The very first dish we had when we arrived in Thailand was Khao Kha Mu. We got it in Chiang Mai near the north gate of the old city at a stand that is famous for a lady with a cowboy hat, although she wasn’t there when we were. The place seemed to be popular with both tourists and locals, although the locals were all getting takeout. There were two guided food stall tours when we were there. It was tender braised pork leg in a sweet soy-flavored gravy, served with rice and a hard-boiled egg, pickled mustard greens, and a spicy vinegar sauce on the side.

They were busy deboning and chopping up the meat.

For takeout everything was bagged separately.

Back home I looked at various recipes online, such as Hot Thai Kitchen, Simply Suwanee, and ThaiCookbook.TV. I noticed that all of these recipes served the dish with shii take mushrooms and fresh greens, which were not included in the version I had in Thailand. Of course I could not resist to prepare a sous vide version to ensure perfectly cooked meat, but also to keep more flavor in the meat (rather than transferring most of the meat flavor into the gravy). This turned out great and is wonderful as simple comfort food.

Ingredients

Serves 4

• 1.3 kilos (3 lbs) pork hock with rind
• 2 Tbsp light soy sauce (preferably Thai)
• 1 Tbsp dark soy sauce (preferably Thai)
• 2 Tbsp oyster sauce (preferably Thai)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 38 grams (3 Tbsp) palm sugar, minced
• 3 to 4 coriander roots (substitute with coriander stems or omit if not available), chopped
• 2 to 3 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1/2 tsp white peppercorns
• 5 slices galangal, chopped
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 star anise
• 1 tsp five spice powder
• 8 dried shii take mushrooms
• vegetable oil

For the sauce

• 2 coriander roots
• 2 garlic cloves
• 2 green chillies (I used 1 jalapeño and 1 rawit)
• 60 ml (1/4 cup) distilled white vinegar
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1/8 tsp salt

To serve

• 400 grams (.9 lbs) fresh bok choy or other leafy greens
• 400 grams (.9 lbs) drained and pickled mustard greens, homemade or store-bought
• 4 medium boiled eggs
• 400 grams (2 cups) jasmin rice
• 8 shii take mushrooms (fresh or from above)
• meat, skin, and gravy from above

Instructions

Make sure to burn away any hair on the pork hocks if your butcher hasn’t already done so.

Rub the pork hocks with vegetable oil and brown them in 2 tablespoons of oil in a wok on all sides.

Allow the seared pork hocks to cool off. Do not discard the oil in the wok.

Chop 38 grams of palm sugar.

Chop 3 to 4 coriander roots, 2 to 3 garlic cloves, and 5 slices galangal. Put them in a mortar, together with 1/2 tsp white peppercorns.

Use a pestle to pound this into a coarse paste.

Add the paste to the wok, together with 1 cinnamon stick and 1 star anise. Stir fry for a minute, adding a bit more vegetable oil if needed.

Turn off the heat, and add 2 Tbsp light soy sauce, 1 Tbsp dark soy sauce, 2 Tbsp oyster sauce, 1 tsp five spice powder, 1/2 tsp table salt, and the minced palm sugar.

Stir until everything has been mixed well and the sugar has melted, using a bit of heat as needed. Allow this to cool off.

Vacuum seal the pork hocks with the spice mixture. If you do not own a vacuum machine with a chamber, it may be easier to use a ziplock bag and the water displacement method.

Allow the pork hocks to marinate in the refrigerator overnight, then cook them sous vide for 24 hours at 74C/165F, or 48 hours at 68C/155F. If you are in a hurry, you could skip the marinating step and go for the 24 hours at 74C/165F.

Pour the liquid from the bag (including the cinnamon stick and star anise) into a stockpot or pressure cooker. Then take the meat out of the bag, and allow it to cool a bit so you won’t burn your fingers.

Separate the nice meat from the skin, bones, fat, and anything else that doesn’t look like nice pink meat.

Reserve the meat, and place everything else into the stock pot or pressure cooker.

Add 1 litre (4 cups) of water, and 8 dried shii take mushrooms. The water should be enough to barely cover everything. Add a bit more if needed.

Bring to pressure and pressure cook for 1.5 hours, or cover, bring to a boil, and simmer for 3 hours. This will extrac the flavor and gelatin from the skin, bones, spices, and shii take mushrooms, to get a great gravy.

In the meantime, chop the nice meat, and refrigerate it.

Sieve the gravy.

Reserve the skin and shii take mushrooms, and discard the remaining solids.

To make the sauce, chop 2 coriander roots, 2 garlic cloves, and 1 chillies.

Put them in mortar together with 1/2 teaspoon sugar and 1/8 teaspoon salt, then pound until quite smooth.

Add 60 ml of white distilled vinegar and stir well.

Allow the flavor of the sauce to develop for at least half an hour (or longer, in the refrigerator).

Everything up to this point can be prepared in advance.

To finish the dish, prepare all the ingredients.

• Boil the eggs for about 8 minutes, then chill them in cold water, and peel them.
• Steam the jasmin rice.
• Separate the mustard greens into leaves and stalks.
• Separate the bok choy into leaves and stalks. Chop the leaves very coarsely and the stalks into smaller pieces.
• Slice the shii take mushrooms (fresh or from the gravy), or leave them whole if you like.

Bring the stock to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer.

Cook the mustard greens, and bok choy in the gravy, covered, until they are tender to your liking. The stems will take longer (20 minutes for mustard greens, 10 minutes for bok choy) then the leaves (just a couple of minutes).

If you want to serve everything separately like I did, cook them one by one, take them out with a strainer, and reheat them in the microwave just before serving.

Cook the peeled eggs for about 10 minutes at the end (do not reheat them in a microwave).

Add the (nice) meat last, and do not allow the gravy to boil, as that would dry out the meat (and destroy the juiciness you so carefully maintained using sous vide to cook the meat).

Serve the meat, skin, mustard greens, bok choy, and egg with the rice on preheated plates, and serve the sauce on the side.

Wine pairing

Thai food is not ideally suited to pair wine with, but it is possible to find wines that will go well with this dish. This can be a white wine with some body and a bit of residual sugar, like a Pinot Gris from Alsace or a Viognier from the Rhône Valley. We enjoyed it with an almost dry Pedro Ximénez (so not the dark brown syrupy dessert wine, although made from the same grape variety). For a red it should not be tannic and a bit jammy, like a riper style Californian Pinot Noir or an Italian red made with appassimento (grapes dried before wine making).