A Rhapsody of Pork

Look at this! Doesn’t it look good? It tastes scrumptious too.

This is the oven-roasted crispy pork knuckle from Cold Storage Centrepoint. Once in a while, we indulge and buy one of these home for lunch or dinner. They are freshly roasted on-site each morning. Every day, at around 11.30 am, they are just coming out of the oven, after three hours of roasting. They are piping hot and smell incredible. The skin is super crispy, and yet the meat inside is tender and moist.

Once or twice, I have found the meat to be slightly more porky than usual. I guess this depends on who did the marinating of the pork. But usually, I like the taste of these knuckles. And this is coming from someone who had, until very recently, stopped taking pork altogether for many, many years; who, even now, doesn’t usually take a lot of pork; and who can’t stand any sort of porkiness in the pork she eats. Yes, I know, pork is supposed to be porky. What else would pork be, right? But you know what I mean. Some pork are more porky tasting than other pork, depending on where the meat comes from and what was in the pig’s diet.

I like the Cold Storage knuckle for several reasons. They always only use the knuckles from the fore-limbs of the pig. These are always more tender and succulent than the hind-legs. When we cook the traditional Chinese braised vinegar pig trotters at home, we use the fore-limbs only too. Also, the Cold Storage knuckles are not deep fried first. Just oven roasted to perfection. So it is not greasy or oily. In fact, I would say the meat is pretty lean for a pork knuckle. The skin is so incredibly crispy! The layer of fat under the skin has been cooked out during the lengthy roasting time, leaving just a layer of super tasty, crunchy skin. Divine!

Even if left until dinner time, all that the knuckle needs is to be popped into the oven to be heated up, and the skin is still as crisp as ever.

There is also something about seeing a good-sized whole, bone-in knuckle – all 6-8” in length of it – that is terribly drool-inducing. Almost hypnotic. It almost makes you want to take the whole knuckle in your hand and chew on it like you would a chicken drumstick! And just let your animal instincts take over and be cave-man like, you know what I’m saying? Ahem. Okay, let’s not get carried away here…

The marinade is nicely neutral too, without being bland. It flavors the pork nicely, but it also allows us room to use different sauces or dressings with the meat, if we so desire.

Sometimes, we make a plum sauce, chilli and black pepper dip to go with the pork. Other times, a tangy mango or apple salsa is nice. But sometimes, I just dip chunks of the meat into thick sweet dark soy sauce. Or better yet, just eat it as it is.

The meat also tastes very good in a sandwich. Any leftover meat is shredded, and the next day warmed and stuffed into a wholemeal pita bread, together with some salad tossed with the plum sauce dressing, and a liberal sprinkling of black pepper. Yum!

Here’s a shot from a better angle…

The underside of the knuckle looks flat because by the time I stopped stuffing my face long enough to remember to take the photos, we had already eaten half the knuckle.

And so that was my pork fix for the week.

Copyright © 2004 Renee Kho. All Rights Reserved.
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