Rosemary fig jam bbq braised pork rib sandwich with celery, onions and carrots 🍖🍞🥕 I made this on a whim using what we had in the fridge and wanting an easy weekday dinner. Literally chopped everything up, threw it in the pot and let it go til we got home to eat after work.

Marinated the pork rib ends the night before then I tossed everything in before I went to work, set it on delay start so that it would be ready when we got home! Then added a nice fig jam BBQ sauce on top, broiled for a quick minute and put between two crispy garlic toast 😍 Love the sweetness of the fig that comes through in the sauce, and a kick from the hot sauce too!

Honestly instant pot is like my new best friend for braising meat. It makes my life so much easier and the meat is always juicy and tender, whether it be chicken, pork or beef! The celery, carrots and onions were also super soft from the pressure cooking and we just piled it up in the sandwich with the pork after removing the bones (it literallt falls out of the meat because it is so tender)! This sandwich would probably go well with some crisp cole slaw too!


INGREDIENTS:
​
PORK & MARINADE
• 3 Pork loin end ribs
• 1/2 tbsp worcestshire sauce
• 3 teaspoon salt
• 2 tsp black pepper
• 1/2 cup chopped scallions
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1/2 tbsp paprika
• 1/2 tbsp oregano
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic chopped


INSTANT POT
• 1 large chopped carrot
• 3 stalks chopped celery
• 1/2 chopped onion
• 6 cloves garlic chopped
• 1 cup low sodium chicken stock or vegetable stock
• 2 tbsp tomato paste


SAUCE FOR RIBS
• 1/3 cup fig jam
• 1/4 cup BBQ sauce of choice, we used Sweet Baby Ray's
• 2 tbsp hot sauce (we used Frank's red hot)


DIRECTIONS

1. Prepare marinade ingredients and marinade the pork rib ends for at least 1 hour or overnight.
2. Set instant pot on sauté mode, add 1 tbsp olive oil and sauté onion and garlic until translucent and fragrant.
3. Add chopped celery and carrots, tomato paste and mix. Put the pork rib ends on top and dump in the marinade. Pour 1 cup chicken stock in.
4. Close the Instant Pot and set on High Pressure cook for 30 minutes.
5. Allow Instant Pot to vent. Prepare 4 slices of toast or bread of choice with fresh garlic and butter to make as garlic bread.
6. Mix the fig jam, bbq sauce and hot sauce together. Take the vegetables and pork rib out and put onto oven safe tray. Pour the bbq sauce mixture onto the meat and broil on high for 2 minutes.

Eat the meat and veggies in a sandwich and enjoy!

Until next time,
Jenny

I am up to my noodley shenanigans again! Today I am sharing a Braised Beef Noodle Soup. I feel apprehensive calling this a Taiwanese Braised Beef Noodle Soup, since the recipe is really a combination of a bunch of recipes I've tried in the past and have tweaked over time to suit our tastes, but essentially it would be best related to Taiwanese beef noodles--although I'm sure a purist would say otherwise. Bay leaves are not usually part of the recipe, but I find that it gives a little somethin' somethin' to it. I also find that other recipes have more star anise and use spicy bean paste for the telltale spice kick, but after a few times of recipe testing, we found that we weren't fond of the heavy licorice flavor of star anise in our broth, and that spicy bean paste often ended up being too spicy (at least for my husband, who is decidedly weak against spice haha). I tend to add some chili paste on top of my noodles before I eat, and it tastes just as good!

I developed a love for beef noodle soup when I stayed in Taiwan for a few weeks as a tween/teenager and again when I went on a mom and daughter trip back in 2014. I stayed with my cousins and my aunt once took me to a place not far from her home in Taipei that sold affordable, homemade and delicious beef noodle soup. I remember the steaming pots of beef broth, assorted beef cuts including brisket, shank, tripe and tendon being scooped up to be placed on top of freshly boiled noodles. You could smell the broth and beef as you approached the restaurant from outside. Taiwan is hot and humid, especially during the summer, but you will still see plenty of people queuing up for a good bowl of beef noodle soup on any day.​ This dish is so popular that you'll see it in restaurants, street vendors and even at the airport!

