Asian Braised Pork With Cucumber Salad

Tonight's dinner was deeeeeelicous.  I ripped the recipe out of a magazine and I'd be more than willing to give props, but the page doesn't have the name anywhere on it and I can't remember which one it came from.

I'll give you my version of the original recipe and then I'll tell you how I changed it up a bit.

Asian Braised Pork

1/4 C soy sauce
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/4 to 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper
1/4 C brown sugar
1-inch piece of ginger, thinly sliced
2 1/2 lb boneless pork shoulder, trimmed and cut into 2-inch pieces
Hot cooked rice

In a slow cooker, combine the soy sauce, allspice, red pepper, brown sugar and ginger.  Add the pork and toss to coat.  Cover and cook until meat is tender, on low 7 to 8 hours or on high for 5 to 6 hours.

I pretty much stuck to that, but I substituted the allspice with Chinese Five Spice.  I doubled the ginger and sliced half and grated the other half.  It seemed like an extremely small amount of liquid for crock pot cooking, but I left well enough alone and the meat ended up releasing more than enough juice to make a good sauce for the rice.  It reminded me a lot of another recipe for Filipino Adobo that I make a lot.  Because of that, next time, I would add potatoes and carrots to the mix.  Don't knock it till you've tried it.  Sooo good. I also sliced up some fresh jalapeno and put the sriracha on the table.

Cucumber Salad

1 seedless cucumber, thinly sliced into half moons
1/4 C rice vinegar
1 Tbsp brown sugar
1-inch piece of ginger, grated
1/4 sweet onion, thinly sliced
Kosher salt and pepper to taste

In a large bowl, whisk together vinegar, brown sugar, and ginger.  Add cucumber and onion and toss to combine.

Having a salad consisting of only cucumbers is fine, but I was feelin' somethin' else this time around.  I omitted the onion because The Dad doesn't do raw onions even a little bit.  I added cabbage.  Why?  Because I like cabbage, I had cabbage and I thought cabbage sounded like a good addition.  I also added red bell pepper 'cause it was kinda boring to look at being all green.  I had some cilantro in the fridge, so I threw that in as well.  With the addition of those things, I ended up pouring in a little more vinegar, a small amount of white sugar and a drizzle of veggie oil.  Again, really good.  If you're not into cabbage salad, steamed broccoli would have been just as good, as well as any other veggie you've got in the crisper drawer.


Here's my dinner: