Pork curry with green chillies and tamarind ...

With Gus away at the SE Field Days at Lucindale, I had all day to prepare dinner...

 

But first, I sat watching YouTube videos on crochet stitches (single and double crochet) while also watching last Sunday's ep of Downton Abbey.

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I thought a cracking Rick Stein curry would be the go!

I find curries never quite look like the pictures in recipe books....

I started preparing the ingredients - dry frying black mustard seeds, cumin seeds, cloves, cinnamon stick, peppercorns and turmeric....

Heat gently until aromatic, see the smoke haze rising?

Once cooled, I whizzed it in my Bellini (bullet style) blender to a fine powder. Done.

Next, the recipe said to process 6 (!) green chillies, 6 large shallots (not the spring onion type)...

...but like these...plus 20 (what the? ...) cloves of garlic (or 100gms). That is a whole lotta garlic! And 30gms of ginger.

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I made the executive decision to use 3 chillies and I weighed the garlic and 12 large cloves equalled 100gms. I whizzed it and made the green paste, above. Done.

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Next, I made flash pickled onion and pineapple salad...I used my mandolin to quickly and finely slice a red onion....

...chopped half a fresh pineapple into small chunks (I was disappointed the pineapple wasn't sweeter)... :(

I pickled the onion with white wine vinegar and sugar for 1 hour then drained off the liquid, added the pineapple and lots of fresh coriander. Done.

I find a good raita cools any over hot curry down and adds nice flavour to the meal. Using 2 Lebanese cucumbers, halve them lengthways and scoop out seeds then grate. Toss cukes with salt and leave to drain in a sieve for 30 minutes. Mix drained cucumber with 275gms natural yoghurt, caster sugar, fresh mint leaves, ground black pepper and juice of half a fresh lime juice. This recipe said 1/2 teaspoon of caster sugar - I put more like a tablespoon! My usual recipe also has 1 teaspoon of ground cumin so that went in too. Very good!

The recipe said to use shoulder of pork but of course in my small country town, that is not always (or hardly ever) available. I bought a small leg of pork and diced it up...

I stir fried it off in a hot pan but it started to stew! Buggerit!

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I continued on, adding the chilli paste then the spice mix and some water to cover...

I had my cool cat apron on, keeping me well covered from splatters...

These aprons are beautifully handmade/sewn and all Australian - I love it!

http://www.retrobutterfly.com/179942739/category/57654/block-aprons

The last addition to the curry after it had simmered for quite a while and just before serving - more garlic and green chilli (again I cut back the 3 chillies to 1 and 5 cloves to 2), some tamarind paste dissolved in hot water and ground coriander.

We are on the home stretch!

All plated up and ready to go!

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I'm glad I started prepping all of this at 3.30pm - its not a dish to start cooking at 5pm!

Luckily, I found 2 pieces of homemade naan bread in the freezer (score)!

Verdict - not as flavoursome as I would have hoped but all together a nice dish. Gus is having leftovers today so it will be interesting to see how the flavour develops...

Cheers - Joolz xx

 

Posted by Joolz with Blogsy