Black Bean Wonton Crusted Pork w/ White Wine Mushrooms and Sugar Snap Peas
Y’know, sometimes I cook simple typical dinners and sometimes, I like to flex my culinary muscle and visit the grocery store with an no idea what to cook and a couple ten dollar bills. Recently, I did just this and out came this recipe I’m about to share.
I sometimes just wander the isles of the store with no real plan, and I suggest sometime you do the same thing. Start at the meats, pick something. Then move on to way you’ll cook your meat and what would be great with it. It’s really fun when you get to be creative with your food. Creating new recipes is my favourite and I hope the result of my craziness will benefit you.
What you’ll need:
For Black Bean Wonton Crusted Pork:
- 2 inside round pork steaks
- 1 cups crushed wonton chips, or potato chips
- black bean garlic sauce (any asian store should carry this)
Asian sauce:
- 1/3 cup soya sauce
- 1/2 cup ketchup
- splash of mushroom water (see below)
For Shiitake and Lobster Mushrooms with White Wine and Sage
- 2 tbsp butter, small splash olive oil.
- 2 shallots, diced
- 7-8 Shiitake Mushroom tops, diced
- 2 tsp Sage (eyeball it), chopped fine.
- 1/2 cup white wine
- Dried Lobster Mushrooms, soaked in warm water for 10 minutes
For Sugar Snap Peas
- Sugar snap peas
- salt, oil
How you’ll do it:
Pork:
- Preheat your oven to 400F
- Salt and pepper both sides of your pork steaks and crush your chips to a powder. Next apply a smear of your black bean paste to one side of your pork then press the sauced side down into the chips. Just do one side as doing both sides is too much and it gets messy.
- Heat a skillet with oil until it’s very hot. Place your steaks in CRUST side down. After about 1 minute, flip the steaks… don’t worry if it’s a little black, that’s just the black bean sauce. It should be golden. Move this skillet to your oven. It won’t take long to cook them through, 5 minutes for medium, 8 for well done.
- After this time, remove them and set them aside to rest. Keep the pan for our sauce.
Sauce:
- In your pan fresh out of the oven (now that there is nothing in it) add your soya sauce to deglaze. Move it around (use a towel on that handle, it’s hot!) the pan to remove the brown bits on the bottom of the pan. Add your ketchup and a splash of the water that your Lobster mushrooms are steeping in. DO NOT add any seasoning! This is important! The soya is very salty! Combine the sauce and reduce by half or until semi thick. Taste, if too salty, add more ketchup. Set aside.
Mushrooms:
- First, fill a small bowl with hot water and put your dried mushrooms in the bowl.
- In a pot, or skillet melt butter and oil. Add your shallots and cook for 1 minute. Add diced mushrooms and stir to coat. Add your sage and cook uncovered for about 5 minutes.
- Remove your dried mushrooms (now, hydrated!) and cut roughly. They should be soft now. Add them to our pot. Stir to combine and cook for 1 more minute.
- Add wine and reduce until wine is gone. Remove from heat and season with salt and pepper. Stir well.
Snap peas:
- Check your snap peas, if they have a stringy vein down the side, remove it.
- In a small skillet, heat oil and snap peas. Cook for 5 minutes until crisp, but cooked.
Head to the plate!
Now, we’ve cooked all the aspects of our dish but you want to impress your dinner guests or in my case, my 1 guest (permanent guest :)). So get out nice white plates. Start with a small pile of mushrooms in the middle of each plate. Cut your pork steaks into thin strips and fan around the mushrooms. Oh fancy.
Next, add some peas gently to the back of your plate. Don’t be sloppy now! Nobody likes a mess!
Now simply drizzle your sauce around the dish in a circle and over the meat just a little. This sauce is salty, so a little goes a long way. You don’t want huge amounts of it, so plate accordingly.
There you have it. All the flavours will meld and combine for a wonderful dinner experience and your guests will love it. If they don’t you can get a refund for this recipe, oh wait! It’s free! 
- m
