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. 

Cold-busting curries

I had a busy week – after a busy few weeks. Between a lot of travel, late nights, early mornings, gallivanting, eating too much, eating too little and general running, I could feel a dose of the sniffles coming on.

My favourite cure for feeling run down, which doubles up as my first-sign-of-a-cold dish, is curry. A good, spicy, hot curry seems to purge the cold virus from your system.

It’s worth making curries from scratch. I find they are more satisfying, more comforting, and as you’re in charge of adding the spice, you can make them as hot or mild as you like.

On my travels, I picked up a copy of Jamie Oliver’s magazine. I’m not really a fan of his, although I cannot fault his simplicity and his drive to make meals healthier. The Sept/Oct 2012 edition is dedicated to curry. Yay!

I made two curries from it, adapting the recipes for two people each (so I’d feed four people). The original recipes are below, with my modifications in brackets. Don’t be put off by the long list of ingredients – once you have these in your spice cupboard, you will use them time and again. You can buy some of them in your local large supermarket, but for the rest, head to your local Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi-owned shop where you will get them for half nothing.

Das’s chickpea curry

Olive oil (one tablespoon)

½ a cinnamon stick

3 cardamom pods (½ a teaspoon of ground cardamom)

2 cloves

A pinch of fennel seeds

4 crushed garlic cloves

A thumb sized piece of ginger, grated (½ a thumb)

2 fresh green chillis (one dried red chilli)

3 onions (one onion)

½ teaspoon of ground turmeric

1 headed teaspoon of ground coriander (½ a teaspoon)

1 teaspoon of ground chilli

1 teaspoon of garam masala

1 heaped teaspoon of tomato puree (a good handful of cherry tomatoes)

4 ripe tomatoes (another two good handfuls of cherry tomatoes)

2xtins of chickpeas (one tin)

200ml of coconut milk (I only had coconut cream, so about 80ml)

100g of baby spinach (I was adding spinach to the other curry I made, so I left this out)

Coriander (I’d none)

Heat a pot. Once hot, add the oil, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, fennel seeds, garlic, ginger and the whole chilli. Stir and cook them for a few minutes, then add the chopped onion and cook all of this for about 15-20 minutes over a medium heat. Keep an eye on it as you don’t want it to burn.

Stir in the turmeric, chilli powder, ground coriander and a bit of salt and pepper. Add the tomatoes and about 450ml (200ml) water. Bring all of this to the boil and add the chickpeas and simmer for around 15 minutes.

Reduce the heat and stir in the coconut milk and simmer. If you boil it again at this point, you risk splitting the coconut milk. If you are using spinach, stir this in just before the end of the cooking so that it wilts. Check for seasoning and serve with a bit of fresh coriander sprinkled on top if you have some.

Das's chickpea curry

While I was making this vegetarian curry, I also made a fish curry.

Keralan seafood curry

Again, I’m putting the whole recipe here with my modifications on brackets next to it.

Vegetable oil (a tablespoon of olive oil)

2 teaspoons of mustard seeds (1 teaspoon)

1 teaspoon of fenugreek seeds

I fresh, green chilli (one dried, red chilli)

A handful of fresh or dried curry leaves (a good tablespoonful)

2 thumb sized pieces of ginger, grated (1 thumb sized piece)

3 onions (one onion)

12 large prawns (I had none, so I didn’t use any!)

1 teaspoon of chilli powder

1 teaspoon of turmeric

1 handful of ripe, yellow cherry tomatoes (a good dose of red cherry tomatoes)

400ml light coconut milk (the rest of the 165ml tin of coconut cream from the chickpea curry, above)

400g monkfish fillets (I had 270g ‘cabillaud’ or cod in the freezer, and I wasn’t leaving the house)

1 heaped teaspoon of tamarind paste (I’d none)

75g baby spinach (I only had frozen, so a few blocks of that)

coriander and lime to serve (I'd none)

Fish curry

Heat the oil in a pot and add the mustard seeds until they pop. This will take a few minutes. Once they start popping, add the fenugreek, chilli, curry leaves and ginger. Cook all of this for a few minutes and add the chopped onion.

Cook for about 10 minutes, until the onion is soft. At this stage you should add the prawns if you have them. Add the chilli powder, turmeric and tomatoes, cook for a few minutes and add 200ml (100ml) of water and the coconut milk/cream.  Simmer for a few minutes until it thickens a bit, and add the fish. I added the frozen spinach at this stage but if you’re using fresh, wait for a couple of minutes. Your fish should only take about 5 minutes to cook. Once it is, your curry is done – check for seasoning and add a little salt and pepper if you need it. Serve with coriander and lime wedges.

We ate these two curries with 150g white rice and a few naan breads I took from the freezer.