Mirin and brown sugar would make it too sweet for my taste.

Maybe hold the brown sugar and use mirin in its place? Never seen anything Asian with brown sugar. I watched my Chinese mother in law cook for 35 years and I never saw her put white sugar, let alone brown sugar, in any of her Chinese dishes.....

I've been all over Asia ('cept China) and they all cook differently. We could hunt down the origin of this recipe and see if sugar was added in the original recipe!

I should have worded my original post differently. I copied the recipe from my forum to share with others here. What I meant when I said "This took me several attempts to figure out" would have been interpreted differently if readers here saw what I posted there. I made several attempts from recipes I found online. It took extensive searching but I found one that worked and executed it to the best of my ability. What I wrote here was misleading because of that. I did not intend to lie to the members here, and I apologize to those who thought I created the recipe from taste which I mistakenly inferred. I did not mean to be misleading, or dishonest.

Lan- No worries! I am going to make this recipe using a wild boar loin I have in the freezer... I don't think you were trying to mislead anyone. The recipe looks great...

Thanks mark46th. Can't wait to see how yours turns out!

Any recipe can be changed (and should be) to suit the individual preparing it. All chefs do it all the time! In other words don't sweat the small stuff. I made it and it was great.