Meat Recipes « Leirang

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.

Coconut chicken

Growing up, cooking yen (chicken) was an occasion in itself. Since the older generations of Meitei did/do not eat meat in Manipur, it was forbidden to cook it inside the kitchen. It was very rarely that chicken was cooked in our house in those days. So whenever it was cooked, it was a feast for us. It was the men of the family who did the cooking (who would otherwise never deign to make even a cup of tea).

First, the chicken would be slaughtered, then with the help of boiling water, the feathers would be plucked off (in Manipur, it would be a sacrilege to skin the chicken – the skin is considered a delicacy. When my cousin visited Calcutta, he was distraught to see the skin discarded and the feet too. To console the poor soul, i had to swallow my pride and ask the maangsor dukan‘s dada to include the feet! My ungrateful little cousin still complained of having to eat ‘skinless’ chicken!). We kids would be entrusted the task of peeling the onions and garlic and to pound them into a paste using a stone mortar and pestle. In the excitement of getting to eat chicken, the onion induced tears were forgotten and forgiven.

Since it could not be cooked inside the kitchen, a stove would be brought out and the chicken would be cooked in the biggest cooker of the house. How we waited with eagerness, how our appetites were whetted by the small piece given to us to check if the seasoning was OK.

With time, the chicken make its way into the kitchen but to show that it was still an unwanted guest, the gas stove would be moved from its usual place to somewhere else in the kitchen and the chicken would be cooked there.

i am not too fond of chicken now, having found other animals in the food chain. So the other day, when faced with the task of cooking chicken, i just could not bring myself to cook it the usual way. So i decided to use coconut milk and fried onion paste. The result was finger licking good, if i may say so myself.

For the want of a better name, i thought i would just call it coconut chicken!

Coconut chicken

Things you need:

About 1 kg chicken – cut into medium sized pieces

1 can coconut milk (400ml)

1/2 teaspoon whole coriander seeds

1 teaspoon coriander powder

1/2 teaspoon cumin powder

2 teaspoon turmeric powder

2 medium onion -thinly sliced

6 cloves of garlic

5 cm ginger

1 teaspoon chilli powder/flakes

1 medium tomato – diced

2-3 bay leaves

Mustard oil for cooking

The method:

in a little oil, fry the sliced onion till brown. Remove from heat and let it cool down. When cool, grind it into a paste in the food processor along with the garlic and ginger.

Heat some oil and when hot, put in the bay leaves and whole coriander seeds. When the seeds start crackling, put in the fried onion paste. Add the turmeric, coriander, cumin and chilli powder and cook for some time. Add the chicken and coat well with masala paste. Add the diced tomato and let it cook for some time. Now, add the coconut milk and season with salt. Cook till the gravy has reduced to a thick consistency.

Garnish and serve, as always, with steamed rice.

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Pork vindaloo

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Coconut chicken

Coconut chicken

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