Adventures with Kake

Last week I posted about pig's ears with chilli oil, and mentioned that although I hadn't been able to find any recipes for this in English, I hoped to be able to link to a Chinese one in translation soon. pulchritude has kindly translated a recipe from MeiShiDao for me, and here it is! (Follow that link for the Chinese version, and photos.)

Text in [square brackets] is an aside from either me or pulchritude. I have done some light copyediting (and hopefully have not introduced any mistakes).

Shredded pig's ear and cucumber in chilli oil

Main ingredients

• one pig's ear, simmered in a flavourful liquid until cooked [you could use master sauce, or a mixture of soy sauce and water; as noted last week, about 20 minutes is enough time to cook a pig's ear to a good level of crunchiness]
• one cucumber

Seasonings

• garlic
• salt
• Sichuan pepper
• dried red chillies
• "numbing-spicy" oil [made during the course of this recipe]
• light soy sauce [light-coloured soy sauce, not low-sodium]
• Shanxi aged vinegar [one of China's four famous vinegars; you can subsitute Chinese black vinegar, available at most Chinese supermarkets]
• chilli oil [made during the course of this recipe]

Preparing the pig's ear

1. Let the pig's ear cool [after simmering it in the master sauce].
2. Place your knife at a 45 degree angle.
3. Slice the pig's ear diagonally into julienne strips.

Finishing the dish

1. Put the julienned pig ear into a large bowl.
2. Wash the cucumber, cut into julienne strips, and add to the pig ear.
3. Peel the garlic and put it into a [small, separate] bowl with a bit of salt, then use the end of a rolling pin to crush it. [Or just use a pestle and mortar.]
4. [Making the "numbing-spicy" oil.] Put some oil in a pan, then add the Sichuan pepper and the dried chillies (cut into a few pieces each). Fry until the colour changes and the aroma is fragrant, then strain to remove the solids.
5. [Turning this into chilli oil.] Add the flavoured oil to the small bowl with the crushed garlic in.
6. Add light soy sauce, vinegar, and salt to the small bowl, and mix well to create a dressing.
7. Pour this dressing into the large bowl.
8. Use chopsticks to mix everything evenly.

Please note that I haven't personally tried this recipe! But it looks potentially tastier than the one I made up myself — I'm particularly thinking that the simmering in master sauce would add a lot more flavour than my simple simmering in water.