You can’t really have Chinese cooking (and especially Hunan cuisine) without pork.

Add green chile peppers, and you have the two major ingredients for this dish.

Now, where I say that it takes as much chilli as there is meat, the last time I cooked this, my wife asked me why I used so little chilli.

So, I guess it’s obvious enough that this is a recipe where it is essential to have the right kind of chile pepper for the dish, a Chinese pepper that is of a satisfyingly dark green (for the color) and of a nice heat (for the pungency) to give the aroma the meal should have:

Recipe for Farmer’s Style Fried Pork (Nongjia Chaorou)

(for 2 persons, recommended as one of 2-3 dishes)

Ingredients:

1 small bowl of pork belly (~250 grams / 10 ounces)
1 small bowl green chile pepper
Garlic to taste, ~10 cloves

Oil for the pan; salt.

Preparation:

Cut meat into pieces: if there are ribs in there, they need to be removed, but cartilage can stay; skin definitely stays. The pieces should be rather small, the 2-3 fingers’ thickness of the pork belly in length, 1 finger in width, half a finger thick. (Good measuring instrument?… But please don’t cut yourself.)

Start frying the meat in hot oil.

Cut the chile peppers into slices; peel and crush the garlic (or leave it whole, if you want it like that).

Add the chile pepper to the meat, fry, add the garlic and fry more. The meat should be/get browned and somewhat crispy, the chilli should be fried but not burned, the garlic may be browned but doesn’t have to be.

Salt and serve.