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Korea and Japan · Volume 53, The Grill, the Broth and the Sealed Port

Nagasaki kakuni, slow braised pork belly

Nagasaki, Kyushu

Kakuni, Nagasaki's slow braised pork belly: two or three thick glossy cubes of dark soy braised pork belly, the fat rendered translucent and the meat falling apart at one cut edge.

Illustration

Time
1 hour

Nagasaki's toba-ni is explicitly linked in Japanese food history to Dongpo pork, the Song dynasty dish attributed to the poet and statesman Su Shi, arriving via the resident Chinese merchants of Tojin Yashiki and adapted with a defatting step and softer seasoning for Japanese taste; where the Chinese original is braised as a whole block, the Nagasaki version is cut into cubes.

As tradition built it

Serves 4. About 60 minutes.

Ingredients

  • 600g pork belly, in a block
  • ⅓ stalk naganegi (leek), in 4 to 5cm lengths
  • 30g ginger, thinly sliced, skin on
  • ½ bunch komatsuna, spinach or pak choi
  • as needed water, for blanching
  • 1 tbsp sesame oil

Seasoning

  • 200ml sake
  • 40ml dark soy
  • 40ml light soy
  • 60g zarame (coarse sugar)

To serve

  • optional mustard

Method

  1. Blanch the greens briefly, cut them into 4 to 5cm lengths, and keep the water.
  2. Cut the pork into 3cm widths. Blanch it in the greens' water about 15 seconds and drain.
  3. Warm the sesame oil in a heavy pot over a low heat with the leek and ginger, to release their aroma.
  4. Raise the heat, add the pork and turn it to sear every side.
  5. Add the sake, both soys and the zarame. Bring to the boil and skim.
  6. Cover and simmer gently over a low heat 40 to 50 minutes, checking the liquid and moving the meat about now and then.
  7. Dip the greens in the braising liquid and set them beside the pork. Serve with mustard if you like.

Notes

For a more traditional, longer method, pre boil the meat two to three hours to render fat and tenderise, straining and skimming the stock, then add Shaoxing wine, soy and sugar for a further hour's simmer, a genuine two to three hour cook overall either way.

The recipe is Kawabata Sumika's, a Nagasaki-born cooking teacher, on Nadia; in Nagasaki's shippoku cooking the dish is tōba-ni. Her longer shippoku version rubs 500g of belly with five-spice, cooks it in water with ginger, garlic and onion about an hour, rests it overnight, cuts it 2cm wide and simmers it 30 minutes in sake, sugar, dark soy, oyster sauce and its cooking liquid. Sakamotoya, a Nagasaki shippoku house, boils skin-on belly several times to remove fat, simmers it for hours and rests it overnight.

What a modern chef changes

A sous vide braise finished over direct ember heat

Method

  1. Sear the pork belly hard, then cook it sous vide at 72 degrees Celsius for eighteen hours, for a texture the stovetop method cannot reach without breaking the meat apart.
  2. Reduce the braising liquid separately to a tight glaze once the meat is cooked.
  3. Finish the pork under the Big Green Egg's direct heat for two minutes a side, basting with the glaze, for real caramelisation rather than a purely braised finish.
  4. Dust with five spice, ground fresh in the spice grinder.

Notes

The five spice dusting nods at the dish's Chinese ancestry.

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