Southeast Asian Chicken Curry

Fussy eaters, what can you do about them? They make the chef's life difficult and the sweary chef's fucking difficult. I mean, we all have things that we're not keen on, sure. Personally, as I've told you previously, dear readers, I can't stand dried fruit as, to me they are the tagnuts from the devil's own pet rabbits. However, that's OK. They aren't in an awful lot of recipes, besides which, I do the cooking so you want raisins in, get your fucking own. The problems arise when someone doesn't like something that's a common ingredient in a lot of other things. Mrs Sweary has an aversion to butter, cheese in dishes (she'll eat "raw" cheese, go figure) and creamy sauces. This immediately wipes out half the cuisine of Western Europe as an option for dinner when I'm cooking for us. She's also ambivalent to curries containing a lot of coconut which also renders a lot of the fabulous curries from Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Cambodia less than ideal. Sometimes a curry just needs a creamy texture to make it all the better, be it cream in something like a korma or the coconut in Thai red or green curries. Fortunately, Mrs S does like cashew nuts and they make a good alternative to coconut if they are blended into a paste. This curry has a smooth, creamy texture like you would find in a curry with coconut, but the nuttiness also lends it a flavour slightly reminiscent of satay.

While it's understandable that some people are a little bit fussy, the thing that really boils my piss is people that decide they can't eat a major food group as a fashion statement. Of course there are genuine clinical food intolerances and allergies (for example those with coeliac disease or lactose intolerance, which are real and often debilitating illnesses and my heart sincerely goes out to people who suffer with these afflictions), but there's always those people that say they can't eat bread or pasta because they are intolerant to wheat, or that milk makes them blow up like a balloon. The way they talk you might be forgiven for thinking that it was gluten and not polonium that had poisoned Alexander Litvinenko. Most of the time this aversion to a foodstuff is bullshit. Stop pathologising the fact that you're just a fucking fashionably fussy eater!

Anyway, back onto this recipe. This curry has a fresh, aromatic style like those from the various countries from SE Asia, though I think it's probably closest to a Sri Lankan dish. It serves 2 easily, with some left over for a lunch the next day if served with rice.

INGREDIENTS
Spice paste
1 thumb-sized piece of galangal, roughly chopped
1 small onion, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
half a stalk of lemon grass, sliced
2 red chillies, roughly chopped
1 tbsp tomato puree

Dry spices
2 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp ground cumin
1 whole star anise
1 stick cinnamon (around 6 cm in length)
5 green cardamom pods
4 cloves
1 tsp ground turmeric
½ tsp ground black pepper
Salt

Spices on a plate again
From the top: ground tumeric, ground coriander, ground cumin, black pepper, salt, cinnamon stick, star anise, cardamom, cloves

2 tbsp oil
100g unsalted cashew nuts
20 (or so) curry leaves
I medium onion, sliced
1 medium-large aubergine, cut into 2cm cubes
4-6 chicken thighs, skinned
1 tsp garam masala

TIMING
Preparation: 10 to 20 minutes (depending on if you use a blender or a pestle and mortar)
Cooking: 90 to 120 minutes

RECIPE
Place all the paste ingredients into a mini food processor and whizz up until smooth. Alternatively, if you're a foodie wanker like me, put them into a pestle and mortar and pound crap out of them until they are a smooth paste.

 PASTE:
How low can you go?

Heat half the oil in a heavy pan and fry the cashews until golden brown, about 5 minutes or so.

Remove them with a slotted spoon.

To the hot oil add the dry spice ingredients for a minute, stirring.

Add the spice paste and stir for a couple of minutes.

Put the spice mix into a blender with the cashews and 500ml water.

Heat the remaining oil in the pan and fry the sliced onion until it's soft.

Add the blended sauce to the pan as well as the curry leaves and heat until bubbling.

Add the aubergine and the chicken, pushing the chicken into the pan so it's submerged in the sauce.

Leave to simmer for an hour to 90 minutes, stirring occasionally to make sure the chicken is cooked through.

Add teaspoon of garam masala just before serving to pep up the flavour a little.

Serve with rice, like the golden pilau in the pic below, and/or an Indian bread like a naan or paratha.

NOTES
This curry also works with lamb instead of chicken and, as I've alluded to, you could replace the cashew nuts with creamed coconut.

Galangal is a bit like a more fragrant version of ginger. If you can get it, fine, otherwise the curry doesn't lose much by using fresh ginger.

Galangal

Curry leaves are another wanky foodie ingredient that aren't that easy to come by. You can find them in Asian grocers. Add a bay leaf instead if you can't get any.

Latino Pork and beans

The loss of Native American territory as the modern United States was settled through the 19th century
http://www.thewire.com/national/2012/07/how-west-was-lost-native-americans/54797/

Commonly spoken about in cowboy films, pork and beans takes its place in culinary mythology as the dish that fueled pioneer America when settlers forged west into unexplored territory. Well, unexplored by white people anyway. I mean, it was already home to quite a lot of people who were living there quite happily already (but not for much longer, see the graphic above) but they weren't white European settlers and their story never made it into films so they were clearly not very important.

On a lighter note, a diet consisting largely of beans does have some unwanted side-effect, and you'd not want to share a tent with anyone who eats like this. 

