As is often the case, what started out as a clean-out-the-fridge day resulted in one of the tastiest suppers I’ve made in a long time. I had some fresh pork, sliced very very thin. Two packs of eringhi mushrooms. And just a bit of mixed greens and a few leftover carrot sticks. I immediately thought of an old, but reliable standby: pan-fried pork-wrapped veggie bundles. But I was completely out of rice, and needed something starchy to round out the meal. Then I remembered I still had some “bricks” of brown rice mochi (glutinous rice that has been steam-cooked, pounded smooth, stretched out flat, cut into bricks, and dried).
Ingredients:
Very thinly sliced lean-ish pork
Fresh eringhi mushrooms
Dried mochi “bricks”
katakuriko (potato starch); may substitute with corn starch
concentrated soba tsuyu (the basis of soup or dipping sauce for soba noodles)
Directions:
Slice each mochi brick lengthwise into four equal segments. Slice the mushrooms in pieces that are as close in thickness and length to the mochi segments as you can. Brown the mochi segments in an oiled frying pan till the sides are crisp and the centers are soft. Remove the mochi to a plate to cool. Pan-fry the mushroom segments till they are soft, then remove them to the plate to cool.
Spread out the pork slices and sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper on both sides. Then sprinkle both sides with potato starch. Place one or two mochi segments and a few mushroom segments near the widest end of a pork slice and roll it up towards the narrow end. Do that to all the remaining pork slices.
Place the pork bundles seam-side down in a heated, lightly oiled frying pan and cook over medium heat for 3~4 minutes. When the bottom sides of the bundles are cooked through and crispy, turn them over to make them crispy on the other side. If you have extra vegetables, toss them into the pan at this time and cover the pan with a lid for a few minutes. Then drizzle some soba tsuyu over the contents of the pan and roll the pork bundles around till they are coated with the tsuyu.
Place the cooked pork bundles on a bed of mixed greens and sprinkle the extra veggies over the top. The more colorful the veggies are, the prettier it will look. I call these mochi-mochi pork bundles not only because I used mochi in the recipe, but also because mochi-mochi is an adjective used to describe the glutinous quality that is part of what makes this recipe so yummy.
