One of Shaoxing's most divine dishes, and that's saying a lot

Getting this one dish right took me decades, but in the end it was worth it. When done right — like here — a perfect balance is struck between sweet and savory, meat and vegetable, fresh and preserved, tender and chewy. 

A specialty of the Shaoxing area of Zhejiang, it relies upon a seasoned dried mustard called meicai, which literally means “plum vegetable.” This always struck me as strange until I one day realized that the original name was méicài 霉菜, or “moldy vegetable,” since the mustard is allowed to ferment much like soy sauce, another specialty of the region.

The key seasoning

The Hakka have a dish with the same name and similar ingredients, the main difference being the type of preserved vegetable being used (the Hakkas prefer a fatter mustard with crunchy stems, rather than the shriveled leaves of Shaoxing) and the way in which the pork belly is prepared, as the meat is kept in one piece rather than sliced, as it is here. Some have surmised that this dish was brought by the Hakka when they moved south from the Yangtze area into Guangdong hill country.

This is without doubt the best recipe for this dish I’ve ever tasted. Deep winey flavors combine with lots of ginger and green onions to season the pork and vegetable. I love this for a cool weather dinner, and the first days of autumn have convinced me to make it again. It’s easy enough for just the family and delicious enough to please the finickiest guest. It’s also a great make-ahead dish that can be stashed in the fridge or freezer, making dinner parties a breeze.

Shaoxing style meicai

Molded pork with preserved vegetables

Méicài kòuròu 梅菜扣肉

Zhejiang

Serves 4 to 6

  

Pork:

1 pound nicely-striped pork belly with the skin on

Supporting cast

1 tablespoon dark soy sauce

¼ cup oil for frying

Water as needed

Vegetables and the rest:

6 ounces Shaoxing style meicai

¼ cup Shaoxing rice wine

¼ cup thinly sliced ginger

3 green onions, trimmed but left whole  

1 piece of rock sugar (about the size of a large cherry), or more as needed

1½ teaspoons white liquor

1. Rinse the pork and pat it dry. Pluck out any hairs on the skin and trim off any nipples. Pour the soy sauce into a medium work bowl and place the pork skin-side down into the soy sauce to marinate while you prepare the rest of the ingredients. Have a wok ready, as well as the oil and a pot of cool tap water.

Fry the skin, then soak

2. Place the meicai in a sieve (not a colander, as the holes are often too big) and rinse it with very warm tap water. As soon as it has softened up a bit, squeeze the meicai dry and place it on a chopping board. Work apart the clumps and use kitchen shears to chop any largish pieces. Place the meicai in a small work bowl and toss it with the rice wine.

3. Place the wok over medium-high heat, and when it is hot, add the oil. Wipe the pork skin dry and fry only the skin of the pork. Cover the wok with a spatter screen, and when the pork can be easily shaken loose and the skin is a nice brown, remove the pork from the wok and place it in the pan of cool water. As soon as it can be handled easily, slice the pork crosswise into pieces about ¼-inch thick.

4. Scatter the pork slices over the meicai and then sprinkle on the ginger slices. Lay the whole green onions on top, and finally add the rock sugar.

Ready for 1st steaming

5. Prepare a steamer and place the bowl in there. If the steamer cover will drip water down into the bowl, cover the bowl with a saucer; otherwise, it’s all right to leave it uncovered. Steam the pork for around 2 hours, remove it from the steamer, and let it come to room temperature. Remove the green onions (they are very tasty, so keep them as a cook’s treat) and reserve the ginger slices. Drain the sauce out into a measuring cup. If the sauce has a layer of fat, refrigerate it until the fat hardens and can be easily removed.

6. Line the inside of a heatproof 6-cup bowl with the pork slices by first placing 1 or 2 of the prettiest slices at the very bottom and then covering the sides by overlapping them in an attractive pattern. Mound the meicai in the middle and lightly pack it down. Sprinkle on the white liquor, pour in the sauce, and arrange the ginger slices back over the top.

2nd steaming

7. Steam the bowl as in Step 5 for another 4 hours or so. This can be done ahead of time, and then this dish can be cooled down before being refrigerated or frozen. Just before serving, steam the pork until it is heated through.

8. To serve, pour off the sauce into a measuring cup. Place a rimmed plate over the bowl and flip it over onto the plate. Pour the sauce around the molded pork and serve.

What's better than bacon? Stuffed Hakka bacon!

Major feast dishes in the Hakka repertoire are fairly rare, as most of it is down-home cooking meant for family meals. But the ones that Hakka families wheel out for weddings, birthdays, and other celebrations will almost always include this dish.

