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Breaking the Rules

Pork Cheek Vindaloo

The first thing to remark upon is that vindaloo is usually,

but not always, made with pork. Perhaps because of Goa’s

mercantile history, perhaps due to an insensitive attitude,

the Portuguese had little respect for local habits, ignoring

both Hindu and Muslim proscriptions against the pig.

However, vindaloo’s singularity does not stop there. There

are lashings of vinegar and buckets of garlic, black pepper

and tomato. The more one looks at it, despite the spicing

that one expects – cumin, coriander, cardamom and

turmeric – it begins to look like a cover for what is

essentially a European dish, until one realises that it isn’t

very European either. Unlike British ‘curries’, bastardised

and adapted from Indian originals, it is a true hybrid.

Even within the extraordinary diversity of Indian

cooking, vindaloo sticks out like a sore thumb.

Synonymous in English culture with extreme piquancy –

at university we would compete to see who could eat

the hottest curries, a turbocharged vindaloo being the

ultimate test, one that I soon learned to flunk – a vindaloo

need not be that hot. But it should pack a punch.

I had been meaning to take on vindaloo for some time

when I was prompted by a reading of Fresh Spice, an

invigorating tome by Arun Kapil. Arun would appear to be

a bit of a hybrid himself, half Indian, half Yorkshireman;

he worked in London before settling in Ireland, thanks to

romance and the good offices of the Ballymaloe Cookery

School. His book attracted me not because it is eclectic –

I don’t want turmeric with ham, gherkins and Vacherin

Mont d’Or, thank you very much – but because of the

respect and attention with which it deploys those spices.

Not only should we be a great deal more circumspect in

sourcing proper fresh spices, we should also take a great

deal more care of them once we have them. Having

patiently learned to ‘toast’ our spices in a dry pan before

grinding them, Arun tells us that most of the time we

are doing more harm than good, destroying much of the

aromatics that we are trying to extract. That’s another job

out of the way then.

37

January