Sunday, October 08, 2006

D's Garlic Nam Lu Pork Ribs

I love ribs. My favorite cuts are sparerib (shortrib), babyback, primerib, rack of ribs, ribeye, French cutlet and mainly come from beef, pork or lamb in origin (I find chicken ribs too troublesome to eat). The best part about the rib is that crunchy bit between the meat and the bone or the membrane known as the aponeurosis. But enough googled medical jargon, let's get this show on the road.

I tasted deepfried pork in preserved red beancurd (nam lu) at some restaurant awhile ago and thought it was pretty good, then I thought to myself that I could make it even better by using pork spareribs instead of pork slices and since I'm at it, I might as well throw in some garlic for good measure.

Ingredients:
1. Pork spareribs
2. Oyster sauce, pepper, salt, sake (or any cooking wine), soy sauce
3. Preserved red beancurd (nam lu)
4. Diced garlic
5. Rice flour
6. Oil for deep-frying and stir-frying

I actually used a Cantonese seasoned salt for salt-baked chicken in this dish to give it a slight twist to the flavor. Check out the hardcore earthen pot the preserved red beancurd comes in. Anything which comes in such a hardcore pot has to be good haha.

Method:
1. Mix in oyster sauce, soy sauce, salt, pepper, sake and nam lu with the spareribs
2. Coat each sparerib with a fine layer of rice flour

3. Deep-fry the spareribs till they're just about cooked
4. Heat some oil in a separate wok and brown the diced garlic till golden
5. Toss in the pre-deep-fried ribs and stir-fry with the garlic till well-done

Hint:
1. I normally let the ribs marinate for at least 24 hrs before cooking
2. Allow sufficient time for your meats to "warm up" abit prior to cooking, especially with bone-in cuts. This prevents the area near the bone from being bloody. I took these ribs out from my fridge about three hours before I deep-fried them

This is how I would serve this dish if I were a "fine-dining" Chinese restaurant with intentions to rip you off haha. But this is normally my preferred style of serving such food:

Lots of it!

D

3 comments:

kahsean said...

mmm thats making me hungry.
i don't get all that fancy asian food cause i live with my bro n both of us aren't upto the cooking standards of those fancy asian dishes. =(
dam, i miss my moms cooking.

Anonymous said...

*haha I love that part about the fine-dining Chinese restaurants. Talking about chinese restaurants I went to one recently with my law friends and they were playing christmas music with erhu and guzheng. (like santa claus is coming to town in erhu) we asked them about it and they said it was because 'christmas is coming'. a very clueless affair. i would show you the pictures, but they are on facebook. do you have facebook, or is it an angsty-teenager thing? :D

god bless,
grace

D said...

kahsean: "fancy"? Haha you're very kind. It's just that I do enjoy cooking the occasional dish as much as eating it. I actually started cooking and experimenting more when I was living alone overseas but I do agree with you, Mom's cooking is always tops.