Dinner Tonight: Thai-ish Yellow Curry with Pork and Kale
Tonight for dinner, I made a Thai-influenced yellow curry with pork and kale. The method is inspired by Mark Bittman, the flavors from several different recipes — and also what I had on hand. The results were scrumptious, and made four relatively modest servings.
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons peanut oil
- 2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
- 1 lb pork, cut into thin bite-sized strips
- 1 dried hot pepper, slit partly open but not cut into pieces
- 1 yellow onion, sliced into bite-sized strips
- 1 tablespoon garam masala
- 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
- 1 bunch dinosaur kale, cut into 2" x 2" squares
- 1 13.5 oz can light coconut milk
- 2 tablespoons fish sauce
- salt and pepper
Procedure
- Heat half the oil in a dutch oven over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, add half the ginger. Stir briefly, a minute or two, until it starts to darken slightly.
- Add the pork, and maybe a pinch of salt. Raise the heat to high. Cook, stirring only occasionally, until the pork
is a bit brown. Remove the pork from the pot with a slotted spoon and set aside. - Turn the heat down to medium and add the other half of the oil to the pan. (You can add less if some oil remains.) When it's hot, add the rest of the ginger, and the hot pepper, to the oil. Cook a minute or two, as before.
- Add the onion to the pan, along with the garam masala and turmeric. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion starts to soften, four or five minutes.
- Add the kale to the pan. Cook for a minute or two, tossing and mixing it in. Add the coconut milk, the fish sauce, and a pinch of salt. Cover and cook for three to five minutes, until the kale is intensely green and somewhat lower in volume, and the coconut milk is bubbling.
- Stir the pork back in. When the liquid starts boiling, reduce heat to medium-low and leave partially uncovered until the kale is tender and the sauce is somewhat thickened, about ten minutes. Taste, and adjust salt and pepper as required. Serve over rice.
If I had to do it over again, I might have added a little garlic to the ginger. Or maybe not. And I might have used curry powder instead of garam masala and turmeric, but I didn't have any on hand so that wasn't an option. Also, I used white pepper and for the rice used ruby red jasmine rice, which was delicious and a little bit nutty but still very tender. About as good a weeknight meal as I could imagine.
You Heard it Here First
The New York Times' annual Ideas issue highlights food wrapping that changes color when the food is bad.
I suggested this idea back in February 2005.
PID-Controlled Slow Cooker
This week, my Cuisinart CSC-650 Slow Cooker trashed another batch of food. The temperature was too hot, and stayed too hot, and burned the heck out of my sweet potatoes. When I made stock this week, it also cooked too hot, and spit and made a mess of the countertop. The Amazon reviews suggest that many other people have the same problems that I did.
The Cuisinart has ruined food before, but enough was enough. This time, I gave up on the cooker, and got permission from my lovely wife to disassemble it. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have a real thermostat, so it wasn't something I could adjust. I ended up trashing the device, which was somewhat cathartic (not as cathartic as fixing it would have been). Oh well, I wasn't going to be using it again anyway.
Wikipedia says that , for "safety" reasons. A couple of people have also looked into hacking slow cookers, but nobody seems to have done much work to solve the problem.
I've considered just buying another slow cooker after reading some reviews and meta-reviews, but I feel sure that whatever I get will just cook at too high a temperature.
What I really want is a tweaked-out slow cooker with a PID controller that's content to let me cook at "unsafe" temperatures. It looks like this Hamilton Beach model actually uses a temperature probe to control cooking, and at $50 I might give it a try, but the absence of a high-end gadget model with more precise controls is disappointing at best.
Self-Stirring Risotto Pot
I love making risotto, but all the stirring! What if there was a nice, heavy risotto pot with a top like one of those old crank-driven popcorn poppers? It could slowly spin (driven electrically, presumably), making the risotto all nice and happy.
Espresso Bagels
It's easy to find a zillion flavored bagels, all of which are too sweet and too soft.
A good bagel with some solid coffee flavoring, toasted, with a schmear, sounds pretty good to me.
More chip flavors!
Chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, and peanut-butter chips can all be acquired for use in cookies. It seems that there must be a zillion other kinds of chips one might wish for: berry-flavored chips, coffee chips, and so on. The flavors might not be "real," but kitchen shortcuts sell well regardless... plus they're shelf-stable.
Better Stove Controls
My stove was set to "medium" last night, but medium on my large burners is nothing like medium on my small burners. If I had a fancy stove, they would be different again.
Wouldn't it be nice if the numbers shifted, so that the big burner started at 2 or 3 and went up to 11 or 12?
"This burner goes to 11" jokes aside, ratings based on a constant scale across different stoves could make recipes more universal.
Pirate Toaster
I admit that I've always wanted the Hello Kitty Toaster that burns an image of everyone's favorite promotional vehicle. Unfortunately, I don't eat toast much, and I already have a toaster oven, which is useful for cooking fish sticks, too.
Even so, I'd buy a toaster that burned a jolly roger onto every slice of bread.
Self-Popping Popcorn
We've got self-heating lattes; I want self-popping popcorn, in a similar canister.
Wasteful? Lazy? You betchya! But it'd also be mighty convenient. Popcorn is so much better when it's popped fresh...
Electronic Recipe Assistant
Now that tablet computers are becoming affordable, there's a whole lot of use for them in the kitchen. Including the Electronic Recipe Assistant. (Queue announcer voice: "A new ERA in home cooking has arrived...")
Really it's simple stuff. Aggregating the groceries for the week's menus, and letting people "cross off" stuff they already have shelved, to produce nice grocery lists (print to any networked printer in the house). Touch the screen to see the next step --- ERA will need a plastic screen guard, to keep the grease off, something you can toss in the dishwasher. Heck, if it's got a loud enough speaker, it can read the next step, and respond to requests: "ERA: Next Step!"
I don't know if I'm just a geek, but when I'm alone in the kitchen cooking, I could use an ERA...
Tupperware with Secret Compartments
Sliding panels are always cool. Hidden anything is neat. But Tupperware storage containers for the fridge that include secret compartments would be super-cool. Among other uses, you could hide leftovers of the good stuff from roommates and other potential scavengers. Plus they'd just be fun to play with.