Goan Curry. Curries are great, you buy the spices in one fell swoop and you have ingredients to make a curry all at hand, all you then have to buy are meat, onions and ginger.
You can double quantities of curry paste, it will keep in a jar in the fridge for a fortnight or so. This is a gorgeous curry which is the vindaloo from Camellia Panjabi's Indian cookbook, slightly adapted. You can make it hot as you like by adding more chilli and paprika, however as it is here it is medium hot.
Curry paste:
Blend together the following:
6 garlic cloves, thumbnail sized piece of ginger, 2 tablespoons tamarind paste, 3 teaspoons hot paprika, 6 red chillis (or 3 teaspoons easy chili from a jar), 2 teaspoons ground cumin, a good slug of cider vinegar.
Blend the following in pestle and mortar: teaspoon poppy seeds, 1 star anise, 6 cloves, 8 black peppercorns. Add this to above mix and blitz until you have a curry paste which has a houmous-like texture.
Add a tablespoon of this to 500g diced pork and mix, leave to marinade for an hour or two. Put the rest of the spice paste aside.
Finely dice 2 large onions and fry in a little oil for 20 minutes on low until brown. Add spice paste and fry on low for 10 minutes. Then add pork pieces and immediately add 500ml stock. Cover and simmer for an hour.
You can add potatoes to bulk out - slice 3 jacket potatoes into wedges, splash over some oil, paprika, turmeric and ground cumin and roast in oven for 20 mins on high. Then add these part cooked wedges to the curry at the stage when the stock is added.
Just before you serve it, add a teaspoon of jaggery (palm sugar).
Serve with plain boiled basmati.