Brasied Pork Ribs & Bread with red rice wine (紅麴醬燒排骨和紅麴蔓越莓面包)

I am actually quite excited about the coming mooncake festival. Reason being I can make some fancy mooncakes again! I love making them but don't really like eating them, haha! But I do eat those that I made since I only use filling with reduced sugar. :) I even took up orders from my neighbours just to satisfy my need to make them! Weird I know, but I guess if you are like me, enjoy playing around in the kitchen, you will know what I mean. :) I need to bake around 30 mooncakes just this week alone...so wish me luck!

Back to today's post, it's actually one that I had hold off posting for more then 2 months. Just didn't have the right timing plus participating in food fest or themes, so put it off till now. I had been saying I wanted to use red wine yeast to cook or bake something for awhile. So here it is! Braised Pork Ribs with red rice wine(紅麴醬).

Although red rice wine is not really a common household ingredient here in Singapore, but it is getting more popular lately because of its healthful benefits. It is known to help lower the cholestrol level and thus good for the heart. My first attempt using it was making baos. Later I added it into my chiffon and it was good too. ;)

I got this braised pork rib recipe from Carol 自在生活. It was easy to prepare and ingredients were not hard to gather.

Ingredients for Braised Pork Ribs using red rice wine: (serves 4-5 ppl)

Pork ribs 600g

80g red rice wine

2 sprigs green onion, cut into small sections

2-3 garlic cloves

2-3 slices of ginger

200ml chicken/vegetable stock (if unsalted, add salt to taste during cooking)

Marinate

1.5 tbsp light soy sauce

Seasoning

1-2 tbsp sugar (adjust to taste)

• Combine the soy sauce and pork ribs to marinate. Cover and chill in the fridge up to an hour before cooking.
• In a small frying pot, add about 200ml of cooking oil and heat up at medium fire. Add the pork ribs and fry till slightly golden brown. Don't have to be throughly cooked through. Dish up and drain on paper towel.
• 
  Remove most of the cooking oil, leaving about 2 tsp left in the pot. Add in the garlic, ginder and green onion in. Cook till fragrant, about 4-5 minutes. Add in the pork ribs andstir fry for a couple minutes.
• Add in the red rice wine, salt, sugar and stock. Stir to mix and cook till boil. Once boil, lower the fire to low, cover and simmer for about 30-35 minutes or till the meat is tender.
• Dish up and serve while still hot.



The slight tang from the red rice wine makes the dish very appetitzing. A plate of steamy rice with this and it's all it needs. :)) You can also substitute it with chicken if you prefer the other white meat. Pork ribs tends to be a little more oily. :P

The other recipe I'm posting is using the same red rice wine to bake some bread. I used a recipe from 孟老师的100道面包 and it was very nice and soft! Original recipe is call 紅麴蔓越莓 (red rice wine cranberry bread)

The dough was pretty easy to handle. And instead of leaving it plain like what the original recipe calls, I used sweetened cream cheese as the fillinf, somehow a good match with the tangy dried cranberries.

Note that I made 1.5 portion of the recipe.

Ingredients for 紅麴蔓越莓 (red rice wine cranberry bread)

Set A

250g bread flour

20g caster sugar

1/4 tsp salt

4g instant active dry yeast

140ml water

15g red rice wine

Set B

15g unsalted butter

30g dried cranberries

200g sweetened cream cheese (180g cream cheese with 20g powder sugar)

• In a large mixing bowl, add all ingredients in Set A and mix well till it comes together to form a soft dough.
• Knead the dough till it is not sticky and add the butter in Set B and continue to knead. Knead till it reaches the window panel, about 20-25 minutes on my KA.
  
• Place the dough in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let proof for at least 80 minutes.
  
• Punch out the air in the proofed dough. Divide the dough into 2 equal portions and let rest for 10 mins before shaping.
• I used half of the dough to make buns, so I divided the 1/2 portion of the dough into 4 equal balls. While the othe half I rolled it like a swiss roll and bake it in a small loaf tin.
• Fill the 4 equal balls with the sweetened cream cheese (about 50g) and seal it nicely. Place into a muffin cup or any container you prefer. Repeat till all the dough portions are filled.
• Let the dough proof for another hour and preheat the oven to 175C.
• Bake the buns for 15 mins and the small loaf for 20-25 minutes. Once done, remove from oven and let cool completely on the rack.

Similar to the bao and chiffon, I could not taste the red rice wine in the bread. I did thought about adding more, but I was worried the whole recipe might be ruined. :P Nevertheless still the pink shade from the wine, heehee. :P

Okay folks, hope I have introduced enough red rice wine dishes/bakes for you to try out at home. I know there are still a number of good recipes out there that uses it....well that will be in another post. :)

Okay, signing off now, have a good week all!