Recipe : Wak Serjak - Pork Stew from Tripura - North East India

My red meat of choice is pork. I grew up eating pork on Sundays. My grandmother was an amazing cook and made the most delicious pork dishes. Manglorean style pork is heavy though and very conducive to Sunday afternoon naps. So not really dishes for mid-week. and we keep our dinners light as far as possible.

So it was a fantastic revelation for me, when we lived in Guwahati in 2011, to discover a multitude of pork dishes that were super tasty and yet very easy to prepare (no heavy grinding of masalas) and super light on the tummy. As light as eating chicken.

A lot of pork dishes in Assam, are cooked with local herbs which are difficult to find outside of the state. My friend Sanjukta is a great resource for local recipes and her blog is an excellent starting point.

When I lived in Guwahati, there weren't too many local food bloggers, so the first book that I bought for help with local cuisine was Hoihnu Hazel's collaboration with Penguin. This recipe is from that book.

I'm happy to say that in the decade since then, North East Indian food is slowly working itself into public consciousness due to the enterprising passion and commitment of a few foodies like Gitika Saikia in Mumbai and  Sneha Saikia in Delhi.

Wak Serjak in its thinnest form is like a soup, you can however let it simmer for awhile so it gets thicker. And in the Manglorean/Goan fashion of maturing pork, keep reheating leftovers (if you have any) daily, until it becomes a nice thick mass. Its super-delicious at every stage.

Ingredients:
2 kg pork (I like a good balance of meat and fat and bones - here I buy pork belly and ribs seperately to add to the mix)
2 tsp oil
4 tbsp ginger paste
6-8 green chillies chopped
4 medium onions chopped
6 medium tomatoes chopped
salt to taste

Method:
Wash and drain pork. Cut into bite sized pieces.

Heat oil in a deep pot and add ginger, green chillies, onions and tomatoes, fry till golden brown.

Add pork and stir-fry for awhile until pork is cooked. I tend to cook the fat and bones first so the fat breaks down, before adding the meat.

Add salt and 4 cups water. Then cover and leave to simmer for awhile (use less water if you want a thicker gravy.

Adjust salt and fresh chillies to taste.

Serve hot with cooked rice.

Optional garnish - freshly shopped corriander leaves for a fresh herby taste.


Note:
Optional - since the tomatoes here in the UK, don't have any tartness, I added the juice of one lemon - to taste.

I found Bergamot lemons in the market last week and as an Earl Grey aficionado, I had to bring them home. In the North East of India, the tomatoes are tart enough that you don’t need to add any thing citric. But here I added the juice of a whole bergamot to 2 kilos of meat.

The essential fragrance of the bergamot was lost in the cooking, so it tasted like any other lemon in the mix.

Recipe : Baingan Pitika/ Bharta - Aubergine / Eggplant/ Brinjal Dip

Baingan Pitika or Baingan Bharta is a common side dish in the North and North East of India. Each household has its own way of making it, this is mine.

Clean & dry a whole brinjal/ aubergine/eggplant.

Big ones work best for this recipe.

Rub some oil on the outside of the brinjal/ aubergine.

Either roast it on an open flame / on coals / or in an oven until the skin chars.

To roast it in an oven, prick the skin a bit with a fork or a skewer (to allow the steam to escape).

Preheat oven to 450F/230C/210C-Fan oven.

Roast for 45 minutes to an hour depending on the size of your brinjal.

You want the skin charred for a smoky flavour, but the flesh inside should turn nice and soft and mushy.

Peel off the skin (discard) and mash the brinjal with a fork - you want a rough texture, not a smooth paste.

Mix with chopped onion, fresh coriander, green chilli, salt and mustard oil.

Now this is a recipe that comes completely down to personal taste, but for an idea:

1 medium brinjal/ aubergine/eggplant

1/2 medium onion chopped fine

1-3 green chillies (depending on how spicy you like it and how spicy the chillies you are using are)

2 tbsp chopped corriander

1/2 tsp mustard oil - this really gives it a good flavour, if you don't have mustard oil, don't use any other oil, just omit the oil.

a pinch or 2 of salt

Serve as a side or a dip with breads or crudites

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

Recipe: Pork Chops with Naga flavours

I've been making pork chops with Asian Citrus Spice Marinade for awhile & I wanted to try something different. I've been missing all the gorgeous pork I used to gorge on while living in Guwahati, so I decided to cook with some North Eastern flavours for a change. I used the ingredients of the Naga dish ThevoChu for inspiration and was quite pleased with the result.

