蒜泥白肉 (Pork belly slices with garlic sauce)

Protein:
1 lbs pork belly

Sauce:
3 TB soy sauce
2-4 TB chili oil
6 cloves garlic, minced
.5 teaspoon Chinese black vinegar
.25 teaspoon raw rice wine
1 teaspoon Korean red pepper paste

-This dish is mainly about the sauce.  You can substitute a leaner meat and it will taste pretty good: I like using a roasted pork loin and calling the dish 蒜泥白人 (because of the western style meat preparation, not because it's made out of Caucasians).  Using pork belly is traditional, of course, and it adds a lot of chewy fatness.  The vinegar is there to help take the edge of the raw garlic and give just a bit of acid so that the fat feel from the oil and pork fat isn't so overwhelming.  The rice wine is present to help make the sauce pop- I have no idea why it does that, but it just kind of works.
 
-Prepare the pork belly.  You can brine it if you want the meat to be juicier.  Cook it however you like: traditionally it's boiled until medium done (about 150 degrees final temp) which is about 30 minutes for a 1 pound belly.  If it's not brined, boil it in salted water with a slice of ginger to help take off the porky smell.  I've been experimenting with a combo of tea smoking and then pressure steaming the meat: I'll update as more data becomes available.  Whatever cooking method you choose, make sure it's wet so that the fat and the skin become reasonably tender.  When the pork is done, chill it in the fridge to make it easier to slice.

-Slice the meat THIN.  If my knives are dull and I haven't had time to send them to the sharpener, I just don't make this until I do.  Don't bother trying without a good knife.  Practice.  This is the hardest part of the dish.  You can also chill the meat in the freezer for 20 minutes to make it firmer.  At fancier restaurants, the meat is sliced from a semi-frozen block so thin that it naturally curves into rolls, which is awesome, but it doesn't change the flavor of the dish.  I've also heard that if you have a good mandoline, you can run the meat through that, but I've never got that to work (I have a super benriner- maybe it would work if I got my blade sharpened professionally?).  Arrange the slices such that you can spoon the sauce over without too much of a hassle.

-Mix the garlic with the vinegar and rice wine.  Whisk in the korean pepper paste- it's main function here is as an emulsifier that blends in with the other ingredients, so if it bothers you to see it in a Sichuan dish you can take it out.  Whisk in the chili oil.  If you like the "browner" version, just use 2 TB of chili oil, but if you want the flaming red version that's spicier, use 4 TB.  Whisk in the soy sauce last.  If you brined the pork belly, you can omit the soy sauce or use less depending on how salty you want the dish.  Emulsifying the sauce is MUCH easier if the chili oil is chilled because the viscosity will be much higher.  Note: you probably want to serve this soon since the emulsion breaks quite readily at room temperature.

Baconara (a.k.a no cheese carbonara)

MAJOR UPDATE: I think by this time I've made this with something like 100 lbs of bacon/pasta.  Here's the deal: the original method of emulsifying the sauce is superior to every other trick I have tried to do.  If you really want to serve the yolks separately, you will need to do the blended cooked white trick detailed in the 2.0 post.

HOWEVER, the original way of thickening the sauce, I have now come to realize, is far superior in terms of flavor and texture.  Why is this?  Yolks thicken before actually setting, whites don't.  So, it turns out just mixing all the eggs together is superior.  And last time I timed myself, it was ready to serve in 20 minutes- easier, faster, and tastier all at the same time.  How 'bout that!

• 1 lbs. spaghetti or linguine (fettucine is pushing it, though it's ok.  Thinner pastas don't lend themselves to surviving the thickening step below, but if you're really awesome at thin pasta, maybe you can succeed where I failed.)
• 6 eggs
• 1 lbs. bacon
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 TB apple cider vinegar, divided
• 1 TB maple syrup
• .5C frozen peas
• ~1 tablespoon coarse ground black pepper
• ~1 tablespoon kosher salt (DCK) +  more to taste

-Boil salted water for the pasta.  Time the dish so that the sauce is ready before the time the pasta should be finished.
-Cut the bacon into 1" long segments (or eighth-strip lengths).
-Lightly beat eggs with 1 TB of the vinegar, the maple syrup, and the salt.
-Cook the bacon on high heat till you get some crispiness and at least a quarter cup of fat: you don't need to render ALL the fat (suppose you could if you wanted to), but you do want there to be some crunch to the bacon.  Reserve the cooked bacon.
-Add the black pepper to the bacon grease and cook until very fragrant, about a minute.  Add the garlic and cook for another 30 seconds or until fragrant, then remove from heat.  You will probably have browned bits on the bottom of your pan: use the remaining 1TB apple cider vinegar to deglaze the pan while it's still hot.  If necessary, add pasta water 1 TB at a time until all the browned bits are deglazed, then turn off the heat. 
-Once the fond from the previous step cools down, add it to the eggs.  Beat the egg mixture over a double boiler, whisking constantly, until it becomes very thick.
-Once the pasta is al dente, drain it and allow it to cool for about a minute.  Yes, it may get a little clumpy at this point, but it's to decrease risk of setting the eggs.  After it's no longer steaming, add it to the sauce mixture and toss to coat.  Add pasta water 1 tb at a time if necessary to loosen the sauce.  Or, if becomes too thin from the extra water, swirl the whole deal, noodles and all, over a double boiler until the sauce is sufficiently saucy.

-Add the peas at the very end to get them defrosted (you don't really want to cook them or the texture will be ruined).
-Top with the crispy bacon and serve.

Signs you did things right:
-sauce is homogenous without any chunks of cooked egg
-sauce is actually a sauce and has not set into flexible insulative shielding on each of your noodles
-sauce is thick enough that it gets picked up by your noodles (if the sauce "flows off" like a thinner gravy, you should have thickened the whites longer)
-you can taste subtle sweetness from the yolks (the syrup's sweetness will largely be nullified by the vinegar's acid).  If you don't taste this, you overcooked the yolks.
-there should be back-of-the-throat spiciness from the black pepper and an overall aroma of black pepper and garlic (otherwise you undercooked the pepper, overcooked the garlic, tried to use pre-ground pepper, or something of that sort)
-peas are sweet, warm, and crisp
-bacon's crispiness adds pleasant textural variation