This recipe taste better with pork, but you can also do it with chicken.  Chicken turns up dryer and harder as it does not have fats in between the meat, while pork (if you get the shoulder cut, 五花肉) has streaky fats in between the lean meat.  However, you can still do it with chicken if you dislike pork.
The picture shows the version with chicken.

Ingredients

1. 6 Chicken drum stick or chicken thigh, or 500gms of shoulder cut pork (五花肉)
2. 5 garlic
3. 3 tablespoon oyster sauce
4. 3 tablespoon sugar
5. 1 tablespoon chinese rice wine (花雕)
6. 1 tablespoon sesame oil
7. dash of ground pepper

Method

1. Do not peel the garlic, just wash the whole garlic.
2. Season the meat with all the ingredients for 30 mins, including the garlic. 
3. Heat up a thick based steel cooking pot (not too hot, just when water droplets start to evaporate and dry up will be just nice).  Thick based pots do not burn the food that easily as it distribute the heat evenly.
4. Put in the garlic and the meat in the pot, lay them out nicely.  Do not pour in the seasoning left in the bowl yet.  You should hear slight sizzling sound as the pot is slightly hot.
5. Cover and cook for 15 mins with very small flame.
6. Open the cover, and pour in the remaining seasoning gravy, and turn up the flame slightly (but still small), flip the meat over, cover and cook for another 20-30 mins (flipping the meat every 5 mins).  Cook till the gravy is almost totally dried up into a sticky gravy.
7. Slice the pork.  Serve. 

This is a traditional Fu Zhou (hock chew 福州) dish.  Hong Zao 红糟 (red vinasse) is the remains of the fermented glutinous rice and red yeast rice for making red rice wine.   I think you can get this in supermarket, but I use home made ones as my mom made the red rice wine at home.  (I can post the recipe here, but I must say I have not made the wine myself).  Many friends have told us that my mom’s Hong Zao taste so much better compared to those from the supermarket. 

This version I introduced here is a little wet with thick gravy.  You can cook it to be a little more soupy, and can be served with rice noodles 面线 (mee sua).

Ingredients

1. 1 chicken (or equivalent of chicken parts, eg 6-8 drum sticks or chicken wings)
2. 3 cm section of ginger
3. 2 shallots
4. 2 garlic
5. 4 tablespoon hong zao (红糟)
6. 2 tablespoon sugar
7. 1/3 cup rice wine or hua diao (花雕)
8. 1/3 cup water
9. 1 teaspoon salt
10. 1 tablespoon light soya sauce
11. 4 tablespoon cooking oil

Method

1. Peel the ginger, shallots, garlic and chop into small pieces.
2. Wash and chop the chicken into chucks pieces.
3. Using medium heat, in a pot (or wok or pan with cover), add cooking oil and chopped ginger, shallots, and garlic and sauté till fragrant. 
4. Add in the hong zao and stir fry till fragrant of wine is in the air.  Be careful to use low to medium heat as it may burnt.
5. Add in the chicken, salt, sugar, soya sauce and continue to stir fry for 1-2 mins. 
6. Add in the wine and water, mixed it, and cover and simmer using low heat for 10 mins.  Open, stir to allow the gravy to coat the chicken, cover and simmer for another 10 mins. 
7. To have more kick in the alcohol fragrant, after cooking pour in another 2-3 tablespoon of rice wine or hua diao.
8. Serve hot.

To make the soupy version, in step 6, you add in about 3-4 bowls water to your liking.  You just have to add more salt to taste.  You may also add in pre-soak shitake mushroom in step 5.

The gravy used in this recipe is quite special.  It is a little more Asian, unlike the usual black pepper, or mushroom gravy, it is made with oyster sauce.  Its nice.

You can serve with fries, bake potato, mashed potatoes, boiled vegetables, salad, etc.  The picture shows it is served with a serving of Seafood Mushroom Spaghetti Olio Aglio, the recipe just posted before this one.

