Recipe for Red Braised Pork Belly (红烧肉)
The cacophony of chattering customers and the bubbling static of fish tanks lining the walls almost drowns out my voice as I ask for a pound of pork belly. The butcher weighs out the meat as I try not to breathe in the metallic scent of silvery scaled fish bleeding onto ice. I have always hated the smell of raw seafood. When I was little, I used to wait two rows down in the produce section, watching as Ma yelled over the noise and pointed at the rows and rows of meat behind the glass display cases. She would walk back and hand me the red plastic bags to put in the cart, shaking her head with a small smile as I wrinkled my nose. Get used to it, you have to cook for yourself one day. Are you just going to become a vegetarian when Ma Ma can’t cook for you anymore?
I quickly tossed the pork into my cart, which only had six other ingredients. Ginger, star anise, dark soy sauce, shaoxing rice wine, rock sugar, and tofu skin knots. They looked lonely, huddled together at the bottom of my cart. They were ingredients that were staples in Ma’s kitchen, but ingredients I had to specifically drive out to the supermarket nearly twenty minutes away to purchase. Twenty minutes of hesitation. Twenty minutes where I didn’t know whether to just turn back and order the dish from my favorite Shanghainese restaurant or to keep driving and make it myself.
Ma rarely made red braised pork belly, but when she did, the entire bowl would be clean by the end of dinner, only piles of ruby-red skin left. No one in my family liked the skin on pork belly. I always asked her why she didn’t just cut it off before making it, but she would just shake her head in indignation. The flavor wouldn’t be the same, she would scoff.
And she was right. Even though she never measured ingredients while standing over that steaming pot, the pork would always come out tasting the same. Tasting of home and childhood and the nights when we sat around the round dinner table, seats facing each other, but eyes glued to the television screen. We never had anything to say to each other anyways. And when I tried to turn the television off and make conversation, the clacking of chopsticks against ceramic bowls replaced the chattering of people on the screen. The television stayed on at dinner after my last feeble attempt, even after I moved out for work. Even after it was just two people sitting at a table meant for three. Even after it was just my dad.
The red braised pork at the restaurants were delicious. Fatty and savory, sweet and aromatic. Sometimes, I would chance upon the specific type Ma made, the one that included tofu skin knots that absorbed the juices of the fatty pork and the braising sauce, springy in texture as I bit into them. I used to untie the knots with chopsticks and I still do, a childish habit that I strongly believe made them taste better. Still, they never tasted the same. I could never quite grasp just why.
Was it the amount of soy sauce? Ma loved salty things. She used to eat salted preserved vegetables, the ones that came out of the aluminum bags, with everything. She stopped after she was diagnosed with high blood pressure. An extra splash of soy sauce went into the pot of blanched pork belly cubes that were simmering in a concoction of hot water and shaoxing rice wine. Then chunks of sliced ginger. Did the shape matter? Ma always cuts them into thin strips, or perhaps just chunks. Or maybe circular slices? I can’t remember, but I keep going, adding in the bay leaves and the star anise.
Was it the amount of sugar? Ma hated overly sweet things, not just because of the taste, but because she tried to be healthier. Tried to be healthier and stay longer than her mother, who had passed away at just over seventy. Lao Lao was a large woman in my memories, but the last time I saw her before her death, the hospital equipment made her seem tiny even in the eyes of a child. I hold off on a few rock sugar chunks while stirring them in. And then add one back in, only to second guess myself. But the sugar has already dissolved.
I am careful to remove the pot from the flames just after the sugar has melted into the gooey shiny sauce of the meat. Ma forgot the pot on the stove once after adding in the sugar, having scampered off to cut up cabbage and peppers for another dish. There was leftover pork belly that night, but I assured her the taste was fine as she tried to pick out the lighter colored pieces for me, keeping the more bitter burnt pieces for herself.
I tried to get her to teach me. Back in college when I started to miss her cooking. But Ma told me that it was a waste of time and to focus on school. Ma Ma will cook for you when you come back home. Then, she said that she would make it when I had a break from work. Then, she was too tired to cook, the microwave being used more than the stove and frozen meals overpopulating the freezer. Then, the only meals she had were from plastic trays surrounded by the incessant beeping of machines.
Carefully carrying the pot of steaming meat onto the table, I notice the unopened bag of tofu skin knots on the table and curse silently. Perhaps I could still toss them in? No, the sugar would burn with more time on the stove. I sigh and fill my bowl with rice. The dull clack of chopsticks on ceramic seems to echo despite the small size of the kitchen. I nimbly separate the skin from the pork belly and take the first bite.
There are leftovers that night.