The photos below were taken back in 2014 when I went to Taiwan with my mom and we revisited the same beef noodle shop near my aunt's home! Look at all the honeycomb tripe, beef tongue and beef tendon!! Yummm! Next to it is a photo of a bowl of beef noodle soup we ate at the airport in Taipei. Even for airport food, the noodles were super nice and chewy, flavorful broth and large chunks of soft beef. Ah the memories ♥🍜

I tend to pair this recipe with my handmade noodles (super easy to make) but if I'm pressed for time or too lazy, I will use store bought (either fresh flour noodles or the dried kinds). You can even use instant noodles if you wish!

Crispy Cantonese Roast Pork "Siu Yuhk" 燒肉 (directly translated as "roast meat") is an essential part of Chinese Canto bbq cuisine. I grew up visiting Chinatown in New York every weekend with my family. For Chinese school, for groceries. We would walk past bakeries and restaurants, and many of the restaurants would feature Chinese bbq or tanks of live seafood at their storefronts. Seeing a plump soy sauce chicken, crispy roast duck, or fatty roast pork hanging in the window is always the best advertising a restaurant can have. You tell the butcher what you want by the pound, he chops it up and gives it to you with some cups of soy sauce or ginger scallion oil. Call us barbaric, but sometimes we can't even wait to get home and we start eating the meat straight out of the box with our hands!

​With the COVID19 quarantine in effect, we found ourselves craving all sorts of food that we normally get at restaurants, especially Cantonese style crispy roast pork.

I found a wonderful recipe on Pinterest from a blog called What to Cook Today and made some adjustments to the marinade to suit our tastes, but the method, time and temperature is the same. Definitely check out their food blog, there's lots of great recipes there! I can't wait to try other flavor profiles for this crispy pork recipe! You can enjoy this crispy pork with a bed of lettuce wraps, with bao buns, with rice, in sandwiches or tortillas, the list goes on!

The key to getting that crackly crispy AF skin is to make sure to pat the skin super dryyyyy before you oven it. You can honestly marinate the meat part with whatever flavor you want. We went with sweet hoisin and peppery flavors. The rest is in a salt crust that further draws out moisture to help achieve the crispy skin.

Don't worry about the salt crust making your pork too salty—once it is done baking, the loose salt forms a hard crust that comes off easily and you just have to brush off any excess before returning it to the oven to finish the roasting process.

Then it's a low broil for about 20 minutes and the pork skin begins to crackle, snap and pop!

Out comes a beautifully crackled crispy roast pork. It makes my mouth water just looking at the photos of it again. So. freaking. good. I know, I know, you've been scrolling for a while, recipe is down below!

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 lbs pork belly, skin on​
• 1 tbsp five spice powder
• 2 tbsp hoisin sauce
• 2 tbsp white pepper
• 2 tbsp black pepper
• 2 tsp cinnamon powder
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup shaoxing wine
• 2 tsp sesame oil
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 box coarse sea salt for baking

​DIRECTIONS:

1. Dry off the pork belly​ and ensure the skin portion is completely dried.
2. Mix the five spice, white pepper, black pepper, cinnamon, hoisin sauce, brown sugar, shaoxing wine sesame oil and 2 tsp salt. Rub it on the meat portion of the pork belly, taking care not to get the skin wet. Pour the rest of the marinade into the container, rest the pork skin up and marinate overnight in the refrigerator, uncovered. The refrigerator will help draw moisture out from the skin.
3. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. In a oven safe pan, place a sheet of aluminum foil in it. Remove the pork belly from the marinade and place onto the foil, wrapping the foil up around the pork belly. Ensure about 1/2 inch of foil folds up above the pork belly skin. Make sure the foil is wrapped snugly around the sides to prevent the meat from drying out while baking in the oven.  Again, make sure the pork belly skin is dry.
4. Pour a 1/2 inch of coarse salt on top of the skin to form a salt crust.
5. Bake in the oven for 1.5 hours. After 1.5 hours, remove from the oven and carefully remove the salt crust from the top. Brush off any excess salt.
6. Put the pork back into the oven and broil on low for 15-20 minutes or until the skin is crackled to your liking.
7. Once crisp and crackled, remove from the oven and place meat onto a cutting board to cut and serve with lettuce as lettuce wraps, a side to go with rice or with noodles, whatever you like. 

Just look at that deliciousness. Don't you wish you could pull it right off the screen to sink your teeth into?! Be sure not to cover the meat because the steam and heat will make the skin soft and no longer crispy, which will result in sadness. 

I hope you enjoy this recipe! We had this with lettuce, an assortment of sauces like sweet thai chili, peanut sauce and hoisin sauce to dip, and a side of pickled cucumbers for a nice refreshing crunch. Until next time!

​- Jenny