2010 Cooking Club Week 44: Thai Pork with Coconut Sauce

Malari

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!!

Getting there

This looks great! thanks!

I love cooking with thai flavours and look forward to trying this during the week.:)

Little Alex

We had this for dinner tonight, Malari. It turned out really well and was delicious! Thank you! The idea of keeping some of the coconut for the rice was really great and made a huge difference.

This is what it looked like:

Getting there

Sorry I didn't take a photo!

Had this last night and it was really good!

Needed a little bit of cornflour to thicken it up but other than that the recipe was perfect!

I served it with red pepper strips and shiitake mushroom sauteed in oyster sauce. Oh and I'll definitely be cooking rice in coconut milk again!

Malari

Getting there wrote: »

Sorry I didn't take a photo!

Had this last night and it was really good!

Needed a little bit of cornflour to thicken it up but other than that the recipe was perfect!

I served it with red pepper strips and shiitake mushroom sauteed in oyster sauce. Oh and I'll definitely be cooking rice in coconut milk again!

I'm surprised you needed to thicken the sauce, I sometimes need to water mine down a bit

I love the coconut rice too. Can't remember where I picked that one up. It wasn't Rachel though

1966

This looks lovely but think I wud too add pepper strips just for colour more than anything

Malari

1966 wrote: »

This looks lovely but think I wud too add pepper strips just for colour more than anything

Yes, of course it needs a side dish of veggies for balance! Broccoli in sesame oil is a favourite of mine.

Little Alex

1966 wrote: »

This looks lovely but think I wud too add pepper strips just for colour more than anything

You're right and there is actually some veg in there, but it's hidden by the sauce.

Mr Magnolia

Twas lovely. I'd never used pork fillet in a stir fry type dish before and the texture was great. Thanks Malari!

neuro-praxis

Mr Magnolia your dish although lovely looking looks like you left out the coconut milk?

Mr Magnolia

Nope, it's there alright.

Tayla

Made this today, it was lovely, I left out the garlic and the fish sauce because I don't like either, I'd probably put less brown sugar in next time because it was slightly too sweet for me but it was gorgeous, clean plates all round.

The rice was so good with the coconut milk, great tip!

Charlie 08

made this yesterday and of all the cooking club recipes I've made it makes my top 3!!Really fab!Even my 1 and 3 yr olds tucked in!!

Malari

Aw, blast from the past! Glad you liked it. I haven't made this one in a while, must have a go again.

janmaree

I've never cooked anything Thai-like before and despite not having lemongrass and loathing coriander, I made this last night without them and it was totally delicious. Even my insane-making picky eater of a father declared it to be "lovely" so many thanks indeed for the recipe; I will make it again because everyone loved it and it's such a treat to do something different with pork steak.

P.S. Had a crazy busy day and no time to cook so offering Dad several quick options for dinner, including the pork from last night, he opted for the pork! He finished the lot, nothing left for the dog and again commented that it was lovely food! I'm simply flabbergasted.........usually I get "where did you get that meat" or "whose sausages are those".........Thai it is........I'll even use the coriander!