With a Cantonese mother and a Hakka father I decided I have to cook this dish this way. I know, I know I deviated from traditions but I want to pay homage to both my parents. I blame it on lockdown. Too much time at home thinking. kekekekekeke

As my daughter is trying to learn how to do a Cantonese roast pork properly we can use the fruit of her labour. For my Traditional Cantonese Roast pork belly recipe – Traditional Cantonese Crispy Roast pork belly – Siu Yuk, 脆皮烧肉. – Just Julie (julieolive.co.uk) She made this piece of Cantonese roast pork yesterday and I turned it into Hakka Mui Choy with Pork Belly 梅菜扣肉 today for our evening meal.

Surprisingly the hubby love it and the daughter had a second helping too as we skipped lunch today. They were saving their calories for this dish. So funny.

I am very happy with this dish so I am posting recipe to share. I suppose it does take a bit of time to make the Cantonese Roast pork belly but you do not have to do everything in one day.

It’s not a stressful cook on the day as I do not have to boil the pork, marinate and fry on the same day anymore. Cooking it this way I have a different skin texture that I find very pleasant and it does eliminate half the cooking time on the day itself.

I suppose the best of all is that my family loves it.

Beef rendang is one of the most well known of Malaysian dishes. It is as synonymous to Malaysian cuisine as nasi lemak.

We, the Malaysian have adopted and embraced this dish from our neighbour Indonesia and made it our own.

Living in the UK we will never make as nice a beef rendang or nasi lemak as we could in Malaysia. This is because we cannot get nice fresh coconut milk. Some may say that the tin coconut milk is just as good but in my opinion, I beg to differ. However as a Malaysian living in the UK I do not really have a lot of choice. I have a coconut shredder chair (yes the old school one) please refer to pic) but I still cannot buy nice enough coconut to give me any worthwhile coconut milk.

To cook beef rendang it not difficult. The hardest job is frying the kerisik kelapa (shredded coconut strands) Please do not buy the ready fried ones. They taste of stale coconut oil – yikes. Buy the frozen coconut strands and fry it yourself on a dry non stick clean pan/wok.

I would have used more galangal but I did not have more. I really love the taste of galangal. You can find it normally at any Chinese supermarket. Galangal is not hard to find.

TIP – In all my curries and cooking I prefer to make my own paste and I always prefers to blitz some of the lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves etc with my paste. This not only gives any dishes more uuumph but thicken the sauce without the need of buah keras (candlenuts)

As for my DIY lemang there is a long story of trial and errors. When I first tried to make it in UK I made tons of mistakes and this is the closest I can get to the real thing now.

Basically it is just mix the drained soaked glutinous rice to a tin of coconut milk, mix in the salt, the pandan leaves, stir and steam for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and remove the pandan leaves.

Then scope some onto your ready banana leaves and more pandan leaves, wrapped and steam again for another 15 minutes. This will cause the banana leaf taste to seep in.

Remove and use a blow torch to torch the banana leaves (you can use gas stove or BBQ) for this to achieve the smoky taste. This give me the closest taste I can get to the real lemang minus the bamboo. When you served your lemang you will see light green on the sides. That’s the taste and look you want.

Again as I have stressed before use my recipe as a guide and create your own to your own taste.

I still recall most embarrassingly the first time I tried to make lemang I actually boiled the glutinous rice then roll them into tube using cling film and of course it tasted nothing like lemang!

TIP – Do not add your gula Malacca till the last hour to limit the chance of sticking.

TIP – Taste and season with salt if not salty enough or add more sugar if too spicy during the last 30 minutes.

TIP – Add some fresh cili padi (birdeye chilli) if not spicy enough

TIP – Cook rendang the day before and let it steep overnight. Then the next day you only need to steam and make the lemang.

Braised Pork Rice Bowl – Lu Rou Fan (滷肉饭) my way 

Recently in the cooking group I am in many mummies and daddies were cooking pork belly until I can’t stand it anymore. Got to eat Chinese/Asian for the Christmas month of December of British meals is getting too much. I don’t think I want to see another sausage or bacon strip for at least a month!

This is my take on Braised Pork Rice Bowl – Lu Rou Fan (滷肉饭)

The most important different way in which I cook my Braised Pork Rice Bowl – Lu Rou Fan (滷肉饭) is that I like to fry my pork belly skin first. This gives the skin an extra ummmph. The skin also absorb more taste from your stewing ingredients.