For those who love both poetry and pork, the recitation and the recipe, Dongpo Rou's silken layers hold a potent blend of both. This famous dish of Hangzhou, a city tucked near where the Qiantang River spills into the Yangtze Delta of eastern China, is named for its creator, the celebrated Chinese poet, Su Shi. Also known as Su Dongpo, he gave his name to the much-loved dish.

Stories are still told of how he forgot his simmering pork while playing chess or of the misunderstanding among his servants when he called for pork with wine. He was thinking a nice cup of spirits; they were thinking boozy stew. I like to think that while the pork belly simmered gently in wine and soy sauce and spices, the poet composed and ink-brushed and recited an afternoon's worth of verse.

Nicole Mones has written a lovely essay about the lingering ties between the poetry and the pork. Since this is Bay Area Bites and not Bay Area Chapbook, I will let other sites cover Chinese poetry. The recipe, however, is most definitely within our domain.

While teaching a writing class several years ago, I had the pleasure of having two students who were in the middle of their own dongpo rou studies. Class discussions about literary metaphors and run-on sentences quickly gave way to debates about judging slabs of pork belly and the precise ratio of wine to soy sauce and which spices should absolutely not be omitted. A friend's father generously walked me through his own recipe a year later. And then this year, after listening to Martin Yan, Olivia Wu, Albert Cheng, Nicole Mones, and Alex Ong rhapsodize about the dish during a panel discussion at the Chinese Culture Center, I realized it was time to embark on my own journey.

Many a Chinese food lover will name dongpo rou among the finest, most difficult, most sublime and most purely enjoyable of classic dishes. I know cooks who have dedicated years to perfecting it in their own kitchens and still bemoan the challenge of coaxing that alchemical melting of the pork's layers of fat and lean, meat and skin. My own explorations have just begun, but like any still-fresh convert, I can't stop talking about my newfound joy. It's like eating pork custard that melts on your tongue. It's like swallowing savory silk. It's what pork will taste like in heaven. (And now you know why I'm not a poet.)

I can't claim native expertise, nor can I say I have settled on my own final, best recipe. But, damn, this stuff is good!

DONGPO ROU

Ingredients
• 2 to 3 pounds of finest quality pork belly
• Half a stick of Chinese golden sugar, or 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 4 scallions, white part only
• 3 thick slices ginger
• 6 whole star anise
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 teaspoon fennel seeds
• 2 to 3 cups chinese wine (I use Shaoxing rice wine aged 8 years)
• 1/2 to 1 cup stock or water
• 3 to 4 tablespoons light soy sauce, plus more if needed

Preparation
1. Check the skin of the pork belly to be sure all hairs are removed. Tweezers are good for this. Cut cubes that are 2-1/2 by 2-1/2 inches and tie with fresh straw or kitchen string. Blanch in boiling water for 2 minutes; drain.

2. In a heavy pot big enough to hold the pork in a single layer, skin-side up, combine the pork packets, sugar, fresh aromatics and dried spices. Pour in enough rice wine to come up two-thirds on the sides of the pork, then add enough stock or water to just cover the skin. Drizzle in soy sauce.

3. Bring to a gentle simmer, reduce heat until the liquid ripples with a bare shiver, cover tightly and then leave the kitchen for a few hours. Stay close, though, to check that the liquid never boils. Taste one or twice to adjust sweet and salty flavors, but otherwise, it's a matter of trusting the magical effects of time and moisture on the pork and its flavorings. I like to float a round of parchment paper on the surface of the liquid to help cover the meat and fat evenly. If you're in a hurry, you can stop the cooking at 1 1/2 hours, but it won't be as good as when you have waited for 4 hours.

4. Remove the pan from the heat and let the pork cool in its liquid. For the best results, I like to refrigerate overnight to remove excess fat that floats to the top. If done well, though, you'll be surprised by how little fat comes off into the sauce.

5. Set up a steamer over your wok, or place a shallow dish in a large pot. Arrange the pork in a bowl or deep platter with its liquid, which after refrigerating has become a deeply colored, sparkling pork aspic. Steam for one hour. If desired, reduce the sauce by boiling it separately.

6. Serve the pork cubes in small, individual bowls with the sauce spooned over and accompanied with lots of white rice.

Nicole Mones reads an excerpt from The Last Chinese Chef on KQED's Writer's Block.

The Last Chinese Chef chronicles food writer, Maggie McElroy's journey to China one year after the untimely death of her husband. A paternity claim has been filed against her husband's estate and the question surfaces whether her husband fathered a child while he was working in Beijing. While Maggie plans her China trip to unravel the truth about her husband she is offered the opportunity to profile a rising star chef, Sam Liang. This culinary distraction turns into a life-changing healing experience.

