Tag Archive for 'pork'

Recipes: Pork Curry in a Hurry

Published by Hal on January 8, 2008 in Hal's Hint and recipes. 5 Comments

This recipe is a tribute to my good friends, Robert and Mary Lee, and their Chicken Curry in a Hurry. They prepared it for me once, and I had the recipe, but I don’t any longer :) I do know that their chicken curry did not have the same base as mine, but that doesn’t mean it was any less tasty!

Ingredients:

  • Oil
  • 1 pound of pork, cubed (I had chops on hand)
  • 2 cups of green beans
  • 1 bell pepper, cut into strips and cut again to be bite-sized
  • 14 ounces of coconut milk
  • 4 teaspoons of red curry powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon of onion powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder
  • 2 teaspoons of sugar
  • 2 tablespoons of lime juice

Directions:

  1. Start some rice and let it cook while you’re working on the pork curry.
  2. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat.
  3. Add a tablespoon of oil and the pork; cook the pork until it is no longer pink inside.
  4. Remove the pork from the heat and set aside.
  5. Add a tablespoon of oil to the skillet and add the green beans; cook for about 3-5 minutes, until the beans are heated through.
  6. Add the bell pepper and cook for another 3 minutes or so, until the pepper is heated through, but still crisp.
  7. Add the coconut milk and curry, onion, and garlic powders. Stir to combine.
  8. Add the pork back to the skillet, and heat through.
  9. Just before serving, add the sugar and lime juice and stir to combine.
  10. Serve along side or on top of fresh rice.

This recipe was actually inspired by a recipe in the Better Homes and Gardens cook book, but I changed a lot of the ingredients to things I had on hand. If you want more color, you can use a red or yellow bell pepper–they are just so expensive this time of year, and I didn’t have this dish planned when I went shopping last night, so I opted for the green variety. If you can’t find coconut milk, or it’s too exotic for you, you could also substitute plain yogurt. I also really like the taste of curry, which is why there is a lot in the dish. You can tone it down to your tastes :)

Hal’s Hint: Don’t blindly follow the directions for cooking your rice! If you do, you might end up burning it. A good rule of thumb is 2-to-1 liquid to rice. Bring the liquid and the rice to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and cover. Check periodically; the rice is done when there are tubes, like in the picture, and you can no longer see liquid easily. When it’s done, turn off the heat and just let it hang out. Any liquid left in the bottom, which there shouldn’t be much, will absorb into the rice after about 5 or 10 minutes. To make your rice more flavorful, you can use stock instead of just plain water.

Recipes: Bourbon Pork

Published by Hal on December 10, 2007 in Hal's Hint and recipes. 2 Comments

I love bourbon–it’s actually one of my favorite liquors. I’d love to style a restaurant with bourbon as the key ingredient. Keeping that in mind, I looked for a bourbon glaze that I could us with some pork chops we picked up from the grocery the other night. I found one here, that I modified slightly to fit my particular available ingredients.

Bourbon Pork

Ingredients

  • 3/4 cup bourbon
  • 3 cloves of garlic, minced
  • 1/2 cup onion, grated
  • 3/4 cup brown sugar (light or dark–I used light; the recipe above called for dark)
  • 1/2 cup butter, melted
  • 1/4 cup honey
  • 4-6 boneless pork chops, trimmed and cut into about 1 inch cubes
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • rice
  1. Combine the bourbon, garlic, onion, brown sugar, butter, and honey in a large bowl. Whisk together.
  2. Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.
  3. Add the pork to the skillet and allow to brown (Hal’s Hint: Take the meat out of the fridge at least 10 minutes before you put it in the pan. Once it’s in the pan, LEAVE THE MEAT ALONE! Let it hang out for about 5 minutes before you attempt to turn it. If you don’t, the meat might stick and tear or won’t brown as quickly).
  4. Add the bourbon glaze and allow to come to a boil.
  5. Stir until the glaze is reduced by about half.
  6. Serve with cooked rice.

(Hal’s Hint: I like to add spices to my rice to make it more aromatic. I added a stick of cinnamon and three small bay leaves to this batch of rice, making it a little sweeter and full of flavor. Remove these before serving.)

Bring the glaze to a boil and reduce by half.Serve along side aromatic rice.Another view.

My thoughts: My wife really liked this. I thought it was a pretty good interpretation of a bourbon sauce dish you’d get at a Chinese-American restaurant, so I call this “Carryout at home.” However, it was too sweet for my tastes. My wife and I suspect this is because I used 1 cup of sweet stuff (1/4 cup of honey, plus 3/4 cup of brown sugar). I did this because I needed more liquid to carry the flavor of the bourbon and I didn’t want to grate another onion–I had grated one, plus the half of one from last night’s dinner. In hindsight, I probably could have done without, used water, or added something savory (like diluted soy sauce–1 tablespoon soy sauce to 3 tablespoons water).

Regardless, I thought it was tasty. It was just too sweet for me usually. I have another bourbon glaze I’d like to try, but it’s more like a barbecue sauce so I’ll need to wait until I have a brisket or some ribs. Plus, my wife doesn’t like barbecue sauce much, so I’ll need to a new guinea–I mean, taster :).