Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Taste of Home: Char Siew


One of my favourite foods growing up was a hawker-style dish called "char siew, wonton" noodles. "Char siew" is of course barbecue pork, and wonton is... well, wonton. I would sometimes get another kind of dumpling called "Sui Kao" which is a larger version of a pork and shrimp wonton. I could eat the noodles for breakfast every weekend and still not get bored. Despite the fact that there were tons of wonton noodle stalls scattered around the places I frequented, it was really hard to find a stall that served a good plate of "char siew wonton". Most of them either served egg noodles that had a strong alkaline taste or wonton that were so small it resembled rubber bullets.

I recently found this recipe online, and decided to try making my very own "char siew wonton" noodles. Since I've been so busy lately, I made my own "char siew" but used some store bought dumplings that resembled "Sui Kao".


The perfect kind pork for this recipe will either be pork tenderloins with some marbling. If you like fatty pork (most Chinese people do!), you can use pork belly. Instead of the glaze from the recipe, I added honey to the cooked pork, sliced them and grilled it on my trusty George Foreman until there was a nice caramelized layer on the pork.

The "char siew" was just sweet enough, the marinade was absolutely spot on and the barbecued pork turned out remarkably stunning. I served it with the Trader Joes' pork dumpling in a light chicken broth, some egg noodles tossed with sweet soy sauce and a teensy bit of oil, and some blanched baby bok choy.

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