Nicole Mones is the author of the award winning novel Lost in Translation and A Cup of Light. Since 1999 Mones has written about Chinese food for Gourmet magazine, covering the food scene in Beijing, Shanghai, and the San Gabriel Valley, east of Los Angeles. Her work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post.

Here are two recipes with associated excerpts from The Last Chinese Chef:

Beggar's Chicken
When Wu Xunqu, chief chef at Lou Wai Lou, divulged this recipe, he cautioned that it was most but not all of the recipe, since he had a few secret ingredients he wanted to keep to himself. He also insisted on starting with the life of the chicken. This is one of the poultry cooking secrets of Chinese haute cuisine: the last two weeks of a chicken's life must be spent outdoors, running free.

Ingredients & Preparation
1. At home, however, you may start with a whole chicken, cleaned, and 4-6 whole lotus leaves, soaked 20 minutes in warm water.

2. Create 3-4 Cups of concentrated soup broth from pork bone, beef bone, ham, chicken feet, onion, ginger, meiling soy sauce (it's a tiny bit sour).

3. When cool, combine with rice wine, starch powder, white pepper, salt, and a little soy. Marinate chicken 30 minutes.

4. Remove the chicken to wrap in soaked lotus leaves, first pouring over and inside one cup of the marinade (fortified with extra slivered ham, other cooked meats left from the soup, and/or soaked, slivered mushrooms).

5. Follow a layer of lotus with a layer of parchment and then another layer of lotus. Use plastic style baking bags and a foil wrap to create a tight seal.

6. Roast at 400 degrees for 1/2 hour, then at 350 degrees for up to 3 1/2 hours, depending on the bird's size and age.

-courtesy Wu Xunqu

Excerpt about Beggar's Chicken from The Last Chinese Chef:

"Then the beggar's chicken. It looked at first like a foil-wrapped whole bird, but he undid it, folded back layers of crinkly baking bags, and broke the seal on a tight molded wrap of lotus leaves. A magnificently herbed chicken aroma rushed into the air. Maggie couldn't wait. She picked up a mouthful of chicken that fell away from the carcass and into her chopsticks at a touch. It was moist and dense with profound flavor, the good nourishment of chicken, first marinated,then spiked with the bits of aromatic vegetable and salt-cured ham which had been stuffed in the cavity and were now all over the bird. Shot through everything was the pungent musk of the lotus leaf. At once she knew she should write about this place. She should give this recipe, catch the glorious bustle of this restaurant, describe these tall windows looking over the lake and virgin green hills beyond."

Pork Spare Ribs in Lotus Leaf
Serves 4

Ingredients
1 lb pork spare ribs
2 dried lotus leaves
rice powder scented with 5-spice

Seasonings
2 Tablespoons chopped scallion
1 Tablespoons chopped ginger
1 Tablespoon each soy sauce, oil, sugar, soybean paste
1/2 Tablespoon sesame oil

Preparation
1. Cut spare ribs into pieces 1 1/2 inch wide, 2 inches long, then marinate in seasonings 1/2 hour.

2. Cut lotus leaves into eight pieces and soak in hot water 20 minutes.

3. Remove marinated ribs and discard scallion and ginger.

4. Add rice powder and thoroughly mix with rib pieces.

5. Divide ribs into eight small portions.

6. Place each on a soaked lotus leaf, fold and roll to make a package.

7. Place with the smooth side down in a bowl or deep plate.

8. Steam over high heat for two hours until tender.

9. Put a serving plate face down over the bowl and turn over.

Excerpt about Pork Spare Ribs in Lotus Leaf from The Last Chinese Chef:

"Inside the leaves, the rib meat came away under their chopsticks, rich and lean and long-cooked with a soft crust of scented rice powder. Underneath, the darker, more complicated flavor of the meat, the marrow, and the aromatics. Maggie thought it was
wonderful. She ate everything except the rib bones, which she nibbled clean and folded back up, polished, inside the leaf. She wished she could lick the leaf, it was so good.
But Sam, watching Uncle Xie's face, said, 'You think the scallion and ginger are too strong.'
'This is a dish of refinement,' said Xie. 'Sophistication and subtlety are what is most important, not the peaks of flavor. Every flavor must be a play on texture, while every texture suggests a flavor. You can be rustic, but never coarse. Always believe in the intelligence of the diner. Always reward them with subtlety.'"

Recipes for Beggar's Chicken and Pork Spare Ribs in Lotus Leaf (pdf)