Stir-fried Garlic Sprout and Pork Belly with Preserved Fish Paste

Salty fish paste is a produce in Hong Kong and Canton, also can be found in some of the coastal cities in Asia, similar to preserved shrimp paste if you know. It’s made of freshly sea catch and preserved. Just like cheese or any preserved food, some hate its fishiness while some love it so much, me included.

It has a wide range of usages in cooking, such as being fried with aubergine, French beans, water spinach, or steamed with pork ribs. It’s spring now and garlic sprout is in season. It’s particularly sweet and garlicky in spring. Usually people would fry it with a little fat pork and season with Dou-ban Sauce (Spicy Soybean Paste). In this recipe, I would replace the seasoning with fish paste.

This is a quick-fry dish, only takes a few minutes in cooking.

Ingredients –
Garlic sprout, 300g;
Pork belly, 200g;
Onion, 1/3;
Thai red chili, 2, optional;
Garlic, 3 cloves;
Fish paste, 2tbsp. Use shrimp paste instead if you couldn’t obtain fish paste. Or just use Dou-ban Sauce that can be easily found in all Asian grocery stores;
Light soy sauce, 1tbsp;
Sugar, 1/2 tbsp.

How to do –
1. Have a taste of the sauce before cooking to see if it’s too salty or too fishy. Mine is not very salty and I like fishy taste, so I would use 2tbsp;

2. Garlic sprouts cut off heads and the bottom tough parts. Then cut into bite size long;

3. Pork belly sliced; Onion, garlic and chili sliced;

4. Heat some oil in hot pan, put in pork belly and fry till golden and fat released;

5. Put in garlic and fry till fragrant;

6. Put in garlic sprouts, stir fry for 1 minute in medium high heat or high heat. Then season with 2tbsp of fish paste, 1tbsp of light soy sauce and half tbsp of sugar, flip and mix well;

7. Put in onion and chili, flip and mix well then it’s ready to serve.