The origin of this Tamarind and Peanut Pork Curry is sort of weird. One fine day back in 2007-08, my father had wanted to eat a pork curry that would not be too exotic, but also, not normal. He had been telling some of his friends about my kitchen stories (the experiments, the repeated attempts at making something, the disasters) and one of them had asked him if he could eat something that would taste different, and my father could not wait to come home and tell me what this friend of his had said.
The next morning, I had made a short trip to New Market, and asked Joy da of Kalman to give me a kilo of good quality pork. Not very happy with the initial haunches he had shown me, I had promptly marched into the back room (and as he was quite used to my high-handed attitude, he had let me) and picked up some meat from pork shoulder, and some fatty pork belly. He then had proceeded to cut it into medium chunks, and I had come home with a big smile on my face.
The meat was procured, but what about the rest of it? After reading through some recipes, I had finally given up and decided to make a rather simple curry, but then, when reducing the gravy, had added a couple of things totally not in the initial list of things. These two things were some tamarind pulp and a heaping tablespoon of peanut butter.
The result, I daresay, was really good. The ultimate taste of this Tamarind and Peanut Pork Curry is somewhere between an Indonesian Rendang and a Bengali jhol, and I have to say, in the next few years of my life, I did make it quite a few times, whenever I wanted a slightly sweet and sour curry to eat with a steaming heap of rice.
I’ve also served this with rotis and bread, and both of them work out well, but my favourite thing to eat this Tamarind and Peanut Pork Curry will always be rice – short-grained, slightly sticky Gobindobhog, or some fragrant Jasmine rice, even some long-grained Basmati – a platter of chopped cucumber and chillies on the side for a little bit of a crunch. The curry itself is rather delicate – its got a creamy nuttiness from the peanut butter, a bit of heat from the chillies, some sweetness, and the heat is balanced out with the tang that comes from the tamarind and the yogurt. Overall, a clear winner in the Banerjee household.
How to make Tamarind and Peanut Pork Curry
There are a couple of rules when it comes to making this Tamarind and Peanut Pork Curry recipe. First, you need to have a bit of tolerance towards pork fat, since we are cooking our meat in it. Therefore, in comes a kilo and half of skinless, boneless pork with about 75:25 meat-to-fat ratio. Now, this is crucial, since the first thing you’re gonna wanna do is to trim off a good bit of this fat (keep a bit with the meat for a bit of extra fat loving on your rice), then keep it aside. About 100 gm. fat, if I may be so bold.
Yes, you need it. No, there’s no other way I do this. If you want to use oil instead of luscious pork fat, its your loss. In case you want to check out other recipes where I use pork fat to cook, check out this recipe, and this one, too! I bought my share of pork from The Whole Hog.
Then, cut the remaining meat in about 11/2 to 2-inch chunks, depending on your comfort level, and marinate it in 200 ml. plain yogurt, 1 tablespoon ginger paste, 1 tablespoon garlic paste, and 1 tsp red chilli powder (or, 3 dried red chillies, soaked in water and pasted). I was a bit of a tiger, so I took the ginger, garlic and chillies and pasted them together in a mixer grinder.
Yes, the mixer grinder has been fixed after nearly two months, and no, I’m not crying, you’re crying!
So, now that you’ve marinated the meat, you’ll want to walk away for a couple of hours. You know what? You can actually let the marinade sit overnight, if you so choose, but I let it sit on my counter top for 3 hours before I started cooking, so do what I did, and finish cooking quickly.
Now, the next thing you do is prep about 200 gm. red onion. Chop them in slices, and while you’re at it, peel and cut three potatoes in big chunks. I generally cut them in quarters, but feel free to be yourself. Once you’ve got the prep sorted, the next thing to do is to render out pork fat.
Here, cut the pork fat in small chunks, about 1 cm pieces. Put them in a thick-bottomed vessel with a dab of water/oil (both works), cover, and let it be for 5 minutes. When you come back, there would be a sizeable amount of fat for you to start working with. However, I am bougee like that, so I decided to let my pork fat get rendered to the point where I was left with tiny, crispy bits of golden nuggets of pork fat, and I ended up putting a bit of salt and Italian seasoning and ate them standing up, right there.
Anyway, to the rendered fat, add all of your onions, and sweat it down in the fat until the onions are translucent, about 10 minutes over really low heat. Trust me, this step is important. What its essentially doing is getting the onion flavour infused in the pork fat, and that will, in turn, bless you later. So, once the onions are translucent, carefully remove them with a slotted spoon and reserve the fat in the thick-bottomed vessel.
To this, add 4-5 whole dried red chillies, 3 whole cardamoms, 2 sticks of cinnamon, and 10 peppercorns. Try not to add whole cloves, though you might be tempted. If you like, you can add 1 star anise, but that’s up to you. Star anise, apart from its flavour, is also rather pretty, and looks nice sitting on top of food. So well, if you want to make your pork curry a touch more instagrammable, please go ahead and add one perfectly pretty star anise which will then promptly break and three petals will be floating about, waiting to invade the interiors of your mouth when your unsuspecting molar just chews down on it and your taste buds scream for sudden death.
I digress.
So, once you’ve added these spices, you fish them out after 30 seconds, and keep them with the onions, because that’s where it will go after this. Then, to the fat remaining in the vessel, add the pork pieces, and stir it about over medium heat. Now, you will see the pork releasing a good bit of water. I would strongly suggest you cover the meat after the first three minutes, turn the heat down to a simmer, and leave the kitchen premises for a contemplative stroll across the house – ideally, about ten minutes. Once you come back, you shall see a good deal of water being released from the pork. This will be really useful, so at this point, you will have to make some choices.
What you can either do is grab a pressure cooker, carefully remove the pork from the gravy, and put them in the cooker. Then, add about 1/2 cup of the gravy from the pork, let it all come to a boil, then cover the pressure cooker lid, and let the pork cook till its soft, about 8 minutes after full pressure. Turn the heat off, then let the cooker cool down naturally.
While the pork is cooking, you add the whole fried spices and onions to the remaining gravy, and let it come to a boil. When it does, add the potatoes, and simmer and cook till the potatoes are soft and the gravy thickens.
At this point, you add around 1 tablespoon tamarind pulp (that would be about 2 tsp tamarind paste + 2 tsp water, and yeah, sure, my maths suck), along with 1 tbsp creamy peanut butter. Stir that in well, then adjust salt and sugar. Then, add the pork back and cook the pork with the gravy till it is rather nice and thick.
Finish by adding 4-5 green chillies and a handful of chopped coriander leaves just before you take the meat off the heat, cover it for at least 10 minutes, and then stir everything in well and serve.
Okay, you said either. What about the “or”?
Well, the truth is, I’ve never cooked this any other way, so I cannot, for sure, tell you there’s another way. But, HYPOTHETICALLY, you CAN cook the pork till its mostly done on the stovetop, then add the onion, whole spices, potato and other stuff, and just cook till everything is cooked to your liking. So well, yeah, that’s another way. Happy?
I would have to say this out loud though – this needs to be eaten with rice. There’s something rather poetic about the glistening pork fat that floats on top of the gravy, telling the judgemental world to get a life, and the people who eats them, and I know for sure I’m one of those people who appreciate that a lot!
