Pork and pumpkin curry

A nice dish this that you can cook in a few minuets if you sue a good cut of pork, what you do not want is any thing that has to much fat or sinew or it will become tough. I have put down here a red Thai curry past but you can use green just as well in this recipe and if you want to be totally authentic you can make your own curry paste. The thing you have to remember is that you keep every thing very rustic and you will not go far wrong. Also I have listed fish sauce or salt, if you can use the fish sauce it tastes so much better.

Ingredients
1 tbsp vegetable oil
750g/1½lb pork strips
1 onion
1 garlic clove
2.5cm/1in piece of fresh galangal, or ginger
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 stick fresh lemongrass
6 tbsp red Thai curry paste
300ml/½ pint creamed coconut
350g/12oz pumpkin
1 tbsp fresh coriander
1 tbsp fresh basil
300g/10oz fresh spinach leaves
1 tbsp limejuice
Fish sauce or slat to taste.

Start by crushing together as fine as you can your garlic, fennel seeds, lemongrass and your galangal or ginger. If you need to add a little oil and work it all together. Then roughly slice your onion and peal and dice your pumpkin. You can use butternut squash or any thing of that will do.

Once you have that all done take your wok and get that on the heat and add the oil. Make sure that it is very hot, so you can see smoke coming from the oil . The throw in your pork and brown that off. It is best to do this a little at a time and not all at once, as you want to fry the meat and not stew it. Also throwing all the pork in to the pan cools the pan and actually slows the cooking process down.

Once your pork is cooked remove it from the pan so you can stat to make the sauce. Take your onions start to cook them until they go soft then add your crushed spices and your curry paste. Let that all cook together so you get all the spices working and then add the pumpkin. Stir-fry this till it starts to go soft but not fully cooked then add the coconut cream. Stir this all round so you get a rich sauce and then return the pork to the pan.

Finlay just rip up and tare the basil and coriander and throw that in along with the limejuice and you are ready to serve.

Serve this with some noodles or sticky rice and it is perfect refreshing dish, if you like, it hotter you can add chillies to it or make it with chicken or prawns like so many dishes like this it is a very versatile thing to make.