Recipe - Pork Madras

What better a dish to have on such a cold day than a spicy Madras curry!  (Pizza, according to the two youngest, all the more for us then!).  Still no snow, it's promising it bad countrywide tomorrow, but as I've touched on before, Anglesey has its own weather system.  Anyone seen The Simpsons movie, where there's a huge dome over Springfield?  A bit like that.  Over the bridge and off the island, a few miles away could be inches deep in snow.  We'll probably have a heatwave.  Nevertheless it's pretty cold at the moment, so in keeping with my vow to reduce food wastage, todays meal comes from the freezer.

If you saw my New Years Eve curry post, then you'll know that firstly I made a curry base sauce for the Chicken Tikka and Jalfrezi, if you missed this post you can find it here.  I always make a huge pot of the curry base as opposed to enough for one curry, simply because it freezes well and it's a great thing to have on standby in the freezer.  Just add the relevent meat, veg or seafood, additional spices, maybe a bit of cream, and you'll have a curry that is just as good as a takeaway (and for a fraction of the cost!).   I used the plastic takeaway style containers with lids to freeze the sauce in, and I had enough left over to make this curry.

I had to do another little shop today, at the Indian grocers to get fresh spices.   I always try to support the ethnic grocery stores when I can above the big supermarkets, I for one would miss them if they weren't there because a lot of the products they stock, you can't get locally anywhere else.   Also - you have the cost.  I managed to get large bags, 400g weight of Cumin and Coriander today for just over £2 each.  You can pay anything from about 80p (for a store's own label) to £2.00 (for a premium spice range) for a small glass jar of these spices, and they only contain between 40 to 50g in each jar, so it really does work out much better value to buy this way if  you cook a lot of curries.

We had to laugh when we saw the latest addition to our 'Not Quite Right' photographs, thankfully the shop had just opened up and the owner had gone to open the chiller cabinets at the back of the store so we were able to snap this quickly.  Sorry about the quality of the photo, my husband has given up on technology and gone back to a very old, very basic phone.

Honey?  Could you grab me a jar of 'Shito'?  We're clean out...

My spice haul!

And I promise, using up what base was left after NYE!

First and foremost heat up your curry base sauce in a pan.  I used two of these containers of sauce.

Cut up your meat into chunks, I used large pork leg steaks that I bought and froze last week in Morrisons. 

Fry the meat in a little oil until sealed with 1 tsp minced garlic and ½ tsp ginger.  Remove from the heat and add 1 tsp of the Curry Spice Mix (see this post), 1 tsp of Chilli powder, 1 tsp of Curry powder and ¼ tsp of Tandoori Masala.  Stir to coat the meat.

Mix 1 tbsp tomato puree with 3 tbsp water.  Return the meat to the heat and stir in the tomato puree mixture, fry for a few seconds.

Add the curry base sauce a ladle at a time and mix in well.  Reduce heat and simmer until the meat or vegetables are cooked.  If (like me) you like your pork tender, then I'd advise that you put this dish into the slow cooker.  Unfortunately tonight I didn't have enough time to do this, but I will do the next time I make it.

Et voila!  Pork Madras, Pilau Rice, Spinach Pakora

Not a scrap was left over, and we enjoyed it so much that I may make another curry tomorrow as well, try out something new this time :-)

M x