Kou Rou Mei Cai (Translation: Fatty Pork with Sweet Preserved Vegetables)

had pork streaky steaks in the freezer for some time and decided it was finally time to make kou rou mei cai (because the pork was bought for that reason) since i havent had that for ages and i had all the ingredients.Here's how I prepared it:

1. chop up the cleaned pork into chunks
2. marinade in salt, sugar, soy sauce, honey and a dash of white pepper
3. soak the preserved vegetables in boiling hot water (to dissolve the sugar that is on it and to remove any dirt)
4. smash one bulb of garlic and chop a few springs of spring onion
5. drain the preserved vegetables and chop to thumb-width size
6. switch the slow-cooker on to HIGH (because my slow-cooker is really ssllllooooowwwww)
7. in a pan, fry ginger paste (i cheat - you can mince fresh ginger, which is better) and the garlic in some vegetable oil
8. brown the pork
9. add the preserved vegetables
10. add the spring onions (so that they dont disintegrate at the end of the cooking process though adding it in at the beginning with the ginger and garlic would flavour the oil that cooks the pork more - but it kind of doesnt matter because you are slow-cooking it)
11. transfer to the warm slow-cooker to continue the cooking process. add some boiling water.

essentially, the longer you cook it, the better it tastes. which is why i think it will make an even more fabulous lunch than it did for my dinner/supper last night.

the longer it cooks, the browner the dish gets - the picture above shows it 30mins into te slow-cooking process. after approximately 6 hours of cooking, it will look like this:
enjoy with steamed white rice or rice porridge. i recommend having cai po (preserved radish) omelette and stir fried vegetables (like beansprouts or any asian vegetable such as bai cai or cai xin) as accompaniment.