Braised pork belly

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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