It’s winter and the perfect time to be eating red meat, and spicy food. My favourite combination being pork vindaloo with steamed rice. It’s actually one of the easiest dishes to make, but you just need to take the trouble to roast and grind all the spices. Don’t take shortcuts and use ready-made powder, it just won’t taste the same. This is the recipe which I like the most, but every family has their own vindaloo recipe – some more tangy, others more spicy, all of them fabulous.
I usually buy my pork from Pigpo in Jorbagh market, but have lately found this fabulous pork chap in INA market. Make sure you choose pork shoulder with a nice layer of fat. Get them to remove the skin though as it just gets tough in a curry. I’m a little under the weather, so I’m sticking to some healthy and hearty chicken stew with root vegetables, but go pick up some yummy pork, cook and enjoy the vindaloo and thank me later.
PORK VINDALOO
• 1 kg pork – with the fat on, but the skin off
• ½ cup malt vinegar – not synthetic vinegar
• 2 tbsp freshly ground ginger-garlic paste
• 2 tsp dried red chilis (ground)
• 1 tsp coriander (roasted and ground)
• 1 tsp cumin (roasted and ground)
• 5 cloves (roasted and ground)
• 5 green cardamoms (roasted and ground)
• 6-inch piece cinnamon (roasted and ground)
• Salt to taste
• Mustard oil
• 3 bay leaves
• 4-5 peppercorns
Marinade the pork in the vinegar and salt and all the spices for as long as possible. I like to marinade it for almost 24 hours. The longer, the better. And always use a glass bowl for marination, not a steel one. It’s something to do with chemistry, which eludes me, but does impart a metallic taste.
Heat the oil in a deep pan and put in the pork with tis marinade. Fry on high flame and then add the bay leaves and the peppercorns. Fry the meat well, for at least five to ten minutes and then turn the flame down, add ½ a cup of water and cook the meat for almost two hours till it loses its firmness. Being a good Bengali, I of course always serve my vindaloo with steamed rice., But you could serve it with pao. Because of the malt vinegar, you could keep the vindaloo in the fridge for almost 2-3 weeks, but I’ve never been able to exercise such self control.
