*~Riceballz~*

My first time cooking pork knuckles, and surprisingly they turned out quite well! This dish is for the reunion dinner, so there was some pressure, but luckily they ended up quite well! Even my grandparents gave the nod, surprise!

I don’t exactly follow any strict recipe, so this is roughly what I used.

Ingredients:
1 pork knuckles
2 bulbs roasted garlic
20 black mushrooms, soaked
1 palm size cuttlefish (or dried squid?) for boiling soup, the thing called “tiu pin” in Cantonese
5-10 dried oysters (hou see)
1/2 cup abalone sauce or 1/4 oyster sauce (1 cup of chicken stock or equivalent)
1 tbsp dark soy sauce (add more if you think its not dark enough)
5 tbsp light soy sauce
A dash of black pepper powder
one thumb size of gula Melaka or 5-6 cubes of rock sugar
salt to taste
1 star anise
1 cinnamon stick
1 packet dried black seaweed (fatt choy)

Method:

Clean and blanch the pork knuckles in boiling water to remove the scum. Dish and drain. The pork knuckles were already cut into small pieces so I blanched them; otherwise if its whole I will cut criss cross on the skin and deep fry them for a while in oil instead. A whole pork knuckles would be nice for presentation, but it all boils down to how you want to have them, really.

In a big pot, put in cleaned pork knuckles, garlic bulbs, mushrooms, cuttlefish, star anise and cinammon stick. Add in the abalone sauce, light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, salt, sugar and a dash of black pepper powder. Then, add enough water to let all the ingredients sit nicely in the pot. Turn on high heat and let the water boil. When the water is boiling, turn the heat from medium to low and let the pork knuckles simmer.

In the meantime, clean and deep fry the dried oysters. This is done in order to preserve the shape of the oyster, as they turn mushy if boiled for too long.

Stew the pork knuckles for at least 2 hours, and add the dried oyster and dried seaweed (fatt choy) and hour prior to serving. Serve hot with white rice.

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