Directions

• Soak the dried shiitake mushrooms in room temperature water for 30 mins. Afterwards, cut the mushrooms into small cubes, filter the mushroom water and put the cut mushrooms back. We purposely save the mushroom water for its rich savoury note which will provide the dish bursting umami.
• Boil 3 eggs and peel them. Set them aside for later.
• Peel your garlic, onion and ginger (because I didn’t have any onion at the time, I didn’t put any). Finely chop them like shown in the picture, this step will make the fragrance of the ingredients release easily when stir-fried in hot oil.
• Cut your pork belly into small strips, make sure the one strip you cut has the “layered marble”, which means it should contain a few layers of fat and lean meat.
• Add a tbsp of vegetable oil to a cooking pot, heat it up. Add your minced ginger, garlic, onion and bay leaves in the oil, keep stir-frying until they are nicely browned.
• Add your pork belly in and keep stir-frying until the meat is browned evenly. Add the soaked and cut mushrooms along with the mushroom water.
• Add ½ tsp oyster sauce, 1tbsp light soy sauce, ½ tbsp dark soy sauce, ½ tsp Chinese cooking wine, ½ tsp Wangshouyi 13 spices, 3 tsp pure cane sugar, salt to your taste and 2.5 cups of water, add the boiled and peeled eggs in. Medium-low heat, let the ingredients slow cook for 1 hour. Check midway to make sure your food is not dry and is not burned (I added a layer of damp towel on top of my lid to reduce water evaporation). Flip the eggs if only half of them are soaked in the sauce, so they could come out with a more evenly “tan”.
• Take out the bay leaves before serving. Boil vegetables of your choice for garnishing. Don’t forget to serve with some of the sauce on your rice, that’s the soul of this dish!
• We hope you enjoy it. 您慢用 (nín màn yòng)!