The Visa Wellington on a Plate festival is over for another year – this is a cuisine event that promotes food and restaurants in greater Wellington.
As part of the promotion, organised by Positively Wellington Tourism, members of the public could submit their recipes to win prizes and have their dishes featured on restaurant menus.
The mouth watering recipe reproduced here on Meateaters comes from Wendy Slieker. Wendy won three of the eight My Dish categories. Her other two recipes were a ricotta gnocchi, and a Yorkshire treacle tart. Three top-notch Wellington restaurants featured her dishes – Logan Brown did the treacle tart, Capitol did the ricotta gnocchi, and Monsoon Poon are featuring the Burmese pork curry through the month of September.
This dish serves 8 to 10 people.
Ingredients:
- 2kg boneless pork, with some fat
- 4 medium onions roughly chopped
- 20 cloves of garlic (holy shit!)
- 150 g peeled and roughly chopped ginger
- 2 tsp salt
- 2 Tbsp vinegar
- 2 tsp chilli powder
- 185 ml peanut oil
- 3 Tbsp of oriental sesame oil
- 1 tsp ground tumeric
Method:
1. Cut pork into 2.5 cm cubes
2. In food processor or blender finely chop the onions, garlic and ginger. Turn into a strainer set over a bowl and push with a spoon to extract as much liquid as possible.
3.Pour the liquid into a large saucepan, add the pork, salt, vinegar, chilli powder and half the peanut oil. Bring to the boil, cover and simmer over a low heat for 1.5 hours or until pork is almost tender.
4. In another large pan heat remaining peanut oil and the sesame oil. Add the onion, garlic and ginger solids from the strainer. Add tumeric, stir and cook over a low heat. Cover pan and simmer the mixture lifting the lid frequently to stir scraping the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon. This initial frying takes around 15 minutes.
5. If mixture fries too rapidly and begins to stick before the smell has mellowed and the onions have become transparent add a small quantity of water and stir well. When the water content of the onions has evaporated and the ingredients turn a rich brown colour with oil showing around the edge of the mass the first stage of cooking is complete. Because of the large quantity this first stage may take up to 25 minutes.
6. Halfway through cooking the onion mixture spoon off some of the oil that has risen to the top of the pork mixture and add it to the onions.
7. When onion mixture is a reddish brown add the contents of the first pan and cook, uncovered, until the oil separates again and the liquid is almost evaporated. Stir frequently during this stage to ensure it does not stick.
8. Serve with white rice and accompaniments.
It sounds time-consuming but not difficult – and definitely delicious!
Image courtesy of Flickr