Vindaloo, Wine and Kheer - Oh My!

In keeping with my Indian theme, I made goan-style hot and sour pork (Vindaloo) this weekend. It was a bit more time consuming than the other dishes, but it turned out deliciously!

To make this meal, I ended up biting the bullet and buying a spice grinder and I also made a trek to Central Market (and their bulk spice isle) to find 2 key ingredients for this dish - fenugreek and brown mustard seeds. You start by taking all your spices (cumin seeds, dried chilies, peppercorns, cardamon seeds, a cinnamon stick, mustard seeds and fenugreek seeds) and grinding them up, then you add vinegar, salt, and brown sugar to make the start of the vindaloo paste. After that, you brown 2 onions in lots of oil and then transfer them to a food processor, add some water and make an onion paste - this gets added to the spices and you have vindaloo paste. Once the paste is made, the rest of the meal is pretty easy - cut up and brown your meat (I used pork), make a garlic & ginger paste and add that, add turmeric & coriander and the vindaloo and let it simmer for at least an hour.

I made plain rice to go with the pork vindaloo (I thought that the dish itself had enough seasoning and plain rice would go better than a seasoned rice) and served garlic naan (from Treader Joe's), broccoli and a delicious Dry Riesling from Chateau Ste. Michelle.

I discovered the Dry Riesling in talking to the "wine lady" at Safeway - I wanted a white wine that went well with spicy food and she recommend the Dry Riesling. It is very drinkable and goes perfectly with anything spicy - it has quickly become one of my favorite wines! It also helps that I can buy it right at the grocery store and it is under $7.00 a bottle!!

For dessert, I made Kheer again (see my post from 01/13/10 for the recipe), but I changed it up a bit from the original recipe. I used coconut milk, vanilla and toasted coconut in the recipe - along with the raisins, milk and cream. The addition of vanilla and coconut added dimensions to the flavor that were exceptional! Since the dish was a bit spicy, the creamy rice pudding put an exclamation point on the dinner - I love the Kheer!

If you make this meal at home, give yourself lots of time for prep and to chill the Kheer!! I had been running around and didn't start cooking until 2:00 pm - I served dinner at 6:15, but I was "running" around the kitchen all afternoon! It was worth it and there were enough leftovers for dinner tomorrow night too!! I also love my new spice grinder, I can't believe that it has taken me so long to fork out the $20.00 to buy one - it is a must have!