I love pork. I think pork is the best among all meat. Many may not agree with me but there have been times when I have tasted dishes made from pork and I would absolutely forget everything around me and so relish it.
Unfortunately the quality of pork we get in India is very questionable. In fact, in my town, Coimbatore, the only safe place (according to me, of course) is the Agri University. They have a piggery and they feed only proper animal feed to the pigs and I trust that they are vaccinated periodically and is free of parasites, etc. The university culls animals once every 4 months or so and I buy a few kilos at a time and put them away in the freezer for later use.
I found an interesting book on Kerala Syrian food this morning at a local book store and bought it. And I of course had to try out a recipe today itself. I found a recipe for pork roast and it was irresistable. I tweeked the recipe a little bit and made it for dinner. It turned out quite well and I thought I’ll share it with everyone.
Ingredients:
1 kg Pork, preferrably with bits of fat
3 green cardamom
3 cloves
1 no 2” piece cinnamon
1 tsp peppercorns
12 cloves of garlic
2” piece ginger
6 shallots
6 red chillies
3 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp fenugreek seeds
2 tbsp white vinegar
Salt to taste
1/8 + ¼ cup oil
3 big onions, sliced thinly
1 tsp all-purpose flour
1 cup water
Powder the cardamoms, cloves, cinnamon and peppercorns to a fine powder. Also grind the garlic, ginger, red chillies, mustard and fenugreek along with the vinegar into a fine paste. Mix the spice powder, spice paste and salt along with the pork meat and let it marinate for a couple of hours. Heat 1/8 cup of oil in a pressure cooker and sauté the marinated pork for about half hour. Sprinkle some water if necessary. After half hour of sautéing, add 1 cup of water and pressure cook the pork for 15 minutes. Reserve the pork pieces and the gravy separately. Dissolve the flour in about a tbsp of water and mix it with the gravy.
In a pan, heat ¼ cup of oil and sauté the sliced onions until browned and crispy. Now add the pork pieces to the onions and fry for about 5 minutes. Add the gravy to the pan and cook until the gravy thickens and coats the pork well. Remove from flame and drain excess fat from the surface. Serve hot.
I have tried cooking pork with only lean meat (no fat, no skin). But it doesn’t taste quite the same as when you cook pork with all its natural fat. The lean pork ends up dry and less flavourful. Pork gets a lot of its flavour from the fat its cooked in. So what I do these days is mix lean pork with regular pork, say 50 – 50. And I skim the fat from the surface after I finish cooking the dish.
