The Lemongrass, Garlic, Pepper and Coca-Cola Wow Dish

I was thinking of what to cook for Mother’s Day when my mother came to the rescue by telling me about a recipe she saw on Facebook. She insisted that I had to take down the recipe:

1kg of pork belly

3 heads of garlic

3 stalks of lemongrass

Pepper corn

Salt

Fish sauce

Dark soya sauce

1 bottle of coca cola (original taste)

Steps

1. Cut the lemongrass into thin diagonal slices
2. Peel the garlic
3. Pound the lemongrass with the garlic and pepper corn in a mortar and pestle
4. Cut the pork belly into one inch slices
5. Pan fry the pork belly (without oil) until brown, and set aside
6. Use the oil from the pork belly to fry the lemongrass, garlic and pepper mixture. Stir until the mixture is fragrant.
7. Add the pork belly slices to the fried lemongrass, garlic and pepper mixture
8. Pour coca cola over the pork belly slices, leave to simmer
9. Remove the pork belly when cooked
10. Continue to stir the lemongrass and garlic mixture so that it becomes a thick sauce
11. Add a tablespoon of dark soya sauce for colour
12. Add salt/fish sauce to taste
13. Pour the sauce on the belly pork before serving.
14. Garnish with coriander
15. Serve with rice

I sent a photo of the cooked dish to my friends, one replied immediately with: “Wow! This makes me hungry.”

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To my surprise, my mother said she wanted green curry with laksa noodles for Mother’s Day dinner, and she was very specific about what she wanted added to the curry.

Green curry is a simple dish, you only need green curry paste, coconut milk and meat (usually chicken or pork). But my mother told me to pound five cloves of garlic and two sticks of lemongrass to add to the curry.

To make the curry authentically Thai, I had to add baby eggplant and eggplant seeds (which look like peas). (Most people wouldn’t know what to do with baby eggplant and eggplant seeds.) She also insisted that I add fresh Thai basil leaves, lime leaf and green chili. It definitely gave the curry more flavour.

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We also had a soup and a vegetable dish. The soup was chicken soup with luffa, glass noodles, meatballs and egg. The vegetable dish was stir-fried crunchy cabbage.

It was a simple dinner, but we had a lot of fun planning and cooking it. I will remember this Mother’s Day dinner, because it was home-made. My cousin joined us and she brought two desserts: banana in coconut milk with gula Melaka and yam in coconut milk with gula Melaka. We also had soya bean curd and Thai mangoes. It was a sweet occasion!

By Chayo, HomSkil Editor 1, 8 May 2021