2010 Cooking Club Week 44: Thai Pork with Coconut Sauce

This is one I've taken from one of Rachel Allen's books and hopefully you will be as pleasantly surprised as I was at how tasty it is!

Ingredients (serves 5 or 6):
1kg pork fillet or pork pieces
2 tbsp roughly chopped coriander with stalks
5 spring onions
1.5cm piece of fresh ginger
4 garlic cloves
Zest & juice of half a lemon or lime
1 red chilli, deseeded
1 stalk lemongrass
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp fish sauce
2 tbsp sesame oil
1 tin coconut milk

Method:
If you have a pork fillet, cut it into diagonal slices about 1cm thick.

Make a marinade by adding all the ingredients apart from the coconut milk (and pork!) into a food processor and whiz till you have a paste. I usually use a handheld blender for this. Place the pork in a dish and mix through the paste and leave to marinade for half an hour or even overnight. I have cooked this straight away though when I don't have time and it's still good.

Heat a frying pan with no oil and add the pork (keep amy remaining marinade) in a single layer, or as close as you can to a single layer, for a minute or two each side until golden. Don't worry about the marinade getting all burned and sticky in the pan! When the pork is golden remove from the pan and keep warm.

Add 3/4 of the tin of coconut milk (shake well before opening) to the sticky pan and stir till all the marinade is mixed in. You can add in any remaining marinade from earlier. Let this thicken and simmer for 5 mins or so.

I usually cook some basmati rice with the remaining coconut milk and water while the sauce is cooking.

Add the pork back onto the sauce and heat through for a few minutes. You may need to add a little lemon juice or fish sauce to season at this point.

Serve with rice and a little coriander on top!

I find this dish a really quick and tasty thing to do if you don't want to spend ages cooking. You could throw in some sugar snap peas or peppers while you are making the sauce if you want to add veg. And I don't find that coriander comes through very strongly once it's all cooked. I know a few people are adverse to coriander!!