Steamed Pork Belly with Preserved Greens 芽菜扣肉

Ingredients

Yibin yacai, also called Xufu yacai (叙府芽菜), is ranked with Fuling zhacai (涪陵榨菜), Nanchong dongcai (南充冬菜) and Neijiang datoucai (内江大头菜) as one of Sichuan's four famous pickled vegetables. It is made from fresh mustard greens split into strips, dried in the air and then pickled. It is eaten with rice as a relish and also used as a supporting ingredient in other dishes.

How it is made

The "kou" (扣) in kourou refers to the last step: once the meat is steamed through, the bowl is inverted onto a plate. In Sichuan the equivalent dish is called shaobai (烧白), one of the dishes of the "three steamed, nine inverted" (三蒸九扣) tradition.

Writing in the Economic Daily (经济日报), Lei Ting, whose family comes from Sichuan, says the most authentic steamed shaobai uses yacai and that the best yacai comes from Yibin. Her mother singes and scrapes the skin of pork belly with both fat and lean, boils it until about seventy per cent cooked, drains it and, while it is still hot, rubs it with soy sauce and sugar, ideally brick brown sugar made from sugarcane. The meat is sliced and laid in a bowl, the rinsed yacai and thin bamboo shoots go on top, and soy sauce, brown sugar and other seasonings are sprinkled over before the bowl is steamed in a pressure cooker and turned out onto a plate.

Flavour and texture

The meat is steamed until it is very soft. In Lei Ting's account it is at its best when the fat melts as soon as it is pressed between the lips.