Day 10 : Black Vinegar, Ginger & Fungus Pork

Mum was at the Asian Shop in Inaloo buying ginger, and when she told the two ladies there who owned the shop, they asked if she knew all these confinement recipes, the proceeded to teach it to her. They showed her all the right products to buy and even gave her a discount on old ginger, which if you haven't noticed is prohibitively expensive now a days, and the supermarkets only sell young ginger anyway, which doesn't have enough heat for confinement food. 

The idea is that a bottle of black ginger would be boiled with large chunks of old ginger to form a master stock. Everyday it would be reboiled to kill germs and topped up with more vinegar as needed. 

The liquid from the master stock is used to cook dishes but not rejoined with the master stock.

This dish is usually made with pork trotters which as not easy to find in Australia, so my sister-in-law's mother-in-law used belly pork to get that gelatinous texture in the sauce. My Mum used lean pork meat for me as I didn't want that jelly texture. It has a nice taste, something very different. The eggs were hard boiled separatly  then peeled and added to the sauce.