Bentoism

Hubs and I are busy getting ready for the next work week, so we kept lunch a simple affair while we got caught up with chores, and leftovers get packed into the next day's bentos.

Bak Kut Teh, which in English translates into Meat Bone Tea or Bone Tea Soup, is about the easiest dish to prepare. I used a Bak Kut Teh spice packet my sister sent and popped it into a claypot with 2-3 strips of pork shoulder (chopped up) to cook on a low simmer for 2 hours, teo-chew style. After an hour, your home will be filled with a rich aroma of pork and spices, and the pieces of pork will break apart easily with slight pressure from the chopsticks.

Bak Kut Teh is commonly enjoyed with rice and a few side dishes. The problem is the time spent getting those ingredients here and preparing them. So I took a short cut. This is my adaptation of the stewed mustard greens made from salted mustard greens; today, I used frozen collard greens.


Stewed Collard Greens with Bak Kut Teh spices
1 pound packet of frozen collard greens (or mustard greens)
2-3 cloves of whole garlic, pulled from soup
1/2 cup pork (fattier ones work best), pulled from soup
1 Bak Kut Teh spice packet, pulled from soup
Soy sauce

• Here I prepared it with ingredients prepared with the Bak Kut Teh soup, so if you intend to prepare this with your Bak Kut Teh soup, make sure to add more water and a little more meat to account for this dish.
• If you prepare it from scratch and not from the soup, be sure to cut the pork into smaller pieces and render the fat out first before adding any greens. You might not need soy sauce since a fresh spice packet will have enough salt for the dish. I added soy sauce because my spice packet gave up most of its flavors to the soup stock.

1. Shred the pork into smaller pieces. In a pot on high heat, add the fatty pieces of pork, garlic cloves and the shredded pork in.
   
2. When you begin to hear sizzle from the pork, add the frozen collard greens and the used spice packet.
   
3. Skim excess fat off the Bak Kut Teh Soup and add about 1/2 cup of Bak Kut Teh stock to the collard greens stew. Add 1-2 tbsp of soy sauce.
4. When you see the liquids at base of the pot boil, and the rest of the collard greens are no longer frozen, give it a good stir, cover pot, turn the heat to medium low and allow it to simmer for about 15 minutes.
5. When the collard greens begin to lose some of the vivid green color and acquire a tinge of brownish green (see bento box picture), your stew is ready.

It's not quite the same as the actual salted preserved vegetables dish that is served with Bak Kut Teh back home, but the flavors from the pork and used bak kut teh spice packet works really well with the collard greens. And the leftover greens are packed over rice in a silicon cup in my bento, with a piece of Bah Kut Teh pork, some tamagoyaki and sugar-free peach jello in kitty-shaped cups.

Now I've gotta go iron. Oh joy.