Recipe: Taiwanese Minced Pork (肉燥ba-suh)

This picture is a repost from an earlier meal involving my lemon and honey marinated steak, but since I neglected to photograph the finished product of this certain cooking session... This will have to do.

There are two methods by which one can go about preparing this dish. Sauteing/braising - as picture above - is the most commonly seen method, but my mother also does a steamed version that I far prefer.  Steaming is actually an easier method than sauteing or braising, but it doesn't keep as well, so only do it in daily consumable quantities.

Since my mother doesn't use measuring cups and what not, all these below measurements are just ballparks, but please feel free to modify as you see fit.

[Ingredients]
- 1 pound of ground pork (1:1 lean to fat ration)
- 6 red shallots, sliced (omit if you are steaming)
- 6 cloves of garlic, finely diced
- 100 grams of baby shrimp*
- 100 grams of winter mushrooms*
- 100 grams of Chinese pickled cabbage hearts or cucumbers or winter cabbage
- 1 cup of soaking water from the baby shrimp, winter mushroom, and pickled vegetables
- 1 teaspoon tapioca powder (or use flour if you can't find this)
- 2 Tablespoons soy sauce
- 2 teaspoons black vinegar
- 1 Tablespoon rice wine
- optional: a pinch of crushed peppercorns

*These usually come dried, so soak them in hot water for about 20 minutes, and

make sure you preserve the soaking water, for it will be used later on in the recipe

The first step to this multi-ingredient monstrosity is to soak the mushrooms and the shrimp anywhere from 20 minute to an hour, depending on how long before hand you decide to start doing the mise, but it doesn't hurt if you soak it longer since all the liquid is going into the whole process anyways. So just pop the babies over on into bowls with some hot water (just enough to cover them), and let them sit while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

Drop the ground pork into a bowl, and get out a fork or a spoon or chopsticks to deal with the mixture - usually in the case of sausages or meatloaves or meatballs I like to go in with my hands to mix up meats, but since the fat percentage is supremely high in this case, I decided to go with an utensil. My mother picked up this mixture fresh from her butcher just earlier that morning, freshly ground and everything. Gorgeous.

Next, slice up the shallots. No need to dice them, because they're very fine vegetables in themselves and as we fry them they'll just separate and shrivel into sweet fragrant little goodnesses on their own. If you are not familiar with the gorgeous qualities of shallots (or also known as eschalottes) then I suggest you do yourself a massively kind favor and start cooking with them. They are basically miniature onions infused with a tangy sweetness that could only be reached, I imagine, by combining Vidalia onions and cloves of garlic. When deep fried to a crisp in lard they lend a fantastic flavor that is almost like bacon but less smokey and more pungent.

Finely dice up the garlic - once again, I hope you remember my techniques from previous lessons - and set it aside with the gorgeous sliced shallots. At this point, assuming you started at an early enough point, the mushrooms and the shrimp should be well-soaked and can be drained and removed to be processed. You can leave the shrimp as they are or give them a coarse chop, and just dice the the mushrooms into delicious little fungus squares.

Remember to keep the water with which you soaked the mushrooms (yes, I understand my conscious effort to not end sentences with prepositions is more than a bit pretentious, but it can't kill to be grammatically correct) and add that to the meat. Feel free to do that at this point.

The beautiful light sweet taste of the mushrooms blends very well with the silky flavor of the pork, and as you can see here, the liquids we have added - and will add - are going to contribute greatly to how moist the dish will be.

Next thing to do is to chop up the pickled vegetables. I didn't take a picture of the jar and I cannot remember the approximate name of which brand or variety we used, but this is the rough equivalent.

My mother and I took a two-pronged approach to this procedure: after the jar was opened I promptly went about my chopping frenzy - have I mentioned how much I love dicing and mincing? It is without doubt one of the most satisfying sensations one could experience while cooking - and she poured some of the pickling juices into the meat mixture.

These little crunchy bits of delight retain their texture even after the cooking process, so it adds a nice variety to the dish, much like potato chips on the side of a roast beef sandwich. Adds texture variety, that is, not retain texture after cooking. Anywho.

This is the best part. Dump in all the ingredients that have so far been cut: the mushrooms, shrimp, garlic, and pickled veggies. There should already be a decent amount of liquids in the bowl, but be brave and go ahead and add the soy sauce, vinegar, rice wine, and tapioca flour.

Now is a good time to do some solid stretches and get to mixing. Start off just folding all the ingredients together and once you get to a more consistent consistency, have at it.

It should be rather smooth with all the oils and liquids in the mixture, and although I know you non-Asians might mock me and my mother for using chopsticks in this scenario, know that it is the perfect mixing tool in 99% of the case. Once you've whipped the meat paste into an obedient consistency, decide if you are going to steam or saute the mixture.

If you're going to steam it, just put the whole thing in a serving bowl and throw it onto a small steaming stand over boiling water and let it steam for about 15 minutes.

If you decide to saute the mixture, heat up a large pan with a small dash oil in it and deep fry the shallots until browned and crisped. Then, dump in the entire mixture and make sure you thoroughly chop up the mixture with your spatula or other frying utensil. Once everything's browned properly, put the lid on and let it simmer for a while, taste test for flavor modifications while cooking and in about 15 minutes you will have in your possession an amazing concoction of Taiwanese minced pork that goes wonderfully with most starch products, but especially over rice or tossed with noodles.

Enjoy.