Pork Soong

A soong makes a smashing starter for Asian meals: it’s communal eating at its best and great for breaking the ice. The idea is to cook up a warm meat filling and then serve this alongside a mixture of leaves and fresh herbs so that diners can select their own flavour combinations, taking a lettuce leaf and folding this around the herbs and a spoon of soong before popping the whole parcel neatly into the old bouche. BTW - a chicken soong recipe can be found lurking here.

Hot, aromatic and dark: this soong is ridiculously moreish, so you might be better off just doubling the ingredients. This quantity makes a light starter for four but will leave people begging for more...

Ingredients

• 300g minced pork
• 1 large Indian red onion, finely chopped
• 100g mushroom, finely chopped
• 2 tbsp oil

Marinade

• 30ml dark soy sauce
• 2 cloves garlic, grated
• 2 cm fresh ginger, grated
• 50ml white wine
• 1 tsp runny honey

Sauce

• 50ml sherry or sweet wine
• 1 lime, grated zest & juice
• 1 tsp cornflour

Leaves

• Iceberg (and/or other) lettuce
• Bunches of hot basil, coriander, mint, dill etc

Mix the marinade ingredients and then marinate the minced pork in this for an hour or more. Fry the onion to soften, adding the mushroom. When this is going well, add the pork. Fry this up, stirring, for a couple of minutes and then mix together the sauce ingredients and add this, stirring, to the mixture. Stir fry for a further minute and then serve it up warm with the selection of mixed lettuce and fresh herbs. It can be left and reheated if you like.