Raja Mircha and the bestest pork curry ever

It’s definitely been a while since I last posted a recipe and the only excuse is that I’ve been terribly busy with the restaurant.  But enough of excuses. On to more important topics.

Just the other day, my driver who has been on leave for a couple of weeks and hails from Assam, returned with a brilliant gift for me – a bushel of raja mircha or bhoot jolakia a.k.a the spiciest chili in India. In an effort to preserve and relish them for as long as possible, I first dried them on the roof in the burning Delhi sun and then proceeded to think of how and what to cook with them.

The main word of caution while using raja mircha is that it is bloody spicy, so you don’t want to use more than one chili for a kg of meat. It does have a divine taste and fragrance all its own though and you don’t need to add too many spices as a result. Also, if you have a low tolerance for spice, this is not the ingredient for you.

So now that I had my hands on a raja mircha, I decided that the best thing to cook with it was a nice Naga spicy pork curry, which I’ve cooked for the first time. And I must say, you’ll be left licking your plate clean. Two of the best parts of this recipe are that first, you don’t use a smidgen of oil. And second, there’s no bamboo shoot used in it, which makes it more palatable for me as I haven’t really developed a taste for bamboo shoot yet.

So here goes, just follow the recipe and I promise you you’ll be licking your plate clean.  Also, for best results get hold of really good quality pork with a generous layer of fat.

Ingredients:

·         Pork 1 kg with meat and fat, cut into small chunks

·         Garlic crushed: 1 ½ tablespoons

·         Ginger: 1 ½ tablespoons

·         Salt to taste

·         One raja mircha fresh or smoked and dried

·         Tomatoes 400 gms pureed

Serves 4

Preparation
Wash the pork and soak it in 2 tbsps of white vinegar. Puree the tomatoes and keep aside along with crushed garlic and ginger.

Method
Put the pork along with the vinegar in a thick bottomed pan, add salt to taste, add half a glass of water and let it cook until half done. I also chopped some potataoes and added it to the pork while it was boiling. But you can leave it out if you want. Then add the tomato puree, ginger and garlic and let the pork cook until tender. When it is almost done, add the raja chilli and stir until the pork is cooked and tender. The curry will be a bright red thick gravy.
This tasted perfect with steamed rice. Enjoy.