Day 83: Garam masala pork

I must admit, not the most attractive of sites to me when looking at a pork loin sitting on my glass chopping board but, then again, I’m sure that’s significantly explained by the fact that I’m vegetarian. Dear Husband would probably look at it though and say “Hmmm, can’t wait to eat that!”. Only for this Challenge, there is no way that I would have picked up a pork loin to cook simply because it doesn’t look any way appealing to me. When it comes to pork, the height of my cooking of that particular type of meat is sausages and bacon which I can just about handle. A loin of pork though is another story. So, when I decided to make Garam masala pork tonight, I wasn’t exactly thrilled at having to handle this big lump of meat. I can only guess what part of the animal it comes from but don’t want to know exactly as, when it comes to meat, the less I know the better. Therefore, I will not be consulting my Dear Assistant (aka Google). However, the good old (well, actually new!) latex gloves made the preparation of the pork that little bit more bearable.

I started off by slicing the pork into 1cm rounds before adding it to a bowl of garam masala mixed with rapeseed oil. The recipe said I could either use the store bought garam masala or prepare it using an individual recipe at the bottom of the page; however, I took a short cut and reached for the bottled stuff from my larder. I didn’t have any nutmeg to make the homemade version but will do again in the future. I mixed the pork into the oil and garam masala mixture and then covered the bowl with a plate. Next, I got on to sautéing two onions, crushed garlic and a chopped red chilli for about 8 minutes. Once the onions were golden, I added in the sliced pork and cooked each side for 3 minutes exactly. Having not cooked a pork loin before and, with my ever fear of food poisoning someone from giving them under-cooked meat, I cut a slice of the pork in half just to check that it was fully done (which it was); therefore, the pork didn’t need any more than 6 minutes in total. Finally, I added in a couple of tablespoons of Greek yoghurt, stirred it for a minute and served the meat with boiled rice.

The verdict…

Dear Husband really liked it and gave the dish 9 marks out of 10; Dear Husband’s friend (who also had featured in yesterday’s post – DMB) also loved it and gave it 10 out of 10. I did tell DMB thought that he doesn’t have to give every dish full marks if it doesn’t deserve it but, no, he insisted that it was worth the ten. I was almost half wishing that this dish would score low so that I wouldn’t have to work with pork loin again but, surprisingly, it scored that highly that I will undoubtedly have to make it again. Overall, it was an extremely simple and quick dish to make. Plus, it gave me the opportunity to cook a meat that I hadn’t done so before. Only next time, I will have to venture that little bit further and make my own garam masala which I’m sure will be better than the store bought version. However, when I contemplated going back to the town for nutmeg, a saying sprung to mind... “You can do anything but not everything” and today was certainly one of those days…