Pork Ginger

After a busy day you don't want to spend much time on cooking. I don't even want to take time to think what I will cook for dinner. I have the perfect recipes for such days. This evening I found some pork loins in my fridge. British pork is one of my favorite ingredients as it has nice flavor, is generally tender and is fairly cheap! You might think pork is not the ingredient for Japanese, but it is becoming more popular. To be honest with you, I didn't like pork before.

When I visited Tokyo, I went to a restaurant called 'Pork Club'. There is only one choice in the restaurant which is 'Tonkatsu'(breaded pork cutlet). First, you must specify the part of the pork, then choose region. All pork are special breeds. I chose 'Genton fillet. The pork have a unique taste as they are fed on sweet potatoes and drink mineral water. I was very impressed by the taste of the pork. So I bought some pork from the same region and cooked a pork dish at home which was ginger pork. When I got back to London, I tried the recipe with British pork. It was as tasty as with the Japanese pork! Since then, the recipe is one of my favorite quick meals!

Pork Ginger

Serves 4

Ingredients
400g pork loin
3 tbsp tamari
3 tbsp mirin
2 tbsp sake or white wine if unavailable
1 tbsp ginger, minced
Rapeseed oil
Corn flour

When I make this recipe in Japan, I use finely cut pork. However, to speed things up, I just score each side in a shallow diamond pattern and then cut into stripes.

Soak the pork stripes in the sake and ginger for about 10 minutes. Wipe off the excess moisture.

Coat the pork slices with the corn flour thoroughly.
Heat a frying pan and add the oil.
Stir-fry the pork over medium heat until they are almost cooked.
Pour the mirin, sake, tamari and ginger in the pan and cook until the liquid becomes thick.

Serve with rice.