This nourishing dish warms the tummy and heart with its long-boiled flavours.
In the Korean section of Toronto, there are many small cafes proclaiming "best pork bone soup." It's really personal taste when it comes to this comfort food. Korean versions tend towards chili-hot with accompaniments of the usual: kimchi, mung beans and sweetened potato. Beware, Korean pork bone is very spicy.
Korean pork bone tends to come with suey choy - Chinese cabbage - and a bowl of rice. You soak the rice in the soup and munch it all up in your mouth with some fall-of-the-bone pork. Delish.
BOIL FOR THREE HOURS
In my mother's version, the pork would be boiled along with some Shanghai cabbage, salty cabbage. I am actually salivating as I write this. I used to make that "mmmmm" sound as a kid when I devoured my mother's pork soup. And yes, I globbed some rice into the bowl, too.
It's pretty easy to make your own version. Purchase some pork bones (make sure there's meat on dem bones! Could be from different parts of the pig e.g. the neck or ribs) and blanch them by tossing them in boiling water. After a few minutes, put them in a pot with new water and bring to a boil.
Simmer for up to 3 hours, you've got to get the true flavour of the bones. This is where you can add whatever spices you want.
Add the veggies near the end and you can use whatever you like here: watercress, bean sprouts, spinach, bok choy and perhaps little chunks of broccoli.
There is a fabulous tasting dish called Bah kut teh, a Chinese soup of star anise, cinnamon, pork ribs, Shitake mushrooms, garlic and some tofu squares.
The dish has a sweet and earthy taste. It's often cooked and served in a clay pot and eaten with rice, Chinese doughnuts (long pieces of fried dough) or stir-fried greens of some sort.
The meal is also terrific the next day and great for whatever ails you.
BAH KUT TEH: MEDICINAL QUALITIES
Celebrity cook and author Carol Selva Rajah, now based out of Sydney, Australia, recalls her favourite childhood dish to be Bah kut teh from Port Klang, Malaysia – where she was born.
Rajah's slate of dishes covers every region from Sri Lanka to Vietnam, her Heavenly Fragrance cookbook is a veritable spice room full of promise (and you can check out two recipes from her latest offering: Singapore Chili Crab and Seafood Salad).
But it is Bah kut teh that brings her stomach and nose to ecstasy.
"There's this tiny place in Klang that serves it," the exuberant Rajah told me in our phone interview back in the summer.
"It's cooked under a lean-to outside a pub. Wonderful for curing a hangover on Sunday mornings!"
I suppose you don't need any more encouragement than that to try pork bone soup.
Intrigued by soups? Check out this selection: Black Bean Soup, Glass Noodle Soup, Laksa, Hot & Sour and Mugillatawny Soups and Chinese New Year's (Fatt Choy) Soup.
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