Chinese Steamed Black Pepper Pork Ribs

First of all, Spice Divas would like to wish you a Happy New Year. We hope you had a good Christmas with your family and friends. Christmas is one of our favourite holidays as it is filled with laughter, tons of food and good wine (for sure)! 

The year of 2013 has been great to us. We have more readership and managed to post more recipes to share with our readers. If you really really love our site and recipes, we strongly encourage you (ok, maybe begging you) to pass the word: forward our link to your family and friends. This blog was created out of our passion to cook and share with you all. Leave us comments in our blog. We would love to hear from you! 

As for myself, 2013 has been a great year. With all hard work and perseverance, I am happy to announce that my son, baby A, who is 17 months old now is free of eczema. He was on a special elimination diet for 4 months and we now are able to find certain foods that trigger his itchiness. As for now, he is able to tolerate wheat and dairy. We still have more allergens and food to introduce to see his reactions. The journey will not be short but I am sure it will be a fruitful one. Ever since Baby A was diagnosed with eczema, I have become more aware of this chronic skin disease. I did my research and was told by health professionals that eczema, unfortunately, has no cure. There are treatments only and he will grow out of it. But the question was: how long do we have to wait? Do we need to just sit and do nothing and wait for him to grow out of it while he is itchy here and there? 

With the success story that I have, I am hoping to be able to help mothers out there who have children who suffer from multiple allergies or eczema that triggered by food sensitivities or allergies. In the course of 4 months of elimination diet, I have developed recipes that are allergy-free and are baby/toddler friendly. In the coming year of 2014, I will share those recipes and hopefully, able to inspire mothers that living allergy-free may not be hard at all! We also received some emails from our viewers if we will eventually be blogging on dot com. We are happy to announce that we are working hard and on our way to launch our website to dot com, so stay tuned! We will also get our site exposed to social media so be prepared to see us launching our account on facebook, pinterest and twitter!

New Year is only one sleep away but my mind is already ahead of celebrating Chinese New Year. Chinese New Year will fall on January 31st in 2014. In South East and East Asia, it is the biggest celebration, just like Christmas in the western hemisphere. The holiday is celebrated for 15 days with family and friends visiting, chatting over plates of food as well as Chinese New Year snacks and cookies. I will be posting more recipes to come in the near future so you can celebrate Chinese New Year with your family and friends in style! 

Today I am featuring a Chinese Steamed Black Pepper Pork Ribs. This dish is juicy, succulent and flavoured with the spiciness from black pepper sauce and the sweetness from honey. It is one of my favourites and my mother-in-law loves this dish dearly when she came to visit this summer. I think it is a perfect dish to serve on Chinese New Year's Eve or even any other weekday dinners. 

Skill Level: Easy

Serves: 6 

INGREDIENTS:

• 1.2 kg pork side ribs (request your butcher to cut into bite sizes)
• 3 1/2 tbsp Lee Kum Kee brand black pepper sauce
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 3 tbsp honey
• 1 tbsp corn starch

METHOD:

1. In a small bowl, mix the black pepper sauce, garlic, soy sauce and honey with a spoon till uniform
2. Place bite-sized pork side ribs in a heat-proof dish, pour the sauce in and mix well 
3. Add in the corn starch, mix uniformly and marinate for at least 4 hours in the fridge. Best if left marinated overnight
4. In a steamer, boil water. Once the water comes to a rolling boil, place the pork side ribs (with the heat-proof dish) in a steamer
5. Steam for 35 minutes and best served warm