🍜 Extras: Moo manao หมูมะนาว
the life-changing magic of velveting
Hello! Welcome to this week’s Extras on moo manao (this is a paid subscriber only-edition of the newsletter). Thank you for being here.
My mom arrived in the Netherlands from Singapore earlier this week, and I had frankly been rather apprehensive in the days leading up to it, as our love languages are mismatched. While I receive and express love through quality time, physical affection, and words of affirmation, my mom's love language, like that of many Asian mothers, is acts of service. Each year's visit, however, is an opportunity for a better relationship between us. So, when she potters around my kitchen reorganizing it, de-icing my freezer, or scrubbing out my sink, I try to accept these actions as expressions of love rather than as reactions to my personal failings. She brought me a full box of my favorite sambal belacan from Singapore, and in turn, I brewed a pot of cheng tng, simmered with extra honey dates and a couple of apples to soothe the throat, when I noticed that she had developed a cough.
My mom can be very indirect, and Wex — who himself recognizes that he's more similar to my mother than I am — has been teaching me to read between the lines and interpret seemingly off-hand remarks as indirect cues of her wants and needs. After de-icing my freezer, for instance, she said, "With all the ingredients in your freezer, you can make a lot of Thai dishes." This comment would have usually gone over my head, but I took it to be what she desired and cooked moo manao, a Thai pork dish, for her first dinner in the Netherlands. I braced myself for criticism, but surprisingly, there was none. She even remarked, "Actually, you don't even have to eat out when there's restaurant-quality food at home." This is the closest thing to a direct compliment from her, and I'll take it. I hope you’ll enjoy this recipe for moo manao.
THE LIFE-CHANGING MAGIC OF VELVETING
If your meat and seafood stir-fries don’t taste like the ones from Chinese restaurants, it is probably because you are not velveting your protein. I first learnt about this technique about five years ago through chef Gerald Ong and it’s changed my life.
Velveting is a process that consists of a few key steps:
Marinating: First, strips of meat or seafood are tossed in a mixture of cornstarch and seasonings (such as salt and Shaoxing wine) and allowed to marinate for at least 30 minutes. With beef, a small pinch of baking soda is often added as a tenderiser — its alkaline nature denatures the protein strands and transforms the meat into silky soft morsels. Egg whites, which are alkaline, can also achieve a similar tenderising effect.
Blanching: The marinated meat or seafood strips are then blanched until they lose their pinkness and turn opaque. What happens here is that the cornstarch marinade quickly forms a gel-like barrier around the meat — essentially a bubble to shield the meat from intense heat and lock in the juices — and the protein effectively steams within it. No other cooking technique produces a texture that is so silky or succulent. You can blanch the meat in oil maintained at a low temperature (~120°C), so the meat never develops colour, but blanching in water produces a similar effect.
Drain the meat and use it in your dishes or add it to your stir-fries. In moo manao, the velveted pork is simply served on a bed of raw greens with a piquant sauce. But you can also add your velveted meat to stir-fries, where velveting’s other benefit becomes obvious: the sauce enrobes each slice rather than slipping off it. One of my go-tos is velveted beef stir-fried with spring onions, garlic, and ginger. I season the stir-fry with kecap manis and soy sauce towards the end.
MOO MANAO หมูมะนาว
Serves 4 | Takes 30 minutes of marinating, plus 20 minutes active time
