Simmered Pork and Nappa Cabbage 豚肉と白菜の煮物

When we get a large bone-in skin-on piece of pork (either fore- or hind-quarter), I do secondary butchering to remove the skin and bone. With the meat I usually make one large roast for barbecuing in our Weber grill, and one smaller roast for making simmered pork or “Nibuta” 煮豚 in the Instant pot. I usually hand-chop the remaining trimmings into ground pork which I use to make “mapo tofu” 麻婆豆腐, “niku-miso” 肉味噌 or other dishes.  This time the pork came from the fore-quarter and after I did all my usual preparations additional small blocks of pork remained. So I sliced them very thinly and made two dishes; one was a classic homey dish of meat and potato stew or “nikujaga” 肉じゃが and the other was this nappa cabbage dish. I made this dish since I had quite a good amount of left-over nappa cabbage or “hakusai” 白菜 and also brown shimeji mushroom or “bunashimeji” ぶなしめじ.

I added sugar snaps スナップ豌豆の塩びたし for color.

This is based on a recipe I saw on-line but because of the ingredients I had (or didn’t have), I had to make some modifications.

Ingredients:
4 leaves of nappa cabbage, bottom trimmed, cut in half lengthwise. I cut the bottom half thick portion on a slant (45 degree against the cutting board surface) 1 inch long (called “sogi-giri” 削ぎ切). This makes a slightly thin segment). The leafy tops were cut into 1 inch long pieces.
120 grams of thinly sliced pork (the amount is arbitrary. More the better?)
1 package (150 grams) of brown shimeji mushroom, bottoms removed and separated
400ml Japanese dashi broth
1 tbs each of sake and soy sauce (to marinade the pork)

Seasoning
2 tbs sake
2 tbs x4 Japanese noodle sauce (or 1 tbs each of mirin and soy sauce)
1/2 tsp ginger juice (from grated ginger root)

Direction:
Marinate the pork in the mixture of sake and soy sauce for 5-10 minutes.
Put the dashi broth in a pan on medium heat. When it boils add the marinated pork. When the meat changes color, add the nappa cabbage and mushrooms. Cook for a few minutes and add the seasoning. Cook for 10-15 minutes or until the hard part of the nappa cabbage is cooked through.
Serve warm with topping of blanched green beans or sugar snap or chopped scallion (optional).

Although this dish uses the combination of seasoning similar to “niku-jaga”, this dish came out much more mildly flavored and gentle. This is a good dish for drinking snack or the accompaniment for rice.