cabbage cores and pigs

Who doesn't love pork? I mean, come on, really. They're cute when they're alive, and they're delicious when properly sacrificed! Even Food GPS has a weekly section dedicated to pork (just search for A Dose of Vitamin P)!!

Which reminds me... My mom's from rural Hiroshima, and there are two high schools in her town. There's the regular high school that most kids go to, then there's the agricultural high school for kids who intend to help out their family farm/rice patch once they graduate. When we stayed at Grandma's for the summer, my sister and I used to go to the Okonomiyaki shop and ask the owner (who happened to me Mom's elementary school classmate) for leftover cabbage cores. Then we'd walk down to the agricultural high school and give the pigs there the cabbage. The pigs were HUGE and stinky, and when they peed it sounded like someone spilled a bucket of water, but they were always gentle with our hands when we fed them the cabbage bits. So I've always had a soft spot for pigs, no matter how ugly or muddy they were. Plus, I had to read The Pigman and A Day No Pigs Would Die in junior high; I'm sure that has something to do with something.

Oh, I'm going on a tangent again. What I wanted to say was that I love to eat pork so much that I usually keep a pack or two of sliced pork in the freezer so that I can make dinner in a pinch. That way, we can make buta kimchi or some sort of nimono in a pinch (actually, we eat buta kimchi a lot because we end up letting the kimchi go sour in the fridge). Pork, *I* think, is a fantastic quick-cooking meat that takes on flavor easily - needless to say, it's my favorite animal. So today, I'm leaving you a recipe that showcases the versatility and flavorful-ness of the beloved oinker. This recipe can be used for beef too, if you like a gyu-don with a nice gingery punch.

Buta-don (Pork Bowl)
serves 4

1 3/4 cup dashi
1 pound sliced pork
1 slice of ginger, chopped
2 tbsp sake
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp mirin
2 1/2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp miso
rice

Bring your dashi and ginger to a boil. I like to use ginger that comes in those wasabi-tube-like thingies because I usually let fresh ginger shrivel up to some leathery abominaion, or, grow blue fuzzy things. Blue fuzzy things in the kitchen = no bueno.

Once the mixture comes to a boil, lower the heat and dump in the pork slices. Swish each slice around so that it doesn't clump up into pork balls. The more surface area, the more flavorful your buta-don will turn to be. Bring up the heat to medium again and let simmer for 5 minutes.

Make sure to skim the fat! If you chill the ladel in ice water before skimming, the fat sticks on better for some off reason.

Add the ingredients in the following order: sake, sugar, mirin, soy sauce.
There is an ANCIENT mnemonic that you can use, that Grandma swore by. She would always say, "Ila, cooking is all about sa-shi-su-se-so." It's the SA row in the Japanese alphabet, and each one stands for a condiment. SA is for sake and satou (sugar), SHI is for shio (salt), SU is for su (vinegar), SE is for seuyu/shouyu (soy sauce. Seuyu is an old way of saying it), and SO is for miso. In Japanese cuisine, ingredients should always be added in that order.

I also like to add a bit of gochujang in there for a kick, but it's optional. Gochujang is a type of miso, so this goes in last, according to the sa-shi-su-se-so rule.

We let most of the liquid boil off until it becomes a nice glaze (about 15-20 minutes).

Then get some rice in your bowl and top it with the pork... then nom to your hearts desire.

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