           

Pork belly is also known as fresh bacon, and it actually comes from the side of the pig where there’s still muscle weaving in and out of the fat layers. This part of the animal doesn’t get worked a whole lot, and so the fat builds up easily here.

The best pork belly will have distinct, thin layers of skin, then fat, meat, fat, meat, fat, and then meat. That last layer of meat is usually trimmed off and used for something else because it is not that tender, so you are left with five layers under the skin, which is why the Chinese call this cut wŭhuāròu 五花肉, or five-patterned meat.

Mmmm, bacon

Whenever you select this type of meat, try to avoid pieces that are on the edges, which will give you either too much fat or thick layers of meat. You really want to have that nice streaking, believe me. Just think of your perfect slice of bacon…

           

This dish originated around the Shaoxing area of Jiangsu, where it is still popular, although sweeter and more redolent with Shaoxing rice wine than what is made in Hakka households.

The “plum vegetable” or meicai that is used in both places is quite different, with the Hakka style usually sold in whole hanks, while Shaoxing style meicai comes chopped and is slightly drier. 

Among the two versions of this dish, I actually prefer this Hakka one, perhaps because it reminds me so much of my late father-in-law’s cooking. The greens end up tender and almost buttery, much more delicious than any of the Shaoxing style greens I've used. They require a much shorter cooking time and lend an almost exquisite lightness to the dish. I'm sure I'm prejudiced, being a Hakka daughter-in-law, but there you have it. 

Hakka style meicai

The difficulty lies in finding the meicai. I lucked upon a supplier in Chinatown who had a box of meicai from the town of Huìzhōu 惠州, which is in the heart of Cantonese Hakka country. What heaven!

Pork belly with preserved mustard greens

Méicài kòuròu  梅菜扣肉

Hakka
Serves 4

Pork:

1 pound good pork belly (fresh bacon) with the skin on

Boiling water as needed

1 tablespoon dark soy sauce

½ cup peanut or vegetable oil (used okay here)

Fry the meicai

Greens:

8 ounces (or so) preserved Hakka-style mustard greens (meicai)

Filtered water

2 tablespoons fresh peanut or vegetable oil

5 tablespoons rice wine (mijiu)

1 to 2 tablespoons regular soy sauce

2 tablespoons sugar

3 green onions, trimmed

10 thin slices (¼ cup) fresh ginger

1. This dish is best a day or two after you make it, as the sauce can then penetrate the meat; it will also allow you to remove the congealed fat before you steam it a final time. Rinse the pork belly and pat dry; you don’t have to worry about any fine hairs, as they will be burned off later, but thick hairs should be plucked out. Trim the pork so it is an even square or rectangle. Place the pork in a medium saucepan, cover it with water, and bring the water to a full boil over high heat. Lower the heat to medium and simmer the pork for about 10 minutes to remove any impurities. Drain the pork and let it cool down.

2. While the pork is cooling down, prepare the mustard greens: soak them in warm water until pliable, swishing them around and changing the water as many times as necessary to shake loose all of the sand nestled in the leaves, and then use a sharp knife chop them into small (½-inch or less) pieces. Rinse the mustard greens in a colander under running water a final time to remove any sand or dirt. Squeeze the greens dry and toss them with the oil, 2 tablespoons of the rice wine, regular soy sauce, and sugar. Heat a dry wok over medium-high heat and fry this mixture until most of the sauce has been absorbed.

3. Pat the cooled-down pork dry with a paper towel. Rub the skin all over with the dark soy sauce. Heat a frying pan over medium heat, add the oil, and then place the pork skin-side down in the hot fat (don’t fry the other sides of the meat) and fry the pork skin until it is a nice mahogany brown with bubbles and blisters all over the surface; use a spatter screen to protect you from flying fat while it fries. Remove the pork to a cutting board and let it cool down a bit.

Deep-fried skin

4. With the skin-side down on the board, use a sharp knife to cut down through the meat and fat all the way up to—but not through—the skin, making ¼-inch wide slices all the way down the piece of pork; of course, you may adjust the number of cuts to match the number of people who will be dining. Place the pork skin-side down into a heatproof 4-cup bowl.

5. Stuff the pork slices with the greens, packing in as much as possible into and around the meat. Cut the green onions into 1-inch pieces and arrange them on top along with the ginger slices. Pour the rest of the rice wine over everything. Place the bowl in a steamer and steam over medium heat for 4 hours.

6. Remove the pork from the steamer, cool it to room temperature, and turn the pork over so that it is skin-side up. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for one or two days.  Remove most of the fat from the sauce, if desired. Taste the sauce and adjust the seasoning one last time. Place a rimmed plate over the bowl and invert the bowl onto the plate; carefully lift off the bowl. Pour the sauce around and over the meat, and serve immediately with hot steamed rice.