Korma Curry Pork with the Couch Potato Chef

Feeling re-energized on a dreary-weather Friday evening, I decided to cook a proper meal with TLC (tender loving care) for hubby and myself for dinner. For two weeks, I had not cooked a proper meal - by proper meal, I define it as something which is not oven-baked, instant or tapaod (take-away Malaysian style). I was down with an inflammation of the tail bone; in simple words just lower back swelling. I was unable to bend down and could walk only very slowly. Hubby took one day leave from work to see to my needs. I felt very immobile. I could not walk without pain then. It saw me lagging behind housework, cooking, studies, my favourite morning sessions at the gym, piano playing in Almere and my new found interest in ballet. So happened I had exams too last week, and I was at an all point low. So when I found out that I didn't do too bad after all in the exams, my spirits were lifted. For all that two weeks of almost no-physical action, I was feeling sluggish and unintellectual given that I was brooding more than studying and lamenting the fact that my brain didn't seem to work like it did ten years ago at university. Oh, am I that old already?

I decided to make korma curry pork to celebrate my coming out of back pain, my exam results and for thanking hubby for taking extra care of me. For the past two weeks, our meals have been out of the box and didn't feel like mama's recipes; you know that feeling of sentimentality you taste when you're eating home cooked food even if you're faraway.
I cut mushrooms, tomatoes and pork fillet into cubes. Then begins the meat stir-frying part. My style is to toss and play with them as if they were dice in a roulette game. Makes it more interesting with an oomph factor in the frying, making me pay more attention to whether or not the meat is cooked.

I add in the Dutch button mushrooms (they are a bit flatter and whiter than Chinese ones) after the pork has cooked for a bit, but not completely. The reason is I always don't trust mushrooms - yes, that's right. I somehow feel that if I don't cook mushrooms long enough, I'll be poisoned by them. So I treat them like meat.

The mushrooms on their own are tasteless. So if I run out of ideas of ingredients which complement or match the food, I use mushrooms as an all-rounder food. Great tip, no?

 Then I add in the Korma sauce. It comes in a small bottle. I pour all of it inside. I wait for the curry to bubble for a bit, starting at the sides of the pan. Then I know it is really starting to cook and sizzle.

When the curry is all bubbly, it kind of reminds me of a hot swamp in those Piranha type movies where some giant crocodile or monster fish lurks beneath the murky waters ready to pounce as the bubbles get bigger and higher. So when the bubbles are big enough and spread towards the center of the pan, I know it's time to pounce - I do so by adding the tomatoes!

Tomatoes are my last ingredient in any dish because I like it when the tomatoes are still juicy instead of all wrinkly when the dish is ready. Some dishes I see here people cook tomatoes until there is nothing left of them. All you see is a strand of skin of what once was, instead of the juicy red flesh.

I stir the whole mixture thoroughly and with TLC. I felt it all coming towards me now after all the moodiness and back pain is gone. Last unseen ingredient - TLC!

I cannot help but add some Vietnamese chilly sauce inside for more fiery passion in the dish. The label on the Dutch korma curry says that it is only mildly spicy; and for Malaysian standards, this means that it is nil as the level of tolerance for Dutch taste-buds are generally low.

The chilly sauce is actually the one which is officially used by Vietnamese loempia (popiah) sellers here. Hubby and I always squeeze a long line along our popiahs when we buy them at the market to eat immediately. At 1.20 Euros per popiah, they really are doing good business cos when we walk together, we never fail to get one.

Finally the dish is all ready to eat. It tastes good and hubby likes it a lot. The next day, he made fried rice with it with the leftovers as I cooked quite a bit. I'm glad that this dish is the start of a more energetic me.

I hope that I would be able to cook proper meals at least three times a week. Nothing beats the creamy flavours of a home cooked meal. Now I follow hubby's style and try to make my dishes as creamy as possible. Maybe this is part from hubby's liking for cheesy meals. So I try to re-create it in Asian meals as well by means of adding santan (coconut milk). However for this dish, there was no need to as it was already creamy enough as the sauce is quite thick.