Braised sea cucumber and pork rib

Hello all. I have been away from blogging for a very long time as my last post was 6 months ago. I am still cooking but nothing really fancy. Just the usual stuff that I had written before and the daily quick meal. Maybe one day I shall blog about how to prepare meal in 40 minutes. That's the time I have to get stuff ready and clean up before tending to my very demanding children. I love them to bits and the love me so much that they like me to be around all the times. So I need to be super efficient in everything that I do at home.

This dish is out of the ordinary food that I cook everyday. I made this in the past long weekend which inclusive of weekend, Labor Day and replacement Wesak Day. Why it's out of ordinary is that I was using sea cucumber and I never cook with this sea creature before. My mother in law came 2 weeks ago and brought along some sea cucumber with her. She was an awesome lady, she cleaned them up and cooked for us and left a few more in freezer for me to use later. So I took them out and cooked for our dinner on Saturday.

I used claypot to cook this. Ingredients required:

A
300g pork ribs
3 pieces of sea cucumbers (post clean up) cut into smaller strips
4 dried shitake mushrooms soaked and cut into thick slices
2 hard boiled eggs (peeled)
2 shallots, minced
2 bowls water
3  tablespoon cooking oil

B
2 star anise
1 teaspoon of five spice powder
5 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon dark soy sauce
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
1/2 teaspoon of salt

First heat up 3 tablespoon of cooking oil. Saute shallots till fragrant.  Then stir in the pork and brown them a bit. Put the mushroom in and stir a while more. Before the pork burnt up, pour 1 bowl of water. Add in ingredients B and turn up the heat and let the mixture simmer.

After they simmer for about 5 minutes, add in remaining water, sea cucumber and eggs. Cover up the pot and slowly cook it for about 2 hours. Before serving taste and see if you need extra salt. Some soy sauce are salty enough that you do no need to top up.

Serve hot with rice. Enjoy!