Paul Mercurio shares recipe on breakfast

Paul Mercurio has a fortnightly gig on The Breakfast Club to talk food and recipes. This is the recipe he shared with listeners this morning.

“I originally created this dish for my cooking show which we filmed in Cairns in Queensland. The show featured various unique ingredients that I had never cooked with before including Crocodiles! So yes, I cooked this dish with crocodile and you can too if you want to although it may be a little hard to get. That said I think it is better suited to pork neck or chicken thighs! Oh and if you want to know what crocodile tastes like it is a little like chicken with a texture a bit like firm white fish – a little weird.”

Pork and Mango Curry

INGREDIENTS

2 tablespoon of Peanut oil

1 Spanish red onion – sliced

½ red capsicum – cut in thin strips

50g Red curry

700g of Pork neck – diced in 4- 5cm cubes – I like my curry meat to be cut in big chunks

30g piece of Tamarind pulp soaked – approx 4 tablespoons Tamarind liquor

300mils of Coconut milk

1 ½ cups Mango pulp – buy 1 ripe large mango peel and squeeze all the flesh off into a bowl and then mash to a pulp

4 Kaffir Lime leaves – middle stalk cut out

1 lemon grass stalk – trim bottom, remove outer skin, cut top half off and discard chop finely

16 Snow peas – top and tailed

16 green Beans – top and tailed

½ zucchini – cut into sticks

1 Lebanese eggplant– trim ends cut in half lengthways then chop

1/3 cup Fresh Coriander

2 cups of cooked rice

METHOD

Preheat oven to 160°c ff or 180°c

In a large oven proof casserole dish over medium high heat on the stove add the oil and when hot add the onion and capsicum and cook until onion starts to go golden. Add curry paste and cook for several minutes stirring then add the pork and mix to coat the meat well and cook for about five minutes stirring all the time. Add the Tamarind Liquor stir through and cook for three to four minutes stirring all the time, add the mango pulp and coconut milk stir to combine then add the lime leaves and lemongrass stir and bring to the boil. Turn off the heat put a lid on the pot and place in the oven and cook for 1 ½ hours. Remove from the oven and put in all of the vegetables giving them a good stir then put the lid back on and put pot back in the oven for another 30 minutes or until the pork is cooked through.

Remove pot from the oven and stir through most of the chopped coriander; divide the rice between 4 bowls serve the curry over the rice and garnish with a little more Coriander.

Serves four

Note: You can buy tamarind pulp in a concentrated block which is basically the tamarind fruit pods compressed very tightly together. To use you cut a piece off – for this recipe about 30g and then cut it up into chunks and put them in a bowl and cover with boiling water for about 20 minutes. You then squeeze the water out of the pulp and discard the solids and use the liquor that is left.