Ingredients (Serve 2)

1. 2 slices of beef steak (cut of your choice, eg sirloin, rib eye)
2. ½ teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
3. ½ teaspoon salt
4. 2 tablespoon Oyster sauce
5. 1 tablespoon sugar
6. 1 tablespoon sesame oil
7. 1 tablespoon Chinese rice wine (花雕) or brandy
8. 3 tablespoon water
9. 1 tablespoon cooking oil
10. 2 clove of garlic

Method

1. Sprinkle the salt and the pepper on the steak.
2. Grill the steak both side to the desired wellness. I am bad at estimation, but what you can do is use your fingers and press in the middle of the steak.  A very well done steak is very hard (almost no more springy), while a medium done steak retains a little springy. 
3. Serve on a plate.
4. Peel and chop the garlic.
5. In a bowl, mix ingredients 4 to 8.
6. In a sauce pan, heat up the cooking oil, and add in the garlic and fry till fragrant.  Pour in the mixture and bring to boil for 1 min. 
7. Pour over steak and serve.

For the grilling, I used a grilling pan.  If you have not seen it, it is actually like a frying pan, usually rectangular shape, and instead of flat on the frying surface, it has strips that allow your meat to be just touching the strips while cooking, instead of touching the whole frying surface.  It is useful to grill meat at home if you do not have a grill and cook with gas stove. 

Olio Aglio means stir fry with garlic and olive oil. I personally like it as it is not creamy as in cream sauce (although I like cream sauce too) or strong tasting as in tomato based sauce.  I just had this for Christmas this year.

Ingredients (Serve 2)

1. ¼ packet spaghetti
2. 5 garlic
3. 4 tablespoon Extra virgin olive oil
4. 10-15 cherry tomatoes
5. 5 fresh button mushroom
6. ½ red capsicum (if you like spicy, can replace this or add in red chilli)
7. 4-6 big prawns
8. 1 medium size squid
9. 1/2 teaspoon salt
10. freshly cracked black pepper

Method

1. Peel and chop up the garlic into small pieces or chucks if you like to bite them.
2. Wash the cherry tomatoes.  Wash and slice the mushroom.  Remove the seed of capsicum and cut into small squares.
3. Wash the squid and remove the head.  Remove the back-bone of the squid (a transparent strip that runs along the length of the squid body.  Remove the skin of the squid. (you can do it with your finger nails or a knife, scrape off a little and you can pull it off easily).  For the squid head, cut away the eyes, and also squeeze out the “ball” from the mouth of the squid (its quite hard to eat).  Cut into strips (for the body, you may also like to cut into rings).
4. Wash the prawns.  You may like to remove the shell or just leave them on. (I like to trim away the legs and also the tip of the head which is quite sharp.)
5. Boil the spaghetti in a pot of water until the desired softness. Drained and set aside.  Leave the pot of water boiling if you are proceeding to next step.
6. Heat up a pan with medium heat, add in the olive oil, garlic, cherry tomato, mushroom, squid, prawn, capsicum, salt, and cracked black pepper, and stir briefly and cover for 5 mins.
7. While the pan is cooking, put the spaghetti back in the boiling water for ½ to 1 mins, and drain again (so that it is hot and moist, not stick together)
8. Optional: not part of this recipe, you can also pour in ½ cup of white wine into the pan and let it boil, it should taste good too.
9. Pour the spaghetti into the pan and toss it. 
10. Serve hot with some cracked black pepper on the side of the plate.

Optional: serve with a beef steak (recipe to be posted in another post).

Sometimes no matter how long you boil the peanuts, they still don’t turn out to be soft.  Here are some tips you can try while cooking peanuts.

1. Soak the peanuts in hot boiling water for 30 mins before cooking.
2. Use a right pot size where you can have sufficient water depth in the pot.  A rough guide is the depth of water is at least ½ to ¾ of the diameter of the pot.  The reason is that the temperature of the water is lower at the surface compare to the bottom where the flame is burning the bottom of the pot.  Hence you need sufficient dept of water to ensure the peanuts are cooking in the higher temperature water and not near the surface.
3. Put a Chinese table spoon made of china in the pot during cooking.  I don’t know why, my mom uses this method and I think possibly the spoon is able to keep the temperature of the water higher.
4. You need patience.  It will take 3 hours. 
5. You can use slow cooker and cook it overnight.