Slow Cooked Pork with Ginger, Chilli and Sweet Soy Sauce

This Balinese pork dish was as rich and delicious to eat as it was to look at. I have to say it is also one of the less time consuming dishes, in terms of preparation, I have made from Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey cookbook.
I visited China Town in Brisbane last week and stocked up on some pork from one of the butchers there. Their pork cuts are fantastic. This recipe uses pork shoulder cut into chunks. The shoulder is full of flavour and can be tough but when slow cooked it is very tender and falls apart.
To make this dish you fry some shallots until golden then add some salt, garlic and ginger. Next you add the pork and cook until slightly coloured before adding kecap manis, dark soy sauce, tamarind water, asian chicken stock, pepper, whole birds eye chilllies and chopped red chillies.
Asian chicken stock is made by simmering chicken drumsticks, wings or carcasses in water with spring onions, garlic, ginger, star anise and peppercorns. Once it has simmered for a couple of hours you strain the stock and can freeze it for later use.
Kecap manis is Indonesian soy sauce which is dark in colour and thick, sweet and syrupy due to the addition of palm sugar.
The tamarind water is made by soaking tamarind pulp (which you find in Asian supermarkets) in warm water, then breaking the pulp up with your fingers before straining to get the tamarind water.
Once the pork is tender you remove it from the liquid, increase the temperature and boil the liquid until it is thick and shiny. You then combine the pork and liquid, sprinkle with crispy fried shallots and serve with steamed rice.
The combination of the heat from the chillies, sourness from the tamarind water and the sweetness of the kecap manis, along with the tender pork makes this a very delicious dish.
Rating 8 out of 10.