sweet and sour pork (咕噜肉)

The classic Cantonese dish - sweet and sour pork (咕噜肉 or "goo low yok") - is the one zi char dish that I miss the most from back home. Although it's easy enough to find instant packs of batter and sauce for this dish, I find that they still somehow cannot deliver the crunchiness of the pork and the zing of the slightly tangy sauce to the standards that I want.

So I mixed and matched a few recipes for the pork marinade, the batter and the sauce, and combined the resulting self-created recipe with an extra coating for the pork that was a method I learnt from an ex boyfriend's mum a decade ago to yield a more than satisfactory outcome that I am very proud to say is better than what you can get at a lot of the zi char stalls in SG. Give it a try to find out for yourself.

For the marinade:
- 1/2 tsp corn flour
- 1 tsp rice wine
- 1.5 tsp light soy sauce

For the batter:
- 1/2 cup water
- 60g plain flour
- 30g corn flour
- 1/2 egg
- 1 tsp cooking oil
- a pinch of salt

For the sweet and sour sauce:
- 2 to 2.5 tbsp ketchup
- 2 tsp plum sauce
- 1/2 to 1 tsp white rice vinegar
- 1 tsp oyster sauce
- 1/2 tsp worcestershire sauce
- 1 tsp corn flour
- 1 tsp sugar
- 2 tbsp water
(you can adjust the proportion of each item here according to taste; some like it sweeter - add more sugar; some like it more sour - add more vinegar etc etc)

Other ingredients:
- about 250g of pork tenderloin cut into bite sized pieces
- 10 pieces of plain Hup Seng cream crackers
- 3/4 of a green bell pepper cut into small pieces (about 1cm x 1cm)
- 1/2 an onion cut into small pieces (about 1cm x 1cm)
- 2 pieces of pineapple slices from a can or fresh sweet pineapple cut into small pieces (about 1cm x 1cm)
- cooking oil enough for deep frying the pork pieces



Marinate the pork pieces in a bowl. Cover the bowl with cling wrap and put it in the fridge for at least 30min. Mix all the ingredients for the batter well in a another bowl and set it aside. Mix all the ingredients for the sweet and sour sauce well in a third bowl and set it aside.

Pound the cream crackers in a mortar and pestle until fine - see the 2 pics below.





Here you see all the prepared ingredients ready to hit the wok (left to right, front to back): the frying batter, the marinated pork cubes, the sweet and sour sauce, the cut up ingredients - onions, pineapples and green bell pepper, the crushed cream crackers.



In a deep skillet, add enough cooking oil for deep frying and place it on medium heat. Transfer the pork cubes into the batter and then coat them with the crushed cream crackers - make sure they are well coated.



When the oil is hot, deep fry the coated pork cubes until golden brown.



Dish out the pork cubes and set on paper towels to drain out the excess oil.



In a separate frying pan or wok, heat up a tablespoon of cooking oil over medium heat. Stir fry the onions until translucent. Add in the bell pepper and stir fry for about 30 seconds. Add in the pineapple pieces and stir fry for another 30 seconds or until you can smell the aroma of the bell pepper.



Give the pre-prepared sweet and sour sauce a quick stir to mix it and swirl it into the frying pan/wok. Once the sauce thickens and you can smell the tanginess from the sauce, add in the pork cubes and give it a quick stir fry to make sure all the pork pieces are coated with the sauce. It's now ready to be dished out and served with rice!



Doesn't it look good? Just like what you get in a restaurant and it tastes as good if not better. ^^v