Braised pork belly

This recipe is a fairly direct application of the 'hong shao' / red-braised chinese cooking technique to vegetarian pork belly, which does in fact exist.

Ingredients

• 1-2 packs veggie pork belly
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 4 scallions
• 2" ginger, thinly sliced
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 star anise pod
• 1/4 cup light soy sauce
• 1/4 cup shaoxing wine

Directions

• Find vegetarian pork belly. The stuff we found had a lot of pepper caked on it. If that's what you find, scrape off as much of the pepper as you can while defrosting.
• Dissolve sugar in water over medium-high until a syrup is formed
• Reduce heat, add pork, and coat with the syrup.
• Add aromatics. cook - tossing / stirring for 1 minute
• Add soy sauce and wine and cook for another couple minutes until slightly reduced.
• Pour in enough water to just cover pork and simmer until the sauce has permeated the pork. I didn't notice much additional change after 30min.
• Remove pork. Boil / reduce sauce until thickened (maybe 10-15 min).
• Serve pork and sauce