Pork Spare Ribs in Peking Sauce

I did like the Spare Ribs in Peking Sauce during my several years of living in Canton.  So when I promised children they would have Chinese that night, I thought I might do it again, at lease the girls might like it.

According to my knowledge, this is probably a Cantonese dish, not a "Peking" dish.  I could be wrong.  I haven't been back to Canton or Hong Kong for 17 years, so memories can be very very vague as how spare ribs in Peking sauce tasted over there.  That does remind me that I will organise a trip of the whole family to South Eastern Asia, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong and maybe Vietnam, some day....  well, after our trip to U.S, that was the top of the list to do now, I promised my son Disney Land when he was 5, and now he's nearly 11!

Anyway, back to the spare ribs.  There are a couple of different version of Spare Ribs in Peking Sauce in the Cantonese restaurants here in Melbourne, some of them closer to the flavours I rememberred, some not so close. 

Anyway, a while back I googled some Chinese recipes and got a copy some where, but as I was promising kids Chinese for dinner, I couldn't even find where I put all my internet copy recipes.

So according to what I rememberred, this is how I do it:

500g pork spare ribs, in small chunks.
1 heap tbsp tomato paste
2 tbsp dark soy paste (I found it in an Asian grocery shop, the shop owner told me it's like dark soy sauce, thicker, and a bit sweeter, so I guess it's good to use in marinate sauce)
1 tsp ground ginger powder
2 tbsp shaoxin wine or any Chinese rice wine or Sherry
1 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp plain flour
2 Asian shallots, sliced
2 cloves of garlic, crushed.
1 small bunch of spring onions Chopped into 1" length
1 capsicum
lot of vegetable oil, I normally use Canola - enough to cover the bottom of the frying utensil, for about 0.5" or 1".

Mix the marinate sauce at least 3 hours prior cooking, using the rice wine, tomato paste, soy paste, sugar and ginger powder, mix it with the spare ribs, leave in fridge.

When it's time to cook, take spare ribs out of the marinate, keep the marinate as it will be used later for the sauce, coat the pork with flour well.

Heat up oil in a deep pan, or wok (I hardly use my wok although I do have one) until it's hot enough for deep frying.  Place the pork in the pan, it's not exactly deep frying this time for me as I did it in a big batch, but I did have enough oil to cover the ribs. Turn so all sides will be fried properly if not using the deep frier.  Once almost cooked, take the spare ribs out, drain oil and keep aside.

Take access amount of oil out, leave about 2 tbsp worth of oil in pan, quickly brown the garlic and Asian shallots, stir in the capsicum, after it's softenned a bit, return pork back to pan.  Put the remaining marinate back to pan and coat the meat and vegetables, add a splash of water.  Add spring onion, give it another stir to release the aroma of the spring onion, and then take it out of the pan, it's ready to be served and the pork should be coated with sauce, but still retain some crispiness from deep frying.