Stir fried Chinese bacon with garlic leaves and sweet peppers

If you ask me about my favorite dish on the Chinese New Year Eve Feast, my automatic answer is the Chinese bacon dish. Bathed in winter sunshine and wind and absorbing the fragrance of star anise, Sichuan peppercorns, soy sauce, sugar, liquor, etc, it’s amazingly flavorful. I never  buy Chinese bacon from any Asian grocery store or Supermarket for I can easily tell it isn’t made from pasture-raised pork and it has many preservatives.

How do Chinese cook bacon? For many native Chinese growing up in South China like Hubei, Hunan, Sichuan, Anhui, Guizhou, etc., one classic home-cooking dish is stir-fried Chinese bacon with garlic leaves. When the flavorful pork is scented with fresh garlic leaves, it becomes the best dish to serve  with rice.

How do garlic leaves look like? See the picture below. It’s easily found in an Asian supermarket.

Ingredients:

• Half a pound Chinese bacon
• One tablespoon grapeseed oil
• Half a pound garlic leaves, sliced diagonally
• One red sweet pepper, diced
• One tablespoon KIKKOMAN soy sauce
• Salt to taste

Method:

1. Boil the whole slab of bacon until cooked, about 30 minutes. Put it in the refrigerator for 10 minutes so that the fat will not be separated from lean meat when you slice.
2. Slice it into one mm pieces.
3. Heat the grapeseed oil in the wok and stir fry bacon until you see the fat starts to shrink, for about two minutes.
4. Add the soy sauce to stir fry for one minute.
5. Add garlic leaves and sweet peppers to stir fry for one minute.
6. Add salt to taste and transfer to a plate.