Pork with sticky Asian glaze (Lusaka, Zambia)

The whole idea of any thing pork with Asian flavors, just sounds delicious.  I stumbled across this recipe and had to give it a whirl – not because I thought it was overly interesting, but rather I had never even considered cooking a pig’s neck.  I bought the chunk of neck from Zoran’s Majoru outlet in Crossroads Shopping Center.  Incidentally the rice noodles I had brought to Zambia from Thailand in January, along with the star anise and dark soy sauce. 

Total time: 2 hours.  Serves 6.

Ingredients:

1 T sunflower oil
1.5 kg pork neck
1/2 small red onion, thinly sliced
3 cm ginger, peeled and finely grated
5 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1/2 cup dark soy sauce
1/4 cup sugar
2 star anise
2 cups chicken stock
2 cups water
8 dried whole mushrooms (e.g. shitake or brown)
1 kg rice noodles
350 g chopped buk choy
3 green onions, thinly sliced

Steps:

1. Heat oil on medium in large sauce pan.  Sauté pork until brown on all sides. Add onion, garlic and ginger and sauté 1 minute. Add soy sauce, sugar, stock and water and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer covered for 1 1/2 hours turning pork.
2. Meanwhile soak mushrooms in warm water for 30 min, slice and then add to pork about 60 minutes into cooking the pork.
3. Remove pork from pan.  Reserve sauce.
4. Boil sauce uncovered for about 10 minutes, or until about 2 cups is reduced to 1 cup.
5. Meanwhile place rice noodle in bowl and cover with boiling water. Let stand until tender, then drain.
6. Slice the pork thinly.
7. Steam or sauté buk choy until soft.
8. Prepare plates by placing noodles down, then a layer of buk choy, a layer of pork, topped with a drizzle of sauce and chopped spring onions.