21/04/2021
The Empress Dowager's Pork Belly Bits in Chilli Bean Oil
A few months into my first job, I thought to start cooking my own lunch. This was largely because I wanted to cook more and eat more healthily while saving money at the same time, though I would be lying if I didn't also mention the side benefit of escaping the tedium of (some) office lunches.
I would cook food in tupperwared batches over the weekend before conveying them to the office fridge on Monday, eating them over the week (thank you microwave). The one exception to my tupperware towers would be rice, which I always had at my desk together with my trusty Toyomi rice cooker.
Once however, I had been too tired to cook dishes over the weekend. Coincidentally, my aunt texted that the Dowager had cooked a wokful of this 'spicy pork', and that she would bring a jar of it to me at my workplace on Monday. Curious but mostly appreciative, I agreed immediately, none the wiser about the scene that would soon unfold.
Even now, I salivate at the memory of that Monday afternoon.
In the sterile, air-conditioned quiet of the office, I spooned the spicy pork out of the jar into the hot, steamy rice cooker, and watched ravenously as the pristine fluff of the rice was penetrated by the heavy, deep crimson of the pork belly in all its rendered goodness.
It was not so much a sight, as a smell to behold - as if two star-crossed lovers had finally met and were at the cusp of dissolving into one other, and that all that was needed was a matrimonial stir, to solemnize this union of ivory and vermillion.
What transpired thereafter - I leave to your imagination.
