kindkit | a couple of things make a post

1) Why do publishers of gay-male-themed books believe that their covers must feature half-naked men? A cool-sounding gay steampunk anthology, with a cover mostly by the marvelous John Coulthart and mostly very beautiful, ruins it by pasting a couple of escapees from a manga about Victorian male strippers over everything. It's embarrassing. (It's possible that Coulthart drew the strippers too, but they don't seem like his style.) The same thing happens with films: most DVD covers of gay-themed movies look like porn.

2) By request, a recipe for red-cooked pork that I made the other day. It comes from Bruce Cost's Asian Ingredients, with my modifications and suggested modifications noted.

Red-Cooked Pork

1 5-7 lb pork shoulder with bone and rind (From what I've read, Chinese cooks normally make this with pork belly, which is much fattier than pork shoulder. I used country-style pork ribs, which I had on hand and which are halfway between the two on the fattiness scale.)
3-4 quarts/liters of water
3/4 cup Shaoxing wine (I used fino sherry)
6 star anise
1 3-inch cinnamon stick
8 garlic cloves, smashed
10 thin slices fresh ginger
2-3 pieces dried tangerine peel (the local international grocery didn't have any, so I bought a tangerine and used the fresh peel)
2 whole dried chiles (preferably the small, thin red ones sold in Asian groceries)
1 whole scallion/spring onion/green onion
1/3 cup dark soy sauce (You need a Chinese soy sauce for this. Japanese brands like the ubiquitous Kikkoman taste different from Chinese ones; the best fairly readily available Chinese brand in the US is Pearl River Bridge. And you want the kind the says "dark soy sauce"--regular Chinese soy sauce is "light soy sauce." PRB makes a plain dark soy and a mushroom flavored dark soy. The mushroom kind is what I have and used--it's highly recommended by Cost and others.)
6 approximately 1-inch square crystals of Chinese rock sugar (You probably can substitute some brown sugar, but Cost and other writers on Chinese food say that rock sugar gives a unique flavor and glossiness to the sauce. It's inexpensively available in Asian groceries.)
1 tablespoon coarse salt or to taste

Bring the water to a boil, add the pork, and when it comes to the boil again, skim carefully. (Alternatively, drain and rinse the pork after the water boils and put the pork back into fresh water. The point is to get rid of the albumin that forms scum on the surface. Simmer the pork, partially covered, for about 20 minutes.

Add the star anise, cinnamon, garlic, ginger, tangerine peel, chiles, and scallion, and simmer for another 20 minutes. Add the remaining seasonings and simmer, still partially covered, until the meat is very tender, turning occasionally. This will take at least a couple of hours.

Remove the pork from the liquid and keep warm. Strain the cooking liquid into a large pan and reduce over high heat until it's the consistency of thin syrup. (See ETA below about this.) Pour the syrup over the pork on a serving dish. Serve with rice and stir-fried greens.

Notes: I halved this recipe (though I still used 2 chiles and a whole scallion) and it still made plenty. The chiles, used in their whole dried form, will not make the dish very chile-hot. I ended up using more soy sauce than the recipe called for. The rock sugar I had did not come in nice little square crystals but in ginornmous lumps, so estimating the amount was tricky. I ended up with a fairly sweet sauce, but actually I liked that. It's a complex sweetness, like some barbecue sauces, and I do think the sauce is supposed to be pretty sweet.

If it's hot where you are, I'm sure this could mostly be made in a slow cooker--parboil the pork, drain and rinse it, then add it to the slow cooker along with fresh water and follow the recipe from there. You'll still need to reduce the braising liquid in a pan at the end.

Unless you're making this for a crowd, you will have leftovers. You can probably throw the pork into lots of Chinese-style dishes for added flavor.

ETA: I forgot to mention that after the pork was tender, I refrigerated it in the braising liquid overnight. It was mainly just a time thing, but it allowed me to remove most of the fat from the braising liquid the next day after it had risen to the top and solidified. I left some in, because it's supposed to be a rich dish, but I'm not sure I would have liked the sauce's flavor with as much fat as was originally in it.

3) I have things to say about Community, but I'll do that in a separate post due to spoilers. (Probably I'm the last person in fandom who still hasn't seen the whole thing, but you never know.)