Ingredients:
1kg pork chops
2tbsp ginger garlic paste
1 Naga Chilli (you can use birds eye chilli or chilli powder as a perfectly acceptable heat substitute, but the Naga Chilli adds a hint of sweetness and smokiness to the flavour)
Vinegar or lemon juice to taste (I had a lovely bottle of organic garlic vinegar from ABC farms in Pune that I used)
salt to taste
200-225 gms bamboo shoot (I used a Blue Dragon tin after draining the liquid. This brand is low on added salt & citric acid. Check your brand to adjust for salt and vinegar in your dish, if the bamboo shoot is too salty or acidic, rinse it in cold water before using)
fresh chopped corriander leaves for garnish - optional

Method:
Marinate the chops in ginger garlic paste, chilli, salt and vinegar for at least a couple of hours. The longer its marinated the better. I normally marinate chops for a couple of days, so that the flavours really soak in.

Heat a pan, and sear the chops on both sides. (I had a bit of mustard oil in which I've soaked some Naga chillis, so I warmed that on the pan before searing the meat, it added another layer of spice to the meat)

Once the meat is seared, add the bamboo shoot and the rest of the marinade juices and cover and cook, turning once or twice until done.

Garnish with corriander leaves if using and serve.

We are a family of meat eaters, so just pork chops is a perfectly acceptable meal for us. You can serve it with a side of salad, or roast/mashed potatoes. Or serve the chops as a side with pasta aglio olio or any other light pasta dish.

Kim's tip:
You can just pop these marinated chops on the BBQ, and ignore the bamboo shoot and corriander, it will still taste very good.

Recipe : Thevo Chu - Pork with Bamboo Shoot (Nagaland)

I had picked up a copy of Hoihnu Hazel's The Essential North-East Cookbook some time ago, but as is the case with many of my cookbooks, I hadn't really cooked from it. (guilty smile)

My recent experiments with eating North Eastern food at the Assamese Stall in Dilli Haat and the Nagaland Stall on BKS Marg reinspired me to try out this cuisine for myself.

Most of our Manglorean pork dishes are quite heavy on the ground masalas and fresh cuttings. So it ends up sitting quite heavily in our stomachs, especially in summer. North Eastern cooking is much lighter on masalas and hence pork can be eaten without reserving it for a Sunday afternoon.

I have finally found a good pork supplier in Delhi and he gives me the option of regular pork (which is very high in fat), boneless + skinless pork or boneless + skinless + fatless pork. I buy a majority of the 3rd option and half a kilo of regular pork and mix the fat up with the fat free version. This way I can control how much fat I use in my pork dishes. As anyone who loves pork will tell you, fatless pork is absolutely useless. You might as well be eating mutton or beef.

I did tweak the recipe a bit, by adding the spices much earlier than recommended as I wanted them to cook well. I soaked my bamboo shoots for 2 days changing the water every 12 hours, as that is how we use bamboo shoot back home. I used a tbsp of palm vinegar as a tenderiser and to give a hint of a tang. I also garnished with some corriander as I wanted a fresh herby finish to the dish.

Ingredients:
1kg pork
1cup washed and chopped bamboo shoot
1tsp ginger paste
1tsp garlic paste
2tsp red chilli powder
salt to taste

Method:
Wash pork, drain and cut into 2" pieces (I choopped the fat to half the size so it would break down faster)
Place pork in a pan without water or oil on low heat for 5 minutes stirring constantly.
As the pork starts giving out water, add bamboo shoots.

I added the masalas within 5 minutes of adding bamboo shoots although Hoihnu Hazel recommends adding it in the last 5-10 minutes.I also added a tbsp of palm vinegar at this stage.
Cover and cook for one hour on low heat sprinkling water if it dries too much.
While this is usually served dry, I wanted a little gravy, so I added just a little water. Since my lid did not allow the liquid to evaporate, I had a fair amount of curry in the end.

 I sprinkled some fresh chopped cilantro before serving it with hot steamed rice.

 Yum! Soul Food to warm the cockles of my heart :)

The Arunachal Pradesh version of this dish is called Arek. The method for cooking is almost the same, but there the masala is 1 tsp chopped ginger, 1 tsp chopped garlic, 1 medium tomato quartered and 3-4 green chillies.