卵入り豚の角煮

Boiling the pork belly with leek and ginger
(I didn't burn the kitchen! it was already like that when we arrived here four months ago)


Cut the belly into smaller pieces and put it back to the saucepan.
Add the boiled egg, sweetened soy sauce (soy sauce with sugar)


いただきます！

First, mistakes made:

1. I added a little bit too much sugar
2. the first egg I boiled was too soft. I wanted a soft boil egg (instead of a hard boil one as instructed by the recipe) but it turned out to be too soft so I had difficult peeling the shell off. Had to chuck the first one and boil another egg. then I accidentally cracked the second egg as I dropped it into the boiling water. ugh can't give a damn anymore, and it was only a small crack and the egg white were still intact so I just left it as it is.
   
3. I reduced the entire recipe - proportionally (intended) - but obviously that didn't happen. So mathematically, it went wrong. (Ha my maths teachers at school would be furious at this)
   

Second, it actually tasted pretty good despite all these things. I chopped off the skin and fat of the pork belly 'cause really I only like the lean part. I think this dish resembles the Chinese dish 东坡肉 (dong po ro), named after the Song poet Su Shi (also known as Su Dongpo), the differences being the Japanese one does not involve pan-frying the pork, and that it uses less cooking wine (the Chinese one has a strong cooking wine aroma).

Overall the whole thing took over 2 hours to make. Plus it's quite a lot of meat (even without the fat) so it's not really healthy. As simple and tasty as it was, I probably won't make it again. Although I must say that my room now smells of the lovely aroma of the dish (it's the smell of heated/condensed sweetened soy sauce).