A Sunday Lunch

I hope you are not averse to pork, for my piece today is a lunch menu where this meat figures prominently. So if you are a meatotaller or a proponent of porkatheid, this post is not for you. In that case, I feel it would be prudent (for the sake of your appetite) to press ESC and switch instead to a virtuous YouTube channel playing something kosher, like say Vicky Goes Veg.

As for those like me who have sinned with pork and would love to sin over and over again even at the prospect of burning in Hell, do linger. You might find this read just to your taste.

“So what would you like to eat for lunch today?” I asked Other Half. As his face took on that particular dreamy expression, I knew at once what it was that he wanted to eat. He didn’t need to verbalise.

“Ok, ok, pork it will be.” I assured him. “Only do dig it out of the freezer, please. It’s like Bakrasur’s cave in there.” I added.

(Other Half treats the freezer like his lair, filling it up with mountains of meats of all kinds: mutton, chicken, pork and of course, fish. And since only he can tell which frozen, fossilised mound contains which kind of protein, I leave it to him to dig out the day’s requirement, which he does quite obligingly, leaving it on the kitchen countertop to thaw. It’s only at this point that I step in, never before.)

Today morning, we had picked up a bunch of Rai leaves from the local vegetable stall. They were a steal at a measly twenty bucks for the whole bunch and I found them to be very fresh, their stalks crunching with all the water inside and their leaves a deep shiny green, edged with purple. With pork thawing on my kitchen counter and fresh Rai greens still in my shopping bag, lunch had to be without a doubt ‘White Rice and Pork with Lai Patta’ and nothing else.

I had picked up this particular menu from Shillong. While in shillong, we had once, gone on a picnic somewhere up in the Khasi Hills and had come upon a few local women having lunch. They had their steel plates covered with a large mound of plain white rice into which they poured a thin green-yellow jhol or curry made up of these huge mustard type greens which they called ‘Lai Patta’. Here in Himachal, replacing the ‘L’ with an ‘R’, the locals call these same leaves ‘Rai Patta’. The jhol was more like a soup for it had no spice other than some salt and turmeric and was more like a pork soup rather than a curry. Each woman ate her rice mound mixing it with this soup and accompanied it with exactly two pieces of pork, one which was a slice of pure fat without a strip of lean anywhere while the other was a piece of plain lean meat. Later while travelling from Guwahati to Shillong, we had had food at an obscure local dhaba where the woman manning the stall had been taken aback and very happy when we told her that we had no qualms about pork and would love to try her rice-and-pork lunch dish. She had served us this simple meal of white rice with the same green-yellow pork soup cooked with lai patta but she had added some potates chopped in half into the soup and had also gave us a searing hot cilantro-garlic chutney along with onion slices and some more green chillies.

I love to cook but I hate to spend too much time in the kitchen. My mental kitchen timer is set to a max of ninety minutes, irrespective of the meal I’m set to prepare and ninety percent of the time I’m in and out of the kitchen well within this limit. Obviously, I love shortcuts in cooking (a major area of disagreement with my MIL who treats the kitchen like a workplace and who loves to do unpaid overtime in there). And because I like shortcuts, I love this ‘Pork-Lai Patta-Rice’ menu. It goes like this:-

Thaw the pork. Actually, if you have a sturdy pressure cooker and have washed the meat before packing it into the freezer, you can safely omit this step. But, wash the Lai Patta well. When I say well, I really mean it. Heed my words (I should know, being a Public Health Woman) and wash it really well, in running water. Then chop it roughly. I just tear it up with my hands, with vengeance, of the kinds you muster to tear up love letters from an ex . Next fill your pressure cooker with water (take a biggish one that can accommodate all the ingredients and the water comfortably), dump the thawed (or not) pork into it, add some potatoes cut in half along with your Lai Patta, include salt and lots of haldi (if you can manage to lay your hands on the famed Lakadong Turmeric of Meghalaya, there would be nothing surpass it) and place it over the hob. Let it come to full cooking pressure 

(that’s one long सींटी, for the uninitiated), then lower the flame and let it simmer.

For how long? Well long enough for you to finish watching Modern Family or MasterChef Australia or for Arnab to complete his ripping to pieces some hapless masochist on Republic. Ok, seriously, 35 minutes would be a good. Now remove the cooker from the flame and let it cool on its own. As it cools, prepare the side dish and the garnish. Slice two red onions and rinse two green chillies. Wash cilantro (Dhaniya patta, my dear), chop it, add a clove or two of garlic, one chopped tomato and salt and run it in the food processor (Mixie its only your Mixie) till ground to a fine paste. You may have to add some water because it may just happen that your Mixie begins to groan and splutter and not budge an inch because some pesky dhaniya has got tangled with the Mixie blades. Once it is done, that is the consistency of the chutney is of a satisfactory paste, add some lemon juice. Taste and adjust the seasoning. My Mom always adds some sugar but since for me adding sugar to a dish with garlic is nothing short of blasphemy, I haven’t mentioned sugar.

Then on a steel plate (has to be steel, fancy chinaware will just not do) place a ladle of white rice (slightly steaming), a bowl of the Pork-Lai Patta duet, a dash of the green dhania chutney, the onion slice and to spice it all up one notch further, the fresh green chillies. Then with your plates in hand, sit in the warm winter sun out in your garden amidst the candy tufts, the dahlias, the pansies and the calendulas, and relish your simple but beautiful Sunday lunch under that deep blue winter sky. You’ll note how that silken green-gold soupy jhol mixes smoothly with your warm white rice, how that pork cooked to perfection in the pressure cooker’s steam is absolutely melt-in-the-mouth, how the slightly pungent now deep olive green Lai Patta  is slippery smooth and how the flavour of the pork soup is accentuated by the tangy heat of the dhaniya chutney and the sharp crunch of the onion ...and how it all seems to be something like a desi version of Chicken Soup for the Soul or something even better..........................

Bon Appetit!

PS: Please use your hands for a fork and spoon can never bring out the flavours in the way your beautiful earthy hands will.

Photo Credits: Taken from a blog by Ms Ruprekha Mushahary called Feelings where she has given a recipe for the same.
http://rupascloset.blogspot.in/2014/06/pork-with-bah-gaaz-and-bhoot-jolokia.html