Twice Cooked Pork - 回锅肉 - Hui Guo Rou

This is one of the dishes Wu Lei prepared when Mao Xiaoyu invited me over for some serious chinese cooking at his place. The dish is Wu Lei's speciality and they eat it almost every weekend. (During the week they make only 1 dish, or the typical fast low budget student cooking like noodles and spaghetti... I already wondering if every Chinese man has a secret life as a master chef when I noticed the home made steamed bread from their other roommate... Just when do actually have time to play Starcraft ;-) ??).

Ingredients:
400 gr pork (in slices of about 1.5 cm)
bunch of spring onions (cut diagonally so that the pieces are 4 x 1 cm)
2 tbs secret sauce
2 tbs corn starch
1 tbs sunflower oil

The secret sauce is in the top left

• Boil the slices of pork for about 10 minutes. Drain and cut in small pieces of about 2.5 cm. Mix the corn starch with the meat so it gets a coating.
• Heat the oil in a wok, and stir fry the the pork for about 3 minutes. Add the secret sauce and stir fry for another minute or so.
• Add the spring onions, and let them heat along for another minute

some of the ingredients	The finished dish is in the middle top

To be honoust I got a bit scared when I saw the meat. I hardly ever eat pork, and I never eat the pieces with the fat on it.. I just don't like the way the fat feels in my mouth, and how heavy it is on the stomach, if I even manage to chew and swallow it. "Courage evo", I told myself, "you should at least give it a try, and it will be very rude to refuse to eat it". When we sat down to eat I first took some safe dofu, and after that took some pieces of pork with a lot of spring onions to make it look more ;-). As I took a bite I felt a bit pressured as Wu Lei was seriously studying my face to see how I would like it. Wow!!! It was good++!! What a relief, and what a surprise!! I actually took a lot more after that initial hesitation! Wu Lei explained that cooking the meat first makes the oil go out of it. When it's fried after the cooking the sauce takes the place of the fat, so it becomes super tasty, and because of the starch and stirfrying it has a nice crisp to it!
So this twice cooking method must be the secret to how Chinese people stay so slender despite of the fatty meat!