Marc’s Bachelor Boy Vindaloo

While most college kids were either focusing on studying (or partying!), Marc was spending most of his time pestering his lecturer, who was a great cook, to share some of her recipes. This pork dish, which has since become a favourite of ours, was the first and easiest she taught him. Guaranteed to impress the ladies (Darsh certainly fell for it), this dish is easy to prepare, requires few ingredients and takes almost no time at all to cook.

Ingredients

• 500g lean pork, cubed
• 1 bulb garlic
• 3 inches ginger
• 1/2 cup white vinegar
• 4 tbs chili powder
• 1 1/2 tsp mustard seeds
• 2 tbs oil
• salt to taste

Instructions

1. Grind the garlic and ginger to make a paste.
2. Take a third of the paste and mix into the pork. Reserve remaining paste for use during cooking.
3. Add 1/4 cup vinegar and 2 tbs chili powder. Massage into pork and leave to marinate for at least 2 hours (for best results, marinate overnight).
4. Cook: Toast mustard seeds until aromatic, and popping stops. Make sure the pot is closed, or you'll have mustard seeds all over the kitchen floor.
5. Add oil. Once heated, throw in remainder garlic-ginger paste and fry until golden and the kitchen smells oh, so good.
6. Add pork, remainder of chili powder and vinegar, and salt. Mix well. Feel free to add more chili powder if you like your food spicier.
7. Cover and allow pork to cook. Meal should be ready in about 15 minutes.
8. Before serving, you could throw on some chopped cilantro. We like to serve this with steamed rice or plain rice noodles, and plain cucumber wedges.