My love affair with pork began with my first Sri Lankan pork curry - the unctuousness of the pork fat, the sweetness of the meat, the gelatinous skin, the sharpness of vinegar, or even better that of goroka (aka gamboge), combined with a mix of roasted ground cumin, fennel seed, coriander, dried red chillies, fresh curry leaves, chopped ginger and garlic, shredded (sera) lemon grass, a fold of rampa (pandanus) a stick of cinnamon, all cooked up in coconut milk.
It's a classic Burgher dish that rarely appears on the menus of Sri Lankan restaurants in Australia, or if it does it is so dumbed down that it could be any meat swimming in a brown gravy. Can't risk having putting in goroka, looking for all the world like black slugs sitting among the meat and tasting like crap should you chew it. It's actually the dried segments of the fruit Garcinia gummi-gutta and you are not supposed to eat them . They are there to give their characteristic highly sour flavour that cuts through the sweetness of the pork brilliantly. Can't have chunks of fatty pork for fear of scaring the health conscious. Ditto coconut milk which gets such a bad rap these days. And when I ate it in Sri Lanka you would occasionally still find the stub of a hair sticking blackly out of the skin. Prepared as it should be it is an unashamedly jungly dish.
Pickled pork was another early favourite. My dad made it a couple of times, and I have also. It's based on the meat from the head of a pig boiled and then bottled up with mustard seed, dry red chillies, ginger, garlic, green chillies, turmeric, salt and vinegar. It's ready 24 hours after bottling. You can then eat it straight out of the bottle say as a side dish with other curries, or you can fry it up with a little of its pickling liquid in some ghee or vegetable oil and again have it as a side dish. Makes a great sandwich, too.
Sticking with the Burgher ways with pork, you can also make it as a smoore, a whole piece slow pot roasted in coconut milk and roasted spices sharpened in this case with lime pickle, the piece taken out and browned in ghee or oil, and served sliced soused with the gravy.
I don't recall having pork roast in Sri Lanka. We didn't have an oven and any roasting or baking had to be done at my uncles house across the road, and I don't recall eating it when I went visiting at all. So it must have been early days of mum dipping into the Women's Weekly that put the first leg of pork with crackling onto the table. Trotters I think I had curried in Sri Lanka, and then met again as cold vinegared collagen full Chinese yum cha favourites. It was courtesy of a bowl of congee lunching in Chinatown that I first delighted in rousong aka pork floss, dried shredded pork meat sprinkled on top of said congee. And of course I could happily spend my life eating nothing but char siu/siew, a bowl of rice, and some wilted Chinese greens, the marinade so rich in the flavours of regional.national combinations of soy, Chinese wines, maltose, five spice, hoi sin and, from the range of recipes you can Google, pretty much anything that will serve to give that characteristic sweet roasted stickiness.
This post was stimulated by three encounters during this week with pork in three forms. The first was frankly disappointing. It was touted as pork with lentils and greens and certainly those elements were there, but the pork was absurdly tough, the skin difficult to cut let alone chew, the lentils in too much broth. All of this at a dinner during Crave Sydney International Food Festival.
The second was an altogether more satisfying experience, an excellent pork, pickled cabbage and apple sauce roll from Runcible Spoon, a small cafe in Camperdown. The pork was if not pulled certainly pullable ('pulled' pork being everywhere in Sydney at the moment, taking over from belly pork of a few months ago), the cabbage firm and lightly vinegary in generous ribbons the apple sauce not overly sweet, and the roll airy and just toasted. Here is a picture of the roll. (I fear I shall have to go correct the logo of the cafe however as per this delightful discussions of what exactly is a runcible spoon).
My third encounter was today, courtesy of a birthday lunch for son Raj, which we had at the Concordia Club, Tempe, host to the Oktoberfest (happily over by the time of our lunch) and renowned for its pork knuckle which was massive, no other word for it, perfectly tender, with a lightly crisp crackling with a nice layer of fat under it still soft, and simply served with mashed potato, a green bean salad, and sauerkraut. Again here is the meal.
Love the serving touch of the knife stuck in the knuckle. It was the serrated edge knife that was ideal for parting the flesh. The beer was a schooner of Spaten. Now, I don't usually drink beer but I certainly think it was the perfect go with here, cutting the grease and that yeastiness again working against the sweetness of the pork. The setting added much to the enjoyment of this meal. The building is a renovated bowling club (the lawns are still but croquet is now the game of choice) and we sat in the vast carpeted dining hall, all long tables fully occupied with middle and eastern European groups chowing down on the knuckle and/or schnitzel. There was a band playing hits from no later than the 60's, some generic Latin American (sambas, bossa novas) and the occasional polka, but strictly intended and enjoyed as a dance band for a floorful of couples of a certain age having a fabulous time waltzing (yes they played a Strauss or two), quick-stepping, jiving, cha-cha-ing and doing those ball room dance steps with supreme nonchalance. There was a cake counter with what looked like the entire repertoire of German/Austrian cakes, and in a side room a mini supermarket of all things middle European.
