Rick Steins pork curry with green chillies

I love curry, and I’m a fan of Rick Stein, so his latest BBC series was high on my viewing agenda. This recipe is adapted from here. I’ve said lots of times before that curries are worth the effort to make, as they taste so completely unlike anything you get in a jar.

Curries are notoriously difficult to photograph, so please excuse the colouring in the one below. It really was great! 

Pork curry with green chillies and tomato

6 sliced shallots

a lot of crushed garlic. Rick used 20 (“Rick" like he’s a mate of mine… He’s not). 20 cloves goes beyond even my grà for the stuff. I used significantly less. In my defence  they were particularly fiddly to peel.

6cm of grated ginger

6 green chillies, roughly chopped, with or without seeds according to preference

1 tablespoon of black mustard seeds

1 teaspoon of cumin seeds

2 cloves

one cinnamon stick

½ teaspoon of black peppercorns

1 teaspoon of ground turmeric

2 tablespoons of vegetable oil

I used a pork fillet

I added a half of a large tin of tomato puree

Salt to taste

Rick uses coriander seeds, tamarind liquid, more chillies and even more garlic to garnish the finished dish. I didn’t. I didn’t even have any coriander.

Put the shallots, garlic, ginger and chillies into a mini food processor with a splash of water and blend to a rough paste.

Post-food processored shallots and garlic and ginger and chillies 

Fry the mustard seeds, cumin, cloves, cinnamon stick and peppercorns in a dry frying pan over a medium heat for a minute until toasted and aromatic. Add the turmeric and fry for another 20 seconds. Cool, then grind to a coarse powder.

The ground spices, mid grind

Heat the oil in a heavy-based frying over a medium-high heat. Add the pork, in batches if necessary to avoid overcrowding, and fry for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until browned.

With all the pork in the pan, add the shallot, garlic, ginger and chilli paste, the ground spices and salt, and fry for a further five minutes, adding a splash of water if the paste starts to stick. Pour over enough water to just cover, turn the heat down to low, put a lid on and simmer for about 30 minutes, or until the meat is tender. I added the half tin of tomato puree with the water as the sauce needed some thickening and some colour.

I serve this, like most of my weekend curries, with yellow onion rice – gently and slowly fry a chopped onion in some oil for about 20 minutes. It really does make a difference, as the onion is able to release its sweetness. While this is going on, cook for rice according to the pack instructions with a cinnamon stick, a couple of crushed cardamom pods and a half-teaspoon of ground turmeric. Once cooked, drain the rice and mix it through the cooked onion. You could also try some homemade naan bread if you're feeling up to it. 

Pork bhuna – easy weekend Indian food

Long before I moved to Belgium, I loved spicy food, which often meant Indian. Nothing’s changed, except nowadays it’s a lot easier to find Asian/Indian food here. However, finding something sufficiently spicy hot can be a challenge. I have used jars of sauce and added a bit of chilli. Unfortunately, these are usually very high in calories and fat, so I started making my own curries a few years ago.

Pork bhuna with spicy rice

Many people think that making curries from scratch is difficult. In fact, the most difficult part is finding the spices you need. You can find many of these in supermarkets and for the more ‘exotic’ ones, check out the Asian supermarkets at St. Gery in Brussels city centre (near St Catherine and de Bourse) or the many ‘ethnic’ ones dotted around the city (such as the Chaussee d’Ixelles, etc…).

The list of ingredients in the bhuna here can appear daunting, but once you have the basics, you’ll find you can make a lot of other curries. A huge plus is that you can make your curry as weak or as strong as you like. Also, with this curry, you put everything in the pot and leave it to cook, making it low-maintenance.

I served this with spiced rice and homemade naan bread. The recipe is from Madhur Jaffrey’s 100 essential curries. A * marks the spices I’ve found in supermarkets.

2 teaspoons whole cumin seeds*

4 teaspoons whole coriander seeds

2 teaspoons whole mustard seeds (I used black mustard seeds)

2-4 whole chillies* (you can used fresh or dried, the quantity depends on how hot you like it)

2 teaspoons whole fennel seeds*

2 teaspoons fenugreek seeds

Oil (the recipe says peanut or corn oil, I used olive)

3 large shallots (I used a large onion)

4 cm grated fresh ginger (tip: use the side of a teaspoon to peel it; also, if you’ve no fresh ginger, a good teaspoon of ground ginger is fine)

5-6 garlic cloves

10-15 curry leaves (you’ll get these in an Asian supermarket)

2 medium tomatoes (I used 200ml passata as I had some in the fridge to use up)

900g shoulder of pork (for 4 people – I used 400g filet pork (for 2 people), chopped into bite-sized chunks (you can use chicken, lamb or beef either)

Unorthodox ingredient: about 150g mushrooms (upping the veggie count, cutting the calories of the dish, and they had to be used up)

In a dry, heavy casserole or pot (ie: don’t add any oil) and over a medium-high heat, toast the seeds and chillies for about 2-3 minutes, until they start releasing their smells. Keep a close eye on them so that they don’t burn. When they are done, either grind them in a pestle and mortar, a coffee grinder or a small food processor until they are powdery.

In the same pot, heat a teaspoon of oil and cook the chopped shallots, garlic and ginger for about 5 minutes. Add the chopped tomatoes and the curry leaves. Cook until the tomatoes have broken down and are a bit gloopy.

Add the ground spices, 250ml water and the meat. Season, stir and reduce the heat to simmering. Cover and cook for at least 20 minutes if you’re using a filet. If you’re using shoulder, the meat will need longer cooking, so around an hour and a half. Check the sauce. If it needs thickening (it should cling to the meat), remove the lid and cook until thicker. If you need to adjust the chilli heat, do it now too. If it’s too hot, add some (low-fat) yogurt to cool if down.

For the spicy rice

100g long grain rice (recommended guidelines state 125g for 2 people, but as I was serving the naan bread too, I didn’t need a whole lot of rice)

One onion

Oil

A couple of cardamom seeds

A stick of cinnamon

One teaspoon turmeric (‘curcuma’ in French)

Peel and chop the onion into rings. Fry this on a low heat, in a little oil, for about 10 minutes, until soft and golden. From experience, don’t think that upping the heat will cut the cooking time; it doesn’t and the onions burn. Long n slow is the name of the game here.

Meanwhile, pop the rice and everything else into a pot with some salt and loads of water and cook according to the instructions. The rice will go a lovely radio-active yellow colour.

Once cooked, drain the rice and stir the cooked onions through.