Kimchi and Pork and in Coconut Milk

Inspired by the spicy Filipino dish gising-gising, chopped homemade kimchi takes the place of chilies in this kimchi and pork vegetables in coconut milk dish. Just lovely with rice!

Alex’s idea. She’d been dreaming of cooking gising-gising for days while, at the same time, experimenting with dishes she can add her homemade kimchi too. She wondered out loud if kimchi would go well with coconut milk and I told her, without hesitation, that it would.

At that point, it was just a theory on my part, of course. We’ve never put the two ingredients together in a dish before, but I had some pretty good basis for saying that the combination would work. If you haven’t heard anyone articulate it yet, hot and sweet go well together. And milk tempers heat so beautifully that a dish you’d normally balk at eating because it sets your mouth on fire suddenly becomes wonderfully mellow.

So, Alex cooked the dish. She was excited that her first batch of homemade kimchi is almost gone and she can go ahead and make a new batch. But it wasn’t just kimchi and coconut milk that went into the dish she cooked. There was pork — lots of pork — and green beans and sweet potatoes too. The result? I ended up eating more than I normally do.

There’s nothing in this recipe that says you have to cook this dish with homemade kimchi. You may use store-bought.

Kimchi and Pork and in Coconut Milk

Spicy, sweet, creamy and chunky. Enjoy kimchi and pork in coconut milk with rice.

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Course: Main Course

Cuisine: Asian Fusion

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 40 minutes

Servings: 4 people

Author: Connie Veneracion

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons coconut oil divided
• 1 large sweet potato peeled cut into half-inch cubes
• 300 grams pork belly cut into very thin strips
• 1 onion peeled and roughly chopped
• 4 cloves garlic minced
• 1 one-inch knob ginger peeled and minced
• 1 tomato roughly chopped
• patis (fish sauce)
• cracked black pepper
• 1 cup kimchi thinly sliced
• 2 tablespoons kimchi juice (you may use more)
• 1 cup coconut milk divided
• 10 green beans trimmed and cut into half-inch pieces
• sugar optional

Instructions

• Heat two tablespoons coconut oil in a wide frying pan.
• Spread the sweet potato cubes and leave to brown a bit. Cook, stirring, to evenly brown on all sides. You're not cooking them through at this point but just browning them. As soon as they are browned, scoop out and set aside.
• Pour in the remaining coconut oil into the pan and heat.
• Spread the pork strips, leave to brown a little, stir and cook, stirring often, until the edges are lightly browned.
• Add the onion, garlic, ginger and tomato to the pork. Drizzle in a tablespoon of fish sauce and sprinkle in quarter teaspoon of pepper. Cook, stirring, until the vegetables soften.
• Stir in the kimchi juice and half of the coconut milk. Taste and add more fish sauce, as needed.
• Cover then pan and simmer the pork and kimchi in coconut milk until the pork is tender.
• Add the kimchi, green beans and the remaining coconut milk. Stir in the fried sweet potatoes. Cook, uncovered, until the green beans are done and the sweet potato cubes are cooked through (see notes after the recipe).
• Taste and add more fish sauce (and sugar, optionally) to balance the flavors.

Cook’s Notes

The starch in the sweet potatoes will thicken the sauce, making the dish quite dry at the end of cooking time. If you want more sauce that you can ladle over your rice, use twice as much coconut milk. Remember to adjust the seasonings accordingly.

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