Vietnamese Char Sui Pulled Pork, with Japanese Pickled Cucumber, Pickled Galangal, and Red Cabbage Asian Slaw

I'd like to share with you my Vietnamese Char Sui Pulled Pork recipe which we cooked a couple of nights ago and it was amazingly delicious, with the Char Sui Sauce being the secret ingredient. The flavours and textures of the Japanese Pickled Cucumber, the Pickled Ginger and a Red Cabbage Asian slaw married perfectly with the flavours of the Pork and the sauce.

Homemade Galangal Pickle

Homemade Galangal Pickle  (recipe)

Galangal Pickle

Galangal pickle, homemade, and a luscious salmon pink colour, as I had hoped. It has taken four hours concocting this Asian delicacy, but well worth it. It takes three hours down time though waiting for the galangal to tenderise in the salt, while you can be doing other things, and the rest is the actual bottling and cooking  time. This recipe is for long-term pickles that will keep in your pantry for at least 12 months. As you can see, this recipe, when almost doubled makes 2 large jars of pickle and around 8 large roots were needed for that amount. An essential piece of equipment for this pickle is a mandolin, as the galangal needs to be sliced paper thin. This can only be achieved on the freshest, tenderest sections or knobs of the root. You will know that the galangal isn't tender enough when the mandolin refuses to slice it. This is my first batch, and I am so pleased with it that I will be making more, however because it will also make great gifts, and is somewhat of a delicacy, it should be packaged in small jars. A little bit goes a long way.