Home-cooked Braised Spare Ribs with Bean Curd Stick
Ever wonder what dried beancurd stick (bunched tofu skin or ??) should be paired with when you found it laying in the kitchen cabinet just begging to be cooked? Well, I did few days ago. For mom, one of her favourite dish she is hounded to make again and again is frying this dried bean curd stick until it is firm and crispy, then stir-fry with assorted vegetables and turned it into vegan treat. For me, I am not going to replicate this contemporary fare and always on the look-out for alternative recipe to turn this bean curd stick into something else. When I chanced upon this recipe from Amy Beh and with all the trimmings come in handy, I made this dish into our lunch yesterday.
Bean curd stick is soaked until it's pliable, then braised together with spare ribs, dried chillies, star anise and cinnamon stick. The sauce mixture after braising is redolent of Shaoxing wine (???, or Chinese sweet fermented rice wine), distinctive licorice taste from star anise, pungent taste from cinnamon stick and also tinged with heat and sweetness from dried chillies. Whilst the sauce flavors is seamlessly harmonized, I found the spare ribs' texture a bit hard to the bite, I reckon it's due to insufficient of braising liquid which is enough to cover the spare ribs (I only poured in 250ml of water to mix with sauce mixture) and maybe need to prolong the braising time to one hour. Despite this, the dish did satiate our taste buds.
Here's the how-to recipe for braised spare ribs with dried bean curd stick. ??(??)?????
500g spare ribs, cut into pieces
2 star anise (??)
4cm cinnamon stick (??)
5 dried chillies, cut into pieces
3 pieces of dried bean curd stick (?????), soaked and cut into pieces (a.k.a tofu skin, bean skim, yuba)
1/2 tbsp oil
Seasoning Mixture :
2 tbsp Shaoxing wine (???)
1 tbsp light soy sauce
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
400ml water
Method :
1. Heat up one or two tbsp oil in a skillet, saute star anise and cinnamon stick until fragrant. Then add in dried chillies, spare ribs and stir well.
2. Add in seasoning and simmer at medium heat for 30 minutes. Add in the soften bean curd stick and simmer for 15 minutes or until spare ribs are tender. Dish up and serve hot with steamed rice.
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