Recipe : Assamese Style Pork Fry

Delicacy in Guwahati was my favourite Assamese restaurant for simple home style food. Their pork fry and pork patot diya (baked in banana leaves) were my favourite items on the menu.

I've been craving that pork fry so much since I left Guwahati, and neither of my North East recipe books (Penguins - The Essential North East Cookbook and Ambrosia from the Assamese Kitchen) seemed to have the recipe that I was looking for. So I requested my friend Sanjukta, who is Assamese if she knew a recipe for this dish. Sanjukta currently writes a Food Column for G Plus - a weekly news magazine in Guwahati.

She gave me a simple straightforward recipe, that I used as a starting point for my pork fry.
"Marinate pork in crushed ginger and garlic, salt, pepper and some red chill powder. Now take the marinated pork in a wok and cook on low flame for over an hour. Keep stirring from time to time to avoid burning of the meat Now once it's done, chop onions and fry it it little oil in high flame. Add some haldi if u want. Add some chopped green chillies and stirring add the cooked pork into it. Add some more salt if required. Fry for some more time until done"

My recipe follows. I used 20 green chillies and didn't find it as spicy as I remember, so I added another 10 towards the end. If you don't like your food spicy, you can ignore the green chillies completely or lower the quantity.

Ingredients:
2 kg pork cubes - about 1" size (I used a mix of 1 kg ribs and 1 kg boneless to get a good ratio of meat and fat, but any curry cut should be fine)
4 tbsp ginger garlic paste (freshly pounded is a better option, but packaged will do)
2 tbsp garlic paste
2 tbsp pepper

1 tbsp vinegar
1 tbsp chilli powder
1.5 tbsp salt
1 tbsp mustard oil
2 large onions (roughly chopped)
2 medium potatoes (chopped same size as pork cubes)
1 tbsp turmeric (haldi) powder
30 green chillies (slit - optional or adjust to taste)

Method :
Marinate pork in ginger garlic paste, garlic paste, pepper, vinegar, chilli powder and salt at least for an hour. Overnight or longer is a better option.

Heat the oil in a large pan or wok (the more surface area, the better)

Put the fat pieces in the pan (not the meat, so the fat cooks for longer and starts to break down)
Once the fat starts to break down, add the onions and potatoes and let the potatoes fry a bit in the fat.

Add turmeric, half the green chillies and mix well.

Then, add the meat and fry on a low flame till well cooked.

When almost done, add the other half of the green chillies.

Dry it completely and let the meat crisp up a bit.
Serve hot with rice and dhal.

Kim's Note:
If there is any meat leftover, reheat it with some water, it will form a thick curry and garnish with coriander leaves and serve with rice or rotis.

Served here with Kabuli Channa Pulao and Raita