Cowboys eating beans

 Mel Brooks captures the pain of the human condition that can only be relieved by lifting your buttock and farting

Apparently there is also a tinned version of this famous American staple in the States which sounds quite vile. Rumour has it that the pork content is of such poor quality and so insignificant that you might be suspicious that it's made of the sweepings from the floor of an abattoir. As I say, this is hearsay as I've never tried it, but I'd imagine it's something like the full English breakfast in a can which looks and sounds equally revolting. I've also never tried this and, indeed, wouldn't want to eat it if my life depended on it and the only way to consume it was in suppository form. I think I'd prefer a shit sandwich with hemlock dressing and a polonium salsa

Going from the ridiculous to the sublime, this dish is based on a recipe that appeared in the Guardian Saturday cooking supplement (for example they suggest you soak and boil dried beans when I say, in best Sweary style, fuck that when good quality tinned ones are available) though this itself was actually based on Brazilian feijola. It includes Spanish chorizo, Mexican chipotle and dark (ie British/Irish) beer so it's not quite authentically Brazilian. It's similar in a lot of ways to my chilli recipe but it does taste quite different and is another slow cooked classic made in one pot. There is something wonderful about trying a new recipe and it turning out so great you know it is a keeper, and this is one of those dishes

INGREDIENTS
400g belly pork
2 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
4-6 garlic cloves, crushed
1 stick of celery, finely chopped
1 medium sized carrot chopped
50g chorizo, chopped
1 tin of black beans, drained
2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp chipotle paste
½ tsp chilli flakes
1½ tbsp tomato puree
1tsp mixed herbs
1 yellow pepper, chopped
1 tin tomatoes
200ml dark beer
500 ml water
1 vegetable stock cube

It's all in the chopping
Celery, carrot, garlic, onion and chorizo

RECIPE
Remove the skin/crackling from the pork belly (I posted a blog mentioning my fatal attraction to pork scratchings recently so you ought to realise there's no way in hell I'm letting this go to waste. See the notes for what you can do with this)

Heat the oil in a pan, add the pork and brown it for a few minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon

Add the onion and garlic to fry for 5 minuted before adding the carrot and celery. Allow these to sweat out for 5-10 minutes before adding the chorizo and fry for another five minutes when the chorizo should colour up the vegetables.

More ingredients ready to go in

From 11 o'clock: mixed herbs, tomato puree, chipotle paste, black pepper, cumin

Add the cumin, black pepper, herbs, chipotle paste, chilli flakes, mustard and tomato puree then mix before adding the chopped yellow peppers to soften for a few minutes.

Pour in the tinned tomatoes, beer, water and crumble in the stock cubes before mixing well.

Add the beans and return the pork to the pan.

Simmer, covered, on a low heat for 3 hours or more (this would be a good slow cooker recipe). The pork should be almost falling apart.

Serve with rice, bread or baked or sauteed potatoes (roasted sweet potatoes would be fucking amazing with this).

A panful of porky joy

NOTES
This is what to do with the crackling:
- Ensure the skin is well scored into 2cm strips (should be done already, but use a sharp knife to do it yourself if not).
-Chuck it in a pan of water, heat it to boiling and simmer, covered, for 45 minutes.
-Pat it dry with kitchen roll, sprinkle salt on it, then wrap it in more kitchen roll for 30 minutes.
-Put it into an ovenproof dish and put it in a hot oven at 200°C for 45 minutes.
That's fantastic pork scratchings right there. In the recipe I adapted for this blog entry it states you use this as a garnish on the stew but I'd say fuck that and eat the scratchings on their own as a snack.

Chipotle chillies are fantastic, and the heat and warm smoky flavour the paste brings the dish is wonderful. On the other hand, chipotle paste isn't that easy to come by in the UK, unless you go to one of the really big supermarkets or some wanky Mexican deli. I mean, I make no secret of the fact that I'm a foodie wanker and I got hold of it, but improvisation is the bedrock of a great dish. Add more chilli flakes and a couple of teaspoons of smoked paprika instead. Damn it, even swap some of the chorizo for smoked bacon to give the same flavour if you can't get smoked paprika.

Mexican delis aren't that common in the UK, mainly on account of there not being a significant Mexican community over here. For example, where I live, the Mexican community is incredibly small. So small, in fact, that he lives in the centre of town and is actually my Spanish teacher.

The recipe would work with pork filet as well as the belly used in this incarnation and this would also be lower in fat and cook quicker.

As I mentioned above, the black beans are available in tins so why bother soaking and boiling the dried variety? Seriously, why make something more complicated than it needs to be? Sure, they'll be a bit cheaper, but how fucking tight are you to want to do that if you're already paying for chipotle paste and pork belly but want to save 10p on the beans? Also, make sure you get black turtle beans, not Chinese black beans which are fermented soya beans and totally different. The tin I bought for this was from Dunn's River (though if you can't find these, red kidney beans would also work):

This is the sort of dish Thomasina Miers might feature in her column. She is one of those trendy celeb chefs, slightly less trendy than the Yott, but she won Masterchef and her speciality is fantastic Central American Latino food that demands things like quail and day-old brioche. It's probably no revelation to say I've never won Masterchef. To be fair, I've never actually applied to enter the show as it's not really my kind of cooking. In fact the only reason I'd try to get on the show might be to try and infect John Torode and Greg Wallace with norovirus.