Name: The Tsai Family’s Red Roast Pork
Yield: Serves 6—8
Cuisine: Chinese
Ingredients: 120 ml (4 fl oz) light soy sauce; 900 g (2 lb) Chinese leaves, to garnish; 1 pork shoulder joint with rind and bone, about 2.7–3.6 kg (6–8 lb); 205 g (7 oz) crushed Chinese rock sugar or 100 g (3½ oz) granulated sugar; 5 whole star anise; 5 whole Chinese cinnamon barks or cinnamon sticks; 1 litre (1¾ pints) Shaoxing rice wine or dry sherry; 3 dried red chillies; 1½ tablespoons salt; 6 spring onions; 1.5 litres (2¾ pints) Chinese Chicken Stock or store-bought fresh stock; 10 slices fresh ginger; each 5 cm × 3 mm (2 × ⅛ in); 8 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed; 480 ml (16 fl oz) dark soy sauce; 4 pieces dried tangerine peel, each about 4 cm (1½ in) square; 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper; 3 tablespoons cumin seeds

Preparation info

Serves
6—8

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Easy Family Dishes

By Ken Hom

Published 1998

About

This is a favourite dish on the family table of my friend Ming Tsai. Unlike a majority of Chinese-Americans, who are of southern Chinese ancestry, Ming’s family roots are in northern China. Shanghai, like Canton, is a coastal city, but it is much farther north. Along with many other northern Chinese, the family migrated to Taiwan during the troubled times following World War Two.

Red roast pork is a typical Shanghai dish that be