I recently received the following email from my dad:
“It dawned upon me that your passion for bacon may have initially began at the Hong Kong Restaurant with Pork & Seeds!”
There is probably some truth to that. My brothers and I were totally obsessed with pork and seeds as kids (something we still enjoy as adults).
Before I go any further, I guess I should explain the “pork and seeds” concept for those who don’t know. This Chinese dish basically consists of roasted pork loin that has been marinated in a sweet sauce comprised of some combination of sugar, soy sauce, and hoisin sauce. The meat is then sliced and served warm or cold along with bowls of hot mustard and sesame seeds. You dip the slices of pork in the mustard and then in the seeds and, tada, you have a super tasty appetizer. Here’s a link to a recipe.
My mom doesn’t like Chinese food, so the only time we were able to eat pork and seeds as kids was on the rare occasion that she was out of town and dad was in charge of dinner. Which meant piling into the Econoline van and heading to the local Chinese buffet where we would gorge ourselves on pork and seeds, fried rice, and egg rolls. The feeding frenzy usually involved multiple trips to the buffet that could make a pack of feasting hyenas look civilized.
So as I began to write this blog entry, I did a Google search for “pork and seeds” to see what I might find. I was shocked when only 31 results were returned, and almost all of them were related to Idaho or nearby states. Then I began to think about it some more and realized that I don’t think I’ve ever eaten pork and seeds outside of Idaho. At least not in the form I’m familiar with.
There are a lot of Asian dishes that involve pork and sesame seeds, but the version that involves dipping slices of pork in hot mustard and sesame seeds seems to be less common outside of the Northwest. If so, the rest of the country is missing out!