Recipe 5: "Mah Ging" aka Fish Paste & Pork Soup

"Mah Ging" (the name for it in Taiwanese) is a local Taiwanese soup dish. It's a pretty familiar dish in the household and it may not sound appealing, but it is a rather tasty fusion of fish paste and pork.

Ingredients:

2 bowls of water

1 lb. of fish paste

1/2 lb. of pork (we used pork butt)

1/4 napa cabbage

3 dried shitake mushrooms

fried dried shallots

soy sauce

vinegar

cornstarch

(Serves 4)

First, mix 1/2 handful of the shallots with the fish paste.

Next, soak the mushroom and cut the pork into quarter slices (as pictured below). Put the pork into a bowl and add a little bit of cornstarch and soy sauce into the pork.

Then, slice the napa cabbage and the mushrooms.

Finally, mix the pork and fish paste together.

Cooking Part:

First, boil the water. After the water is boiling, grab a piece of the pork with the fish paste around it and drop into the water (see pic). Do that until all of the fish paste/pork mixture is in. Let it boil until it cooks the pork.

Second, take out the fish paste/pork pieces (separate it from the water) and set them aside. Now, with this water that was used to cook the fish/pork mixture, we can use as the base for the soup.

Next, we add the mushrooms and napa cabbage into it. Add 1 tblsp of soy sauce and 1/2 tblsp of vinegar (please add according to taste preference). Let it cook until the cabbage becomes soft.

Finally, add the fish paste/pork mixture. While that is cooking, take a small bowl and mix cornstarch with water into it. Add this into the soup. Cornstarch will help thicken the soup.

When you serve this dish, you can add a little sesame oil and cilantro to enhance the taste.

慢慢吃 ("eat slowly"),

Auntie Jane