as each attempts to combine salt, sugar, acid, fat, and aromatics in some way. Sometimes it's as simple as lemons in europe, limes in asia but I find that you're likely to find more similarities between cuisines that the same general lattitudes and weather. For instance compare mexico to vietnam. The following are rather common ingredients found in many dishes.

 

Mexico: limes, chilis, cilantro, tomatoes, tropical fruit

Vietnam: limes, chilis, cilantro, mint, tomatoes, tropical fruit

 

Southern, as opposed to Northern Indian cuisine tend to share a lot with Vietnamese cuisine. Once again they're pulling from the same temp waters and climate.

 

A similiar distilation can be done with foods of Europe and this is actually a good excercise to understand what they have in common/different.

 

I will certainly agree with your teacher in as much as many top chefs are tending towards simpler dishes and that absolutely blurs the cultural lines. Sear scallops and serve them with a confetti of scallions and garlic and you could be talking about anywhere from china to france.