Braised Pork with Egg and Coconut Juice (Thit Heo Kho)

Nhut Hunyh & Jeremy McNamara – RQ Thai & Vietnamese Cuisine, 294 Crown St on Food Safari

This is comfort food at its best! I love watching the silence as people discover the rich flavours of this great regional Vietnamese dish! Summer! Winter! It doesn’t matter! Flavors like this transcend the seasons!

This dish has been a family favorite of mine for many years and I am thrilled that diners at RQ have taken to it. My mother used to prepare this once a year for Vietnamese New Year. My seven brothers and sisters and I always looked forward to this dish, especially in the years when we were farmers and very poor in the Vietnamese countryside and meat was hard to get.

INGREDIENTS

1 kg pork belly (not too fatty), cut into 5 cm cubes
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
4 shallots (small brown onion bulbs), finely chopped
3 tbsp fish sauce
3 tbsp light soy sauce
1½ tbsp dark soy sauce
4 star anise
½ tsp cracked black pepper
2 tbsp palm sugar or dark brown sugar
2 whole green shallots
1 tbsp vegetable oil
½ white onion, finely diced
3 cups (1 bag) young coconut juice (not milk or cream!)
1½ cups water
8 hard boiled, free range eggs, peeled
Jasmine rice and coriander, to serve
DIRECTIONS

1. Combine pork belly, garlic, shallot, fish sauce, soy sauces, pepper, star anise and palm sugar. Use the whole shallot including roots. Lay on a chopping board and smash with the flat side of the knife then chop finely. Add to marinade. Marinate pork for at least 3 hours or overnight.
2. Heat vegetable oil in heavy based pan and brown onion. Remove pork from marinade and add to the pan and seal over high heat. Add coconut juice, marinade and water.
3. Bring pan to the boil and skim surface. Simmer for 1 hour on low heat (skimming occasionally) and then add eggs. Simmer for a further hour. Serve with steamed Jasmine rice and garnished with coriander.