Two months ago, I brought home some frozen vegan pork belly made from soy protein and tapioca, bought from the Philippines. The tapioca is just so amazingly and unbelievably close to the texture, chewiness and fat of a pork. Imagine how much Filipino dishes I can veganize with this stuff? However, this fake meat is only available in the Philippines that I already dread the day my supply runs out.

Fortunately, I came across another pork belly style veggie meat at Vihn Loi (asian supermarket)!

But before jumping to the recipe, let me tell you a story.

I tested the PH-bought pork belly by just simply deep frying it and WOW it was amazing. Lechon kawali veganized! And so i thought i can make any pork dish from it. From tapa to sinigang, from afritada to menudo, from adobo to patatim. All of it!

And so I started with Pork Tapa...

And then my heart sank because I failed miserably.

I chopped the pork belly, marinaded in my special tapa sauce, and then fried it. To my horror, it just stuck together in clumps. We still ate it of course - we don't like throwing out food.  It appears that the tapioca got so sticky and wouldn't fry the way I would expect it because it has absorbed my ever so special marinade.

Lesson learned.

The important key to cook this thing is apparently frying it first, and then cook together with the marinade. How fried you'd like it to be would depend on what pork dish are you preparing. In this case, I wanted it to be crunchy in the outside, chewy on the inside so I just fried it enough so that there's still room for the marinade to get absorbed once I throw it in the pot.

Since this PH pork belly is basically the same ingredients as the Vihn Loi pork belly - both having tapioca, it should be prepared the same

Another important note: I usually just eyeball ingredients. Adjust according to your liking.

INGREDIENTS:

SAUCE (marinade)

1/4 cup soy sauce
1/2 lemon
2 Tbsp brown sugar
2  Cloves garlic - minced
Salt and pepper

1 pack Frozen Vegetable Streaky Pork (from Vihnloi) - sliced in to bite size pieces.
1 red long chili - sliced
Spring onion - chopped

1. Heat a generous amount of vegetable oil in a pan.
2. Fry the veggie meat until brown and cooked. Let the meat rest on a paper towel to remove excess oil and set aside.
3. Heat about 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil in a wok.
4. Saute red chili for about a minute.
5. Throw the veggie meat back and give it a good toss for about 10 seconds.
6. Set stove on medium heat. Pour the marinade.
7. Let it sit there and occasionally give it a stir until the sauce is absorbed.

Garnish with spring onions and eat with rice!