Curry of the week - Pork and Lime Curry with Spinach

With the hot weather upon us there is no better time to be eating spicy foods.  Contrary to what you might think eating spicy foods actually helps your body cool down, or so I am lead to believe.  Regardless of this we love spicy food in our house and both Thai and Indian form part of our regular diet.

This is such an easy curry to throw together and you can use any kind of leafy green such as silverbeet, spinach, Malabar spinach or Asian greens.  It is a sour Thai curry but not so sour that it makes your mouth pucker and it is not overly hot.  Well by our standards (and really that is a how long is a piece of string thing isn't it. My hot may not be yours.)

My top tips for this would be to prepare your sauces and sugar in a bowl you can set to the side and have each of your ingredients measured out ready to go.  Use fresh garlic and not the jarred stuff as the flavour is far better, and it is the tamarind that makes it sour so if this is too sour or not sour enough you can adjust the amount of tamarind accordingly.

3Tbsp Vegetable Oil
3 Cloves of Garlic crushed
2Tbsp Red Curry Paste
250 ml Coconut Milk
500 gm Diced Pork
3Tbsp each of Fish Sauce, Tamarind Water or Paste, Soy Sauce
1 Heaped Tbsp Palm Sugar (or raw sugar if you do not have palm sugar)
250 ml Chicken Stock
10 Kaffir Lime leaves
200 gm of leafy green ( I never weigh it I just work to what I think would be 4 portions when cooked)
1 Lime

Heat the oil in a heavy based saucepan and fry off the curry paste until fragrant and starting to separate.  Add the garlic and fry briefly but do not let the garlic brown.
Add the coconut milk and bring to the boil while stirring. 
Add the diced pork and reduce the heat to a simmer.  Add your fish sauce, soy sauce, tamarind, sugar, kaffir lime leaves and chicken stock.
If you used pork fillet cook just long enough for the pork to cook through.  If you used a cheaper cut of pork you can put a lid on you pot and cook for 45min - 1hr so that the pork becomes tender.
Once the pork is cooked added your leafy greens and cook till wilted.
Serve over rice with a Lime wedge to squeeze over the top.

Do you have a favorite Curry you want to share?  Feel free to link back to here.