Carefree Cooking

Minced Pork With Egg and Friend Banana on Rice

It's been a while since I posted a blog entry. Part of it is because I was too busy. Part of it was because I got injured (back hurting). Part of it is because I felt lazy :( Anyways, I'm back and hopefully I'll be able to put some regular entries.

Ground pork is something that most asian household will have in their freezer. I find myself always buying ground pork even though I don't have a dish in mind. I just feel that it's so versatile therefore it's always a good ingredient to have. So what do you do with ground beef?

I had this dish only once when I was small. I don't remember what it's called (my mom made it for us), but I think it had a spanish name. All I remember was that there was some ground up meat (could have been ground beef) with raisins, fried banana, and fried rice. It was one of those dishes that need to be assembled on an individual plate instead of being served in a big communal bowl. It might seem like hard work, but I assure you that it's easier than it sounds. To give you an idea, I made three portions of this dish in the morning (just before going to work).

I started with cooking some garlic rice. Just like any fried rice, day old rice works best. Old rice is much dryer and holds its shape better than freshly made rice. But if you don't have old rice, freshly cooked rice is perfectly acceptable. I like to cook garlic rice because it's so simple and delicious. Just minced some garlic, cook it in the pan for a few seconds, then dump the rice in. Thoroughly mix it until all the oil has coated each grain. Remember to scoop at the bottom as the garlic tends to sit there. You don't want burned garlic, that will taste bitter. Sprinkle some salt to taste and place the rice on a plate.

The next step of the recipe is to fry some eggs. You can cook the egg any way you want, but I personally like sunny side up. After frying the eggs, place them on top of the rice (make sure to leave room for the ground pork and banana).

Slice some banana lengthwise and cook it on a pan until it browns. This shouldn't take long so make sure you keep a close eye on the pan. The banana will be very soft at this point so it may make things easier if you use two forks to take the banana out of the pan. Set on top of the rice.

The ground pork takes a bit of time to cook. So you can either start this one up on another pot or use the same pot as the one used to cook the other ingredients. Brown the pork and drain all the liquid. You don't want this since it contains mostly fat. From this point on, you can either go dry or wet. When you go dry, I mean adding herbs and spices to the meat to give it flavour. When you go wet, I mean adding liquid to the meat to give it taste. I went for the wet approach so I got my sweet mirin and soy sauce. Note that mirin and soy sauce is the same ingredient used for teriyaki sauce. I also added some star anise to give a stronger flavour to the meat. Once cooked, scoop a few spoon full of meat on top of the rice and serve. You can play around with the arrangements of the egg, banana, and ground pork. Since I didn't really have time to do that (nor do I have the skills for making beautiful arrangments), I just divided the plate/bown into three and placed the ingredients in their respective sections.

Hopefully you can get a chance to try this out and taste what I tasted many many years ago. Ah good times....good times.

posted by carefreecooking @ 10:45 PM