It's a classic Burgher dish that rarely appears on the menus of Sri Lankan restaurants in Australia, or if it does it is so dumbed down that it could be any meat swimming in a brown gravy. Can't risk having putting in goroka, looking for all the world like black slugs sitting among the meat and tasting like crap should you chew it. It's actually the dried segments of the fruit Garcinia gummi-gutta and you are not supposed to eat them . They are there to give their characteristic highly sour flavour that cuts through the sweetness of the pork brilliantly. Can't have chunks of fatty pork for fear of scaring the health conscious. Ditto coconut milk which gets such a bad rap these days. And when I ate it in Sri Lanka you would occasionally still find the stub of a hair sticking blackly out of the skin. Prepared as it should be it is an unashamedly jungly dish.
Pickled pork was another early favourite. My dad made it a couple of times, and I have also. It's based on the meat from the head of a pig boiled and then bottled up with mustard seed, dry red chillies, ginger, garlic, green chillies, turmeric, salt and vinegar. It's ready 24 hours after bottling. You can then eat it straight out of the bottle say as a side dish with other curries, or you can fry it up with a little of its pickling liquid in some ghee or vegetable oil and again have it as a side dish. Makes a great sandwich, too.
Sticking with the Burgher ways with pork, you can also make it as a smoore, a whole piece slow pot roasted in coconut milk and roasted spices sharpened in this case with lime pickle, the piece taken out and browned in ghee or oil, and served sliced soused with the gravy.
I don't recall having pork roast in Sri Lanka. We didn't have an oven and any roasting or baking had to be done at my uncles house across the road, and I don't recall eating it when I went visiting at all. So it must have been early days of mum dipping into the Women's Weekly that put the first leg of pork with crackling onto the table. Trotters I think I had curried in Sri Lanka, and then met again as cold vinegared collagen full Chinese yum cha favourites. It was courtesy of a bowl of congee lunching in Chinatown that I first delighted in rousong aka pork floss, dried shredded pork meat sprinkled on top of said congee. And of course I could happily spend my life eating nothing but char siu/siew, a bowl of rice, and some wilted Chinese greens, the marinade so rich in the flavours of regional.national combinations of soy, Chinese wines, maltose, five spice, hoi sin and, from the range of recipes you can Google, pretty much anything that will serve to give that characteristic sweet roasted stickiness.
This post was stimulated by three encounters during this week with pork in three forms. The first was frankly disappointing. It was touted as pork with lentils and greens and certainly those elements were there, but the pork was absurdly tough, the skin difficult to cut let alone chew, the lentils in too much broth. All of this at a dinner during Crave Sydney International Food Festival.
The second was an altogether more satisfying experience, an excellent pork, pickled cabbage and apple sauce roll from Runcible Spoon, a small cafe in Camperdown. The pork was if not pulled certainly pullable ('pulled' pork being everywhere in Sydney at the moment, taking over from belly pork of a few months ago), the cabbage firm and lightly vinegary in generous ribbons the apple sauce not overly sweet, and the roll airy and just toasted. Here is a picture of the roll. (I fear I shall have to go correct the logo of the cafe however as per this delightful discussions of what exactly is a runcible spoon).
My third encounter was today, courtesy of a birthday lunch for son Raj, which we had at the Concordia Club, Tempe, host to the Oktoberfest (happily over by the time of our lunch) and renowned for its pork knuckle which was massive, no other word for it, perfectly tender, with a lightly crisp crackling with a nice layer of fat under it still soft, and simply served with mashed potato, a green bean salad, and sauerkraut. Again here is the meal.
Love the serving touch of the knife stuck in the knuckle. It was the serrated edge knife that was ideal for parting the flesh. The beer was a schooner of Spaten. Now, I don't usually drink beer but I certainly think it was the perfect go with here, cutting the grease and that yeastiness again working against the sweetness of the pork. The setting added much to the enjoyment of this meal. The building is a renovated bowling club (the lawns are still but croquet is now the game of choice) and we sat in the vast carpeted dining hall, all long tables fully occupied with middle and eastern European groups chowing down on the knuckle and/or schnitzel. There was a band playing hits from no later than the 60's, some generic Latin American (sambas, bossa novas) and the occasional polka, but strictly intended and enjoyed as a dance band for a floorful of couples of a certain age having a fabulous time waltzing (yes they played a Strauss or two), quick-stepping, jiving, cha-cha-ing and doing those ball room dance steps with supreme nonchalance. There was a cake counter with what looked like the entire repertoire of German/Austrian cakes, and in a side room a mini supermarket of all things middle European.
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