Daobanxiang Cured Pork with Spring Bamboo

Ingredients

• 450 g salt-cured air-dried pork belly, skin on
• 350 g fresh spring bamboo shoots, or 250 g prepared vacuum-packed shoots
• 30 g fresh ginger
• 3 spring onions
• 2 tbsp Shaoxing wine
• 1 tsp caster sugar
• 100 ml light chicken stock
• 1 fresh red chilli, optional

Before you cook

• Scrub the cured pork under warm running water to remove the surface salt and any smoke residue.
• Peel the tough outer sheaths off the bamboo shoots and trim away the fibrous base.
• Cut the bamboo shoots lengthways into thick wedges.
• Slice the ginger into coins and cut the spring onions into lengths.
• Slice the chilli into rings if you are using it.

Steps

1. Put the cured pork into a pan of cold water with half the ginger and one spring onion.
2. Bring it to a gentle simmer and poach for twenty-five minutes, until a chopstick slides into the fat without resistance.
3. Lift the pork out and leave it on a board until it is firm and cool enough to slice cleanly.
4. Bring a fresh pan of water to the boil and blanch the bamboo wedges for five minutes to strip out their bitterness.
5. Drain the bamboo and pat it dry.
6. Slice the cooled pork across the grain into pieces about three millimetres thick, keeping the layer of skin, fat and lean intact on each slice.
7. Spread the bamboo wedges across the bottom of a shallow heatproof dish.
8. Lay the pork slices over the bamboo in overlapping rows, fat side up.
9. Tuck the remaining ginger between the slices and pour over the Shaoxing wine and stock.
10. Sprinkle the sugar across the surface.
11. Set the dish in a steamer over hard-boiling water and cover it.
12. Steam for forty minutes, until the fat has turned glassy and the bamboo below has drunk up the rendered pork fat.
13. Lift the dish out and scatter over the remaining spring onion and the chilli rings.
14. Serve straight from the dish, taking a slice of pork and a wedge of bamboo together in each mouthful.