Yangzhou Lion's Head Meatballs

Ingredients

• 600g pork belly, skin removed
• 60g fresh water chestnuts, peeled
• 4 spring onions, whites only
• 25g ginger
• 150ml cold water, for the aromatic infusion
• 1 tbsp Shaoxing wine
• 1 tsp fine salt
• 1 tsp caster sugar
• 1/4 tsp ground white pepper
• 1 egg white
• 1 tbsp cornflour
• 1 large napa cabbage, about 800g
• 1.2 litres light chicken stock
• 100g fresh crab meat and roe (optional but traditional)
• 1 tsp toasted sesame oil

Before you cook

• Bruise the spring onion whites and ginger, drop them into the cold water and squeeze them repeatedly for two minutes to make a cloudy aromatic infusion, then strain it.
• Cut the pork belly into 5mm slices, then into strips, then chop it by hand so that roughly seventy per cent is fine mince and thirty per cent stays as visible pieces of fat.
• Chop the water chestnuts into rough 3mm dice.
• Separate the cabbage leaves and cut the thick white ribs away from the green tops.

Steps

1. Put the chopped pork in a wide bowl with the salt, sugar, white pepper, Shaoxing wine and egg white.
2. Stir in one direction only, adding the aromatic infusion a little at a time, until all of it has been absorbed and the meat feels loose and wet rather than dense.
3. Fold in the water chestnuts and the cornflour with a light hand, keeping as much air in the mixture as you can.
4. Chill the mixture for twenty minutes to firm it up.
5. Wet your hands and toss the mixture between your palms into four large balls, patting rather than squeezing so they stay loose.
6. Press a hollow into each ball, tuck in a quarter of the crab meat if you are using it, and close the meat over the top.
7. Lay the cabbage ribs across the base of a wide, deep casserole and pour in the chicken stock.
8. Bring the stock to a bare simmer and lower the meatballs onto the cabbage in a single layer.
9. Lay the green cabbage tops over the meatballs like a blanket and cover the pan.
10. Keep the liquid at the faintest tremble and cook for one hour without stirring, checking once that the surface is never more than shivering.
11. Lift the cabbage blanket aside and taste the broth, adding salt if it needs it.
12. Serve each meatball in a bowl with cabbage and plenty of broth, finished with a few drops of sesame oil.