Pork vindaloo

Vindaloo is a Goan dish with Portuguese roots. And no, it is not a bhindi (okra) and aloo (potato) dish! The name comes from the Portuguese phrase vinho de alho or wine of garlic. This dish evolved from the garlic-flavoured vinegar stew brought to Goa by the Portuguese sailors and the spiced-up version was named as vindaloo.

It is fiery hot – though you could tame it down like i have down. You could cook it with pork, chicken, lamb or duck. i prefer duck vindaloo the most.

Once you have the spices ready and the meat marinated, this is a fairly easy dish to cook and is a hit every time. It is even tastier the next day so you could cook it the night before and serve it the next day (after warming, of course; i don’t think it would taste good cold).

i used pork with almost no fat (i hate pork fat – though my husband loves it). It would do good if you trim the fat or you could end up with vindaloo swimming in pork fat – yuck!

Pork vindaloo

Things you need:

1 kg pork – diced and fat trimmed

2 large onion – thinly sliced

1/2 teaspoon sugar

Mustard oil

2 medium tomato – chopped

For the vindaloo paste

10 red chillies (more or less depending on the heat tolerating capacity of your taste buds)

1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns

2 teaspoons coriander seeds

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

1 inch cinnamon

6 cloves

Seeds of 6 cardamon

8-10 cloves garlic

5 cm ginger

1/2 teaspoon black mustard seeds

3-4 teaspoons white wine vinegar

The method:

Dry roast all of the ingredients for vindaloo paste except ginger and garlic (and obviously the vinegar!). Grind the roasted spices along with ginger and garlic. To this, add the white wine vinegar to make a thick paste. Marinate the pork with this paste in a glass bowl. Cover with cling film and keep in the fridge, preferably overnight or as long as possible.

Heat mustard oil in a wok. when hot, add the sliced onions and fry till brown. Add the sugar and the marinated pork and cook on low heat for about a hour or so letting the pork stew in its own juice and the spice. Did i forget the salt and the tomato? Season with salt, add the tomato and after the pork is done, remove and serve. Or better still, keep overnight and serve the next day.