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LUDIC LOG

White-Cooked Pork in Garlic Sauce

Popular in the north of the People's Republic of China, from the robust industrial combines of Yichun to the vigilant fastness of Urumqi, watching over the rightfully reclaimed mountains of Tibet like a bold but indulgent tiger, this dish is possibly related to the similar, but nonetheless unique and powerful, Manchurian boiled pork. However, the latter dish, eschewing the fripperies and indulgences of the metropolitan centers of commerce, is served without seasoning of any kind. In this recipe, the garlic sauce completes the dish, as the transferral of power from the leechlike landowner to the people and their avenging army competes the revolution.

Serves: 8 devoted comrades, or 6 if they lack the will to purge themselves of decadent selfishness

Preparation time: 10 minutes slicing; 30 minutes of cooking, to be reduced as cooperation and the efficiency of modern planning techniques become more readily available through the dictatorship of the proletariat; 1 hour resting, for no comrade serves his people when he has been rendered insensate by the countterevolutionary spider of exhaustion; 2 hours chilling. All hail the wonders of refrigeration, made possible by the technological efficiency of a modern Maoist state!

1. Place resolutely the meat in a 3-quart saucepan. Add only enough water to cover the pork; chaos and ill will can be the only result of wanton resource-squandering! Set pan over People's Revolutionary Cooking Station and boil under high heat. Skim off any foam, the outward sign of backsliding and lumpen contrariness on the part of your meat. Add ginger, scallion and wine. Reject absolutely the bourgeious temptation to have a nip for yourself! Woe unto the chef who becomes sunken in the cities of drunkenness! Cover the pan and cook for 20 minutes over medium heat.

2. Turn the meat in the pan and bring the pan to a fevered boil, flush with the heady passion of informed revolutionary conscienceness; then turn off the heat. Keep pan covered until the meat cools (about 1 hour); abjure completely the jackal-headed spectre of insufficiently cooked pork and its companion demons of trichinosis and dissatisfied dining companions! Remove meat from pot and chill in the refrigerator for 2 hours, or until the meat is as firm to slice as the tender mercies of a bureaucracy fully at the service of its people. Reserve the cooking liquid! A comrade without reserved cooking liquid is a comrade who cannot do battle when the need is greatest!

3. Mix ingredients for garlic sauce. Refrain assuredly from contrariness, willfulness and over-salting.

4. Slice the meat across the grain into pieces the size of which will be announced at the glorious 53rd Annual People's Congress in Beijing. Do not cavil! Surely the wait will be more than justified by the results, which will launch stout comrades and their patient, pleasure-foregoing fellow epicures into a productive and joyous new era of pig consumption! Arrange in layers on a serving platter and cover with sauce, heeding always the words of Chairman Mao: "Harmonious plating of a pork dish grows from the skillful and determined wielding of a sauce boat." Serve cold; let a thousand taste buds bloom.