Braised pork aka Lor Ba 🐷

My mum loves to braise pork and chicken as it's convenient for her since she's working. One pot dish and dinner is done! Learnt this dish from her and my family loves it 😊

Ingredients: 

• 800g pork belly (I added some leaner ones) 
• 6 eggs (I used the smaller eggs) 
• 2 pieces of tau kwa
• 10 pieces of tau pok 
• About 200g fen chang 
• 1 piece of pork skin 
• 3 pieces of star anise 
• A thumb-size ginger 
• 15 pieces of garlic 
• Coriander for garnishing 
• Water enough to cover 90% of ingredients in pot 

Seasonings (I cooked based on estimation. Please use this as a gauge and adjust accordingly to your taste.) 

• 3 tbsp light soya sauce
• 2 tbsp dark soya sauce (大华brand)
• 2 tbsp dark soya sauce (Kwong Xiang tai brand or Baobao brand from Malaysia) 
• 2 tbsp oyster sauce
• 1 tsp rock sugar
• A dash of sesame oil 

Method: 

1. Boil water in pot. Blanched pork belly and set aside. For pork skin and fen chang, wash with salt. Blanched in boiling water with thumb size ginger and 2 tbsp of Chinese cooking wine. Remove, rinse and set aside. 
2. Rinse garlic and star anise and place into pot. Pour light soya sauce, 2 types of dark soya sauce, oyster sauce and water into pot. Heat up pot to bring sauce to a boil. 
3. Add pork belly, skin and fen chang into sauce. Make sure that the sauce covers the pork. If not, add more water. Bring it to a boil and simmer and braise for 45mins to an hour. Stir occasionally to ensure that braising process is consistent. Use a chopstick to poke and check if Pork belly, skin and fen chang is cooked through and soft enough. Continue to braise if it's still hard. Once it's soft enough, remove from sauce and set aside. 
4. Add tau pok, tau gua and eggs into sauce. Bring to a boil and simmer for about 15mins. After 15mins, taste and add more seasoning and adjust to your taste accordingly. Add a dash of sesame oil. Placed Pork belly, skin and fen chang back into pot and off heat. Before serving, sliced the pork belly and other ingredients into smaller pieces and assembled on plate. Scoop some gravy and heat up using a small saucepan. Thicken gravy with corn flour slurry, then drizzled on pork. Garnish with coriander and served hot. 
5. I prepared this in the afternoon using my thermal pot. Simmer ingredients for 25 mins before transferring to outer pot. Heat up the pot again before serving. Remove the pork and other ingredients to slice and plate. Thicken sauce using a small saucepan and drizzle on pork. Garnish with coriander and serve. 😊 

Note: 

1. Should there be leftover gravy, you can keep for the next day. Heat up the gravy and add more water if it's insufficient. After adding more water, do add more seasonings, garlic cloves so that the flavor is not compensated. Once the gravy boil, you can add hard boiled eggs, tau gua, tau pok and even tau kee and it'll becomes a dish for dinner. 

2. For leftover gravy (lor zup), I will normally pour into a sieve to sieve out the scums and ingredients and freeze it and add to the gravy the next time I cook this dish. It enhances the flavour!