Pomelo Skin

Pomelos ... I love the fruit. Since discovering chinese grocery delivery, I've been ordering and eating them. I've been feeling nostagic every time I eat them though, remembering how I used to help my grandma makes this dish with the skin (when I was in elementary school). I wasn't able to find any recipes for it online, or in any of the cookbooks (Chinese or otherwise). So this year, I decided to kind of "wing" it based on memory. Furtunately, there are some youtube videos of people making it around, but none of them are quite like I remembered. It seems to be a cantonese dish since all the youtube videos of it are in Cantonese. A few of the dishes were vegetarian, I decided to pass those by. I have also decided to forego the preserved pork belly and other preserved meats since I didn't really care for them all that much and just use lap cheng (chinese sausage) only. A couple of the videos used shrimp roe and this is not an item that's available for purchase, so I decided to use and make a shrimp broth instead (more on this later). I remember burning the outer part of the pomelo skin to be soaked and scraped off in water. Since I don't have a gas stove, I used my creme brulee torch instead. Less than half a skin later, I ran out of butane fuel in it and I just scraped off the outer layer with a grater instead. After soaking and wringing them out and changing the soaking water on a daily basis for several days, they were finally ready to be cooked. They were cut up into smaller pieces and blanched in water and boiled for half an hour. The shrimp broth was prepared using shrimp shells that I have saved from a week ago (Christmas dinner), roasted in my toaster oven to intensify flavor). A quick boil and simmer along with a couple of star anis and chinese pepper corn later, I very flavorful shrimp broth was ready. The pomelo skins were scooped out and water squeezed out of them once again. I threw some spare rib pieces in the liquid to do a quick blanch and scooped them out. In a large (deep-ish) pan, add in the spare ribs, add a mixture of oyster sauce, dark and light soy sauce, cooking wine, a couple of tsp of sugar. Add pomelo skin pieces Add shrimp broth Add sliced lap cheng (optional) add sliced shitake mushrooms Let it simmer for roughly 20 minutes, add a bit of sesame oil. Stir it up and the dish is ready to be served. I don't quite remember how it was supposed to taste all that much, but I'm pretty sure this is about as authentic as I'm going to be able to get. I gave some to my aunt to taste and she seems to be able to recognize the taste (I guess that's a good thing). I still have a bunch of the simmering liquid left and a few pomelos I have not consumed yet. I will probably make it one more time. We'll see if this turns into a regular thing. It's a simple dish but the prep is kind of time consuming.