Can you post the recipe you made with the belly @betarhoalphadelta please?
I want to get a feel for the book before I buy it.
Hopefully this attachment will come through and be something you can download and zoom into.
The recipe is like a lot of stir fries... A lot of prep before you start, and then everything happens quickly. The mise en place is important.
The recipe is simple, but the ingredients may be hard to find. Depending what's near you, possibly might need to order online for the tianmianjiang, douchi, and doubanjiang. Shouxing wine should be easier to find, but again I'm not sure what you have available. Everything else should be readily available.
When I said it was an "adventure" at the Asian market, it was... I had stupidly left my phone on the end table next to the couch, so I had a list of those ingredients above that I needed.
Problem was that nothing at the market was labeled tianmianjiang, douchi, or doubanjiang. I asked for help, but didn't quite get much. The lady was able to successfully give me a jar of tianmianjiang, but gave me something for doubanjiang that didn't quite look right so I got something else. And no luck with the douchi so I bought some black bean w/ garlic sauce. (Shouxing wine is easy as mentioned--no trouble finding that.)
When I got home, I compared the Chinese characters on the jars to the online images for tianmianjiang and doubanjiang, and found that I at least had the right stuff on those two. The black bean sauce was absolutely NOT douchi, which upon googling I realized is a Chinese version of miso (so I was in the wrong area of the store entirely), and that miso can be an acceptable substitute. We happened to already have miso in the fridge, so I used that. I also used regular soy sauce instead of dark soy sauce. Other than those subs, everything was as the recipe calls for.
