Topic: Pork Vindaloo

[andymarketol@yahoo.co.uk]

Pork Vindaloo is almost unheard of in the UK, however this is the traditional meat for vindaloo -  and most of the other common conceptions about the dish are also wrong.

Firstly it is not originally an Indian dish at all; it was imported by the Portuguese traders who settled in Goa in about 1500 and brought a few things with them. One of them was a pork dish prepared with wine or wine vinegar and lots of garlic. It was called, in Portuguese, Carne de Vinha d' Alhos; vinha for wine, alhos for garlic. And hence the second misconception; that it has anything to do with potatoes, it is an unfortunate linguistic coincidence that aloo is the Hindi word for potato.

The other misconception is that this is necessarily a dish that should remove the skin from your tongue. It certainly didn't in its original form, however the other things that the Portuguese brought with them were Christianity and chilli peppers, which had recently been discovered in Central America.

From this started the evolution of what is now a classic dish, and evolved, it certainly has. Pork vindaloo is rarely seen in the west, we use chicken, lamb and prawns mostly, so it is difficult now to know exactly what a traditional vindaloo actually is. Although the gloop that is served up in most Indian restaurants in the UK can be quite a fine dish, it certainly isn't traditional.

Pork vindaloo started life as a fairly simple dish with not too many ingredients, as it was developed by the Goans it would have acquired spices and, being a hot Southern state, it would have become a very spicy dish. A variety of other ingredients have been added along the way. A common theme is lots of cinnamon, cloves and ginger and this gives the dish a very distinctive taste

I have read (and tried) dozens of vindaloo recipes (only a few of them for pork vindaloo), ranging from the quite simple, which is probably most authentic, to ones with a whole load of extra stuff in them.

My recipe here for the traditional pork vindaloo is quite simple, I do use onions, which may not have been included in the original, but not the array of other ingredients which you will see in some recipes.

A good pork vindaloo needs to be marinated, preferably overnight, so it's not a spur of the moment dish. The result should be a sweet and sour dish and if you want it really hot (it would be in Goa) that's OK you can use lots of chillis; this version is medium hot.

Have a look at the recipe in details here
http://www.my-indian-food.com/PorkVindaloo.html

Andy

[chriswg]

I'll be honest, the picture doesn't look great. The sauce looks very thin which is probably a traditional thing but I like my Vindaloo to have a nice rich thick garlicky very spicy sauce with a lump of potato thrown in.