Suon Ram Man from Vietnam

Suon Ram Man are caramelised pork ribs.  Vietnamese food is a favourite of mine.  The flavour combinations go so well together.  Our holiday in Vietnam was spent on trying to decide what delicious traditional meal to try next.  It was always hard to choose but I do remember the sticky caramelised pork ribs as being a winner.  The Vietnamese sometimes use coconut water instead of normal water.  Just a warning, the caramelised sugar gets seriously hot so make sure you don't get any on your skin as you can burn yourself pretty badly.

1kg pork ribs cut into pieces
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons cooking oil
1 cup white sugar
1 onion finely chopped
3 cloves garlic finely chopped
1/2 capsicum finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 spring onion finely chopped for garnishing
Put the water and rib pieces into a pot and bring to the boil.  Let it boil for about 5 minutes.  In a hot wok, put in the cooking oil and sugar.  Allow the sugar to caramelise stirring all the time so that it doesn't catch on the bottom of the pot and start to burn.  Burnt sugar tastes bitter so you really want to avoid that.  When the sugar has completely melted and is a light-brown colour, add in the pork rib pieces, onion, garlic, capsicum, salt, pepper, ginger, chili powder and soy sauce.  Mix everything together so that the pork ribs are completely coated in the caramelised sugar.  Let the pork ribs brown slightly.  Add in the water the pork ribs were boiled in.  Reduce the heat and allow the rib pieces to simmer in the liquid for 30 minutes.  Drizzle the sesame oil over the ribs and increase the heat slightly, cooking the ribs for a further 5 minutes.  Serve with rice.  Garnish with the finely chopped spring onion.
Cindy Vine is a South African currently living and working in Kyiv in Ukraine. She is the author of Hush Baby, Defective, C U@ 8, Not Telling and The Case of Billy B. All her books are available on Amazon in both print and Kindle format. http://cindyvine.com