Porkchops in Asian Sesame and Sour Plum Sauce Marinate

All you carnivores out there… Welcome to my world!

Embracing my Chinese heritage and taking advantage of the easily available fresh ingredients in Singapore, I came up with this special pork roast recipe during the last Christmas Feast for my meat loving family.

Preparation time: 40 min + optional overnight marinade time

Cooking time: 1 hour per kilo of pork in 160 degree C oven

Ingredients

Marinade

1. Tahini Sesame paste (find out brand) – available at Cold Storage
2. Sour plum sauce (available in provision stores or supermarkets)
3. Roasted sesame seeds – optional
4. 5 Spices powder
5. Paprika – optional
6. Soya Sauce + a dash of Sesame oil
   (for extra flavor: add finely diced up ginger, garlic and onion and dump into microwave to cook in soya sauce for 1 min)
7. Garlic powder
8. White Pepper
9. Salt

Meat

1. Rack of pork chops or simply use pork roast cuts

Step 1) Preparing the marinate

Mix equal portion of sour plum sauce and sesame paste, make sure it is enough to fully coat the meat cut you have chosen

Add all the other marinade ingredients into the sour plum and sesame paste mixture. You can taste the marinate to make sure the taste is right for you. Add more salt if it is not salty enough, but not the soya sauce, we won’t want the paste to be too runny. *Don’t worry, the marinate is edible till you put it on the meat*

Should look like a thick paste.

Optional: How to prepare Roasted sesame

Step A) Pan-fry sesame seeds over medium flame on a non stick pan till it turns into light golden brown.

From this whitish color:

…to this light golden brown color

Step B) Pound/Grind the roasted sesame seeds.

I luUrve my mum’s old school stone pound, she was using it even before i was born!

Just slightly crush seeds to release the fragrance. Pounding them into fine powder is not necessary, unless you have the time….

Step 2) Preparing the meat

I chose the cut with the longer rib bones and I will be removing the top most layer of skin (chewy layer where most of the gelatin and collagen is found – can be used for preparing braised pork or soup).

I intentionally requested the butcher to leave the pig skin on for me to remove because I want to keep a thick layer of fats as the extra layer of fats adds to the meat’s juiciness – The butcher usually cut a good amount of fat off together with the top layer of skin so that he can resell it later.

How to remove the skin:

Keep the knife point right below the layer of skin and hold it at an angle. Slowly slice the skin away, be careful not to cut yourself when you are concentrating on the meat!

WARNING: If you are not confident, don’t even contemplate the above action. Get the butcher to do it and tell him to keep most of the fats on!

After removing the skin, rub the meat with salt and pepper – especially when dealing with cuts with a thick layer of meat . Flip the rack over and make shallow incision between ribs to help get the flavor into the meat.

Step 3) Slather on the marinate on the meat!

Now wrap the the marinated rack in waxed/baking/parchment paper, then another layer of aluminum foil to prevent it from drying up in the fridge. Put into the fridge to marinade overnight.

Step 4) Ready to cook!

Reheat the oven to 180 degree C.

Unwrapping the marinated rack you will see that the marinate is stuck to the paper and on the meat. Scrap off excess marinate both of the meat and the waxed paper, we will need to use it later.

The meat going into the oven should look like this:

To make a good roast, I advice that you get a good roasting pan. I got mine from Pantry Magic at Holland Village. If not, get those aluminum roasting pans.

Put some oil in the pan and heat it up in the oven. Then when the oil is hot, bring the pan out, place the meat rack into the pan, top side down. This will sear the top part of the meat to seal in the fats.

Bring the roast out 30 minutes later, flip it over and pour the marinate paste over the pork rack. Return the rack into the oven, placing the meat at the lowest level in the oven to prevent too much burning of the marinate. Cook for another hour plus, depending on the weight of the meat.

The best bet would be to get a meat thermometer:

*Used camera phone, thus the low resolution*

Poke the thermometer into the thickest part of the meat, should read 160 degree C if the meat is cooked. Alternatively, poke roast with a tooth pick, the juice running out should be clear.

Step 5) Ready to serve!

Bring the rack out, let cool for about 5 minutes to allow the meat to contract and retain its juice in the meat. Then serve on a large chopping board. I sprinkled some sesame seeds over the top as garnish,

This photo seriously don’t do the rack justice…

Look at how yummy the meat is…

Serve the meat at the table. Cut it right in front of your guest or family so that they will drool with anticipation!

*My family thinks that the whole process of waiting is absolutely torturous… – I would like to thank them for waiting graciously while I took the photos*

Yummy!!!!

Its the expression that counts…. Thanks Bowen

*INCOMING!!!*

Oops…. Off to the gym…

My second trip to the wet market

Finally I am heading down to the wet market to collect my rack of Pork Chops! ….REALLY excited about it…

But before heading to collect the pork, I made a quick turn to my favorite grocer at the wet market at Geylang St 17.

I am getting cabbage, brocolli, capsicum, xiao bai cai etc… then while browsing, something caught my eyes:

According to uncle, this is called “Purple Leaves”(??) and it’s very useful in curing the condition of sorethroats. It is usually added into Barley water to boil (like how we will use Pandan leaves):

Sounds good yeah, especially with the roasted pork chop coming up, I’ll need it… Speaking of pork chops…. The pork chops i collected were simply gorgeous!!!

Got Uncle Willy to chop it into 2 racks… nice. But will only use the longer one for our roast.

Cannot wait…. Am gonna start preping. Look out for the next post!

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