Thursday, April 2, 2009

A Rather Nice Stew

I had dinner at the amazing M's place last week, and her mum cooked us a most amazing Lepcha pork curry. Tender it was, and luscious and the smell had me forgetting my 'guest' manners and hovering over the pressure cooker.
since then, I have tried the recipe with pork, and chicken, and lotus root. It is scrumptious each time, but my curries dont mesh together the way they are supposed to. They are good, but the ingredients can still be separated out.. dont know how to tackle that.
But here is how to do it.
Take a pressure cooker. put in a lot of chopped onions, a slightly smaller quantity of chopped tomatoes, as much chopped ginger and garlic as you like, and a little more chopped chilies than you think you can handle (the toms and onions add sweetness). sprinkle some salt over all this, and add the meat. Pressure cook till tender.
Eat with rice/dosas/appams/bread. Or just throw some potatoes with the meat and eat those.
This is simple, extremely tasty, and extremely good for you ( all that ginger, garlic, onion and tomato cannot help but boost immunity).
Try it, and let me know how it goes. And yes, I will thank M for you.

6 comments:

d said...

How much pork? Chicken too? How much how much?

Tara said...

asked in the spirit of one who is mortally afraid of pressure cookers, does not currently own one and does not know how to cook pork:

If I buy a pressure cooker, and some pork,
PRECISELY how long should I let it cook for, and how often do pressure cookers explode in one's hands?

Chicu said...

hello, d.
not both pork and chicken (though that might be good too). I made it once with pork and once with chicken. I used a quarter kilo of meat, and it works for two meals for me..
Tara, pressure cookers save fuel, time, and enable one to cook all manner of scrumptious one-pot meals. They do not explode, unless one tries to open them when they are still hissing. wait till they stop hissing even when you try to lift the whistle with a spoon. If in a pressure cooker, let it whistle twice, and then simmer for 15-20 mins (for tough meat, you might need to reduce the time). Else, just put it in a heavy pot and let simmer for and hour..will actually be tastier and dum-like..
enjoy, both of you!

d said...

Not true! Every time i try to make dal in a cooker it alights on the ceiling. With all kinds of menacing noises too. Better to cook it in a normal vessel for twice as long and have dal free ceilings.

Btw by put in onions and tomatoes you mean saute? Such a clumsily written recipe!

Tara said...

see, the whole HISSING thing just fills me with dread.
i shall, still, attempt to buy one.

Chicu said...

Tara, pressure cookers hiss, but so do kettles..think of it as a warm, cheery whistling at work. most homey and warm and..and ..homey.
d. put in toms and onions as in ‘dump in the cooker’. The beauty of this recipe is that it is a crockpot recipe on fastforward.

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