Braised eel with banana and bean

The eel meat is soft and delicious, the pork belly is fatty, the tofu is rich, and the apricot sauce is shimmering. This dish is best eaten hot with white rice or noodles, especially in cold weather.

Making

1. Pre-processing and preparation

• The secret to creating a dish with apricot yellow color and naturally shimmering broth like in restaurants is fermented rice sauce, turmeric and a little bit of pork skin. Fermented rice sauce creates a beautiful yellow color: wash fresh turmeric, peel and blend with 3 tablespoons of fermented rice. Banana sauce creates a rich, fatty texture: boil 2 green bananas with a little fermented rice and turmeric, peel and blend. Pork skin sauce (optional) creates more fat and stickiness: Scrape off the hair from the pork skin, boil and blend with a little water. Peel the onions and garlic, crush and squeeze out the juice, marinate the eel separately, keep the flesh.

  

• Peel the remaining 4 green bananas, keeping the peels. Cut the bananas in half, then cut into pencil or diagonal slices and soak in diluted salt water with a little lemon juice to prevent browning.

  

• Cut the tofu into squares and fry until golden brown. Remove the bananas and boil them with a little turmeric to get a nice color. Then use the oil used to fry the tofu to fry them until the bananas are firm and will not break when cooked.

  

• Cut pork belly into bite-sized pieces and stir-fry until golden brown.

  

• Buy the eel, put it in a thick plastic bag, add a little salt and tie it tightly so that the eel will wriggle and release all the slime. Then rub with lemon, wash it, cut open the belly, remove the intestines, pat dry and cut into bite-sized pieces. Marinate the eel with onion and garlic juice, 2 teaspoons of fish sauce, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 1/2 teaspoon of pepper, 1/2 teaspoon of seasoning powder, stir well and marinate for 15 minutes. Then stir-fry until the eel absorbs the flavor, scoop it out and set aside. Wash and chop the herbs (betel leaves, perilla, green onions).

  

2. Braised eel with banana and bean

• Saute onion and garlic, add pork belly, banana and a little shrimp paste and stir to absorb the flavor. Then, add boiling water, skim off the foam, season with fish sauce and salt. Pour in the mixture of turmeric sauce, banana sauce and pork skin sauce, then reduce the heat, cover and cook until the banana meat is as soft as desired. Continue to add eel and beans and continue to simmer to absorb the flavor. When the water has reduced and thickened, season to taste. Add betel leaves, perilla, green onions, chili and scoop out to eat hot.

  

3. Finished product requirements

• Fragrant and tender eel, fatty pork belly, rich tofu, shimmering apricot sauce. This dish is best eaten hot with white rice or noodles, especially in cold weather.

  

Attention:

• There are many folk methods to remove the fishy smell from eels, such as using ash, salt, and lemon. Some modern chefs use cooking oil to remove the fishy smell.

• After preparing and cleaning the eel, do not wash it again because it will make the dish smell fishy and lose nutrients from the eel's blood.

• Tofu should be fried until golden brown and crispy so that it stays intact when braised.

• Eel is cold in nature so it needs warm spices to balance it out such as garlic, onion, turmeric.

• Adjust the batch to taste.

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