Pork Belly and Aubergine in a Tamarind Curry

Sharon and the boys are in Ireland this week so I've been fending for myself. I'm no stranger to doing that but Sharon had taken all the good curry cookbooks with her so I had to trawl the web to find a variation on the Sri Lankan pork belly and tamarind curry that she recently cooked from the fabulous Australian Women's Weekly New Curries cookbook. I found something that was close and amended it to suit my circumstances.

The recipe recorded here is typical of my cooking: approximate measures of ingredients that should work together and occasionally do! This is about enough to serve 2 people. The original recipe I found suggested cooking potatoes in with it instead of aubergine and serving it on a bed of raw cabbage which could be an interesting exercise in texture and taste, but I've gone more for the traditional "serve it with rice" approach.

Pork belly isn't something you want to be eating too often as it is very fatty, but the upside of that is wonderfully moist pork meat when it is braised or roasted with the fatty rind helping to baste the meat throughout cooking. A favourite of ours is Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's roasted pork belly with caramelised apple and I've just spotted a recipe for braised pork belly with baby squid that has set my stomach rumbling.

Ingredients
400g pork belly (trim the fat a little if you must)
1 tbsp red Thai curry paste (Mae Ploy is my favourite)
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 onion, not too finely chopped
1 "thumb" of ginger, peeled and sliced into matchsticks
1 tbsp oil
1 tbsp palm sugar (or light brown sugar)
1 tbsp nam pla (Thai fish sauce)
1 medium aubergine, in 2cm dice
2 tbsp tamari soy sauce (tamari is the gluten-free version)
1 tbsp tamarind concentrate
Method

1. Chop the pork belly into 2cm cubes and marinate in a bowl with the soy sauce for 20 minutes.


2. Dissolve the tamarind paste in a mug of boiling water.


3. In a large pan that you can cover, heat the oil, adding the garlic and ginger and curry paste as it is heating. Stir them around for a minute or so, taking care not to burn the garlic, then add the palm sugar.


4. Add the pork and stir fry for about 2-3 mins until it takes some colour then add the fish sauce.


5. Add the onion, aubergine and the mug of tamarind water. Bring to a simmer and cook uncovered for abbout 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.


6. Top up the curry with some boiling water at this stage if it looks too dry. You want a sauce of reasonable consistency, not too runny and not too dry.


7. Cover the pan and continue cooking for another 15-20 minutes until the pork is meltingly tender and the aubergine has no bite left.


8. Serve with boiled rice

Cost: 8/10 (pork belly is an economical cut)
Preparation time: 8/10
Ease of cooking: 7/10
Taste: 9/10

Warbecks Restaurant

As I mentioned in a previous post, the bane of my life when eating out is the double header of having to ask the "is it gluten-free" question and then having to decide whether or not I trust the answer.

We ate at Warbecks in Falkland, Fife, the other night and it made a pleasant change for the chef to seek me out and explain their approach to storing, preparing, cooking and serving the gluten-free dishes on their menu. The rigour that they apply made it easy to trust the answer. Dishes on the menu are marked with an asterisk if they are GF and a double asterisk if a GF version can be made. They won't serve chips unless you tell them that you are OK with stuff cooked in the same oil as, say, a battered fish, preferring to use separate pans and oil to cook saute potatoes. GF shortbread is cut in a different shape so as not to get mixed up with the regular stuff. The soup of the day, minestrone, was available with GF spaghetti in it. There was quite a choice of meringues on the dessert menu and a GF cloutie dumpling and sticky toffee pudding.

In the end I had a fried brie and redcurrant jelly starter (the brie was not crumbed, alas) and a breaded hadddock fillet with saute potatoes and vegetables. This came with a rich, creamy and rounded tartare sauce. There were also steaks on the menu and a salad table with GF dressings available.

The food itself was good and homely, the kind of tasty meal you would cook for yourself. No fancy presentation or complicated techniques or flavours, just plain, wholesome, well-cooked food. When you have coeliac disease, simple food is often the best when you are eating out. The portions were a good size and the prices economical, certainly by Edinburgh standards. It was pleasing to have a choice of GF dishes rather than experience the familiar feeling of "there's one thing on here that I can eat - maybe" and the chef's eagerness to explain everything was a very welcome change.

If you are coeliac and driving through Fife, you should consider a stop off at Warbecks in Falkland.

If you are cooking for me

When eating out or eating unlabelled food there are two aspects to establishing whether or not the food is safe for a coeliac to eat. One aspect is to ask the question "is this gluten-free?" of the server. The other, trickier, aspect is whether or not you trust the answer, especially when it is "yes".

People generally don't know what gluten-free (GF) means, so here is a quick guide to the obvious and less obvious things that contain gluten. The intention is to send a link to this entry to people who are fortunate enough to be in the position of cooking for me!

In the UK, food labelling is now a lot better than it was and streets ahead of many other countries when it comes to listing known allergens so if you are in doubt look at the label on every ingredient!

First, the primary sources of gluten: grains and flours of:

• wheat
• barley
• oats
  
• rye

Second, typical staples containing or based on the above: bread and rolls, breakfast cereals, pastry, pizza, pasta, batter, flour tortillas, pitta breads, naan breads, couscous, egg noodles, cakes, biscuits, beer, lager and most grain-based spirits.

Third, anything which uses any of the above as a coating, flavouring, preservative, binding agent, thickener or bulking agent in its list of ingredients: stock cubes, soy sauce, rice wine, malt vinegar, some vegetable oils.

Things to look out for: barley malt extract, modified wheat starch, processed foods containing soy sauce, bags of grated cheese that have flour in them, potatoes coated in flour to give them added crisp when roasting or frying, sausages or burgers containing rusk, roux-based sauces, flavourings used on crisps or tortilla chips, some baking powders and cross-contamination.

Cross-contamination can either be from the methods used to produce or store the food before it hits the shelves or it can be when you are preparing the food yourself. Warnings about the former typically appear on the food packaging. The latter is up to you: be wary of crumbs or other gluten-containing foods being transferred via butter-knives or other utensils, chopping boards, work surfaces, toasters, oven trays, grill racks or from your hands. This is a serious challenge in our household where three small boys aren't fussy about how they distribute their mucky, gluten-stained paws! One of the less obvious sources of cross-contamination is the frying of chips, say, in oil that has previously been used to cook something in batter.

So what can I eat: the list above may seem long, but it is far shorter than the things I can eat. Fresh fuit and vegetables; meat and fish; butter, milk, cheese, cream; beans (check if they are in a sauce) and other dried pulses (maybe not some soup mixes); rice and quinoa; flours made solely from corn (maize), rice, potatoes, chickpea (gram or besan), sorghum (or a GF mix of these); anything baked using these flours alone; pasta or noodles made using only the above flours; cornmeal (maizemeal or polenta); plain crisps or tortilla chips; all herbs and most spices and curry pastes (check mixes); Kallo organic stock cubes; cider, wine and GF beers.

If you are struggling to find some of these things then most big UK supermarkets have a well-marked "Free-From" section these days (unlike France...) in which you'll find GF staples and some tasty treats. Just watch they aren't in that section because they are wheat, nut or dairy-free: you still have to make sure they are gluten-free.

Essentially, if a meal is prepared from fresh produce and follows the guidance above then I should be fine. If it is a processed, pre-packed meal or a take-away then the likelihood is I can't eat it.

That'll do for now. I look forward to the next GF meal you cook for me!