Dan Bites

Alright, so I didn’t cook last night, nor did I post anything yesterday. In light of that here’s what I made Wednesday night, a Pork Curry. This recipe came from my father-in-law in Japan. He was very excited when he sent it over and translated it into English for me. Some of the measurements that I used are a little different from his since he’s on the Metric System. I also did a couple of things different. Overall my dish was pretty true to his recipe.

To start, I sautéed a sliced onion, a shredded carrot, and two ribs of celery chopped in some soy oil with garlic and ginger. Uichiro adds a little butter, I didn’t because I’ve been eating a lot of butter lately. I need to keep my girlish figure.

Once the vegetables were sweated down for about 7 minutes I added about 2/3’s of a pound of pork chops that I had sliced to about 1/4 inch width. I let the pork cook just until the exterior turned white but the insides were still uncooked. Then I added 2 tablespoons of curry powder, about a teaspoon of black pepper, 5 tablespoons of flour, 1 tablespoon of garam masala, and 1 teaspoon of turmeric. I stirred that all in and sautéed for a few more minutes. Then I poured in 50 ml of white wine and let it boil down.

Once the wine had boiled down I added three cups of water, a 14 oz can of diced tomatoes (Uichiro chopped 1 cup of fresh tomatoes), 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, 1 tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce, once chicken bouillon cube, a bay leaf, salt, and pepper. Once that all came to a boil I covered it and turned the heat down to med-low. That simmered for about 40 minutes.

After the 40 minutes I took a half an apple and grated it into. This adds a lot of sweetness as well as some starch to help the flour thicken it up a bit. I also added a large pinch of sugar to help balance out the spice.

To add a green element to the curry I threw some mache leaves in right after turning off the heat. Uichiro didn’t do that. It really didn’t need it, I just wanted to add the color.

Overall, I have to say, it’s another winner from Uichiro. Next time I think I’ll use about a half cup less water, but otherwise it was delicious. I am disappointed that he didn’t have a cool name for the dish though. He calls his meatloaf “cool breeze amongst the pine trees”. I have no idea why, but it is a damn good meatloaf!