Father's Oxtail

At my house, most of the time my mom cooks dinner, but every once in a while Master Chef Hsu (my dad) will make an appearance in the kitchen. Up until maybe last year, my dad's specialty was noodles.. But last year, he ventured out to all sorts of things, fish head soup, curry chicken, braised pork belly, and my favorite of all, braised oxtail. My dad was in the Philippines for the past year on business and I would always crave this comfort food. My mom didn't have the recipe and my brother only had a failed attempt at transcribing it last summer. After an entire week of nagging him about his delicious oxtail dish, daddy walked me through the process. I'm so glad I have this recipe to share now! It's a nice change from the yummy but common way of cooking oxtail which is in soup.

Father's Braised Oxtail

Ingredients
2 star anise
3 slices of ginger 
1 tsp peppercorn
2 stalks green onion quartered
2-3lbs oxtail
1/4 cup of michu 
2 tsp salt
1 stick of celery quartered
2 habenaro peppers stems cut
10 cups of water
1/4 cup dark soy sauce 
Dash of sugar
3 tsp light soy sauce
1 tsp dashi
1 tbs sesame oil
1/2 tsp cracked pepper
3 Carrots sliced

Directions:
1. Boil water in a large pot add star anise ginger and peppercorn green onion
2. Marinate oxtail in michu and salt let sit for 10 minutes
3. Once the pot comes to a roaring boil place the oxtails into the pot. Stir and cook for 1 minute just until the meat is no longer red.
4. Drain the water, keeping all the other ingredients and transfer to a ceramic pot.
5. Place oxtail evenly in a ceramic pot with celery and habenaro peppers and add 10 cups of water or enough to cover all the meat.
6. Add soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar, cracked pepper and dashi, bring to a boil on high heat
7. Reduce heat to low and cook for 1.5 hours. Remove the blood/impurities from the top.
8. Add carrots and cook for another 15 minutes.
9. Garnish with Worchestire vinegar!

Minced Pork Rice

I apologize for the blogging hiatus. I blame part of it on my trip to asia! I understand that only explains one month of absence... and I probably could have posted all the "sees"to balance out the taste aspect of this blog. I BLAME HUNGER GAMES for the rest! Anyway, I'm back now and I'm going to give blogging another shot!

So today I have my own recipe for Lu Rou Fan (Minced Pork Rice) for you.  This is one of my FAVORITE things to eat in Taiwan and I had lots and lots of it during my two week there. I think the reason why I like it so much is that I hardly let myself have it... I rarely order it at restaurants in the states because... well the meat is usually REALLY fatty and the sauce makes it extremely hard not to down an entire bowl of white rice... Anyway, this is a low fat version of the traditional lu rou fan! And the best part about this recipe is that you keep it in your fridge for roughly 2-3 weeks and use it as topping on rice, noodles and/or sautéed/boiled veggies!

Low Fat Lu Ruo Fan (Minced Pork Rice)
serves 8

Ingredients:
2 Shallots Minced
8 Shitake Mushrooms Minced (I used dried because it gives a great mushroom flavor)**
Olive Oil
1 lb 97% fat free Ground Pork
3 tsp Michiu (rice wine)
2 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Dashi
6 oz Low Sodium Soy Sauce
1 1/2 tsp Sugar
2 cups of Water (I used the water from my boiled mushrooms)

**boil dried mushrooms in 2 cups of water until soft, keep the boiled water for later use**

Directions:

1. Season pork with 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp of michiu then set aside.
2. Heat olive oil in a non-stick saucer and add minced shallots and cook using medium heat until shallots are caramelized and brown. Then switch to low heat and add mushrooms.
3. Add ground pork and turn the heat to medium high to brown the meat.
4. After most of the pork is browned add the soy sauce,  michiu, salt, dashi and sugar, stir well. 
5. Then add the mushroom water half cup at a time to reduce. Then cook on low heat for 2 hours... or garnish with cilantro and eat right away :) (the sauce gets better with time)
6. I added hard boiled eggs after step 5