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Home cook: Sharmini Jayawardena
This side dish is great with our yellow rice with plain steamed rice and other accompaniments such as brinjal curry, potato tempered, potato curry, pol sambol, seeni sambol, salaadhey and others.
It goes well with mains like string hoppers, hoppers, pol roti, pittu, waffles, pan cakes and with bread and butter.
Let me tell you, curry is all about the spice mix!
Each family has its’ own recipe and here is the recipe from my mom’s kitchen which at the time functioned like a restaurant, eating in, being the sought after thing to do. Numerous fancy and wholesome foods came out of it that are almost unthinkable today. Everything having been prepared from scratch!
The spice mix is known in Sri Lanka (Sinhala) as “thuna paha”, meaning, three-five, translated literally.
What it means though is, that you take three parts of one spice and one each of two other spices.
After roasting the spices it was ground to a powder and that’s the form in which it was added to the curries.
My mom did not add cardamoms and cloves to the mix. She added these separately to the curry. This is because she used this roasted curry mix in preparing both meat and vegetables.
I know of those who use the roasted mix only for the preparation of meat and fish and an un-roasted version without cloves and cardamoms in preparing vegetable dishes.
Wild Boar Curry
Ingredients
300gm wild boar meat
3 tsps spice mix
1tsp turmeric powder
3 tsps chili powder or to desired heat
1/2 cup thick tamarind juice (mix 3 tbls of tamarind in 1/2 cup of water and strain. Add appropriately)
3 small onions
1” piece fresh ginger
4 cloves garlic
3 sprigs curry leaf
1 pandan leaf
4 small green chilies
2” piece of lemon grass
1” stick Ceylon cinnamon
3 cloves
3 cardamoms (tear each pod leaving the seeds intact)
2 tbls coconut oil
1 1/2 – 2 cups coconut milk (1 cup thin milk which is the second squeeze and 1/2 cup the thick milk which is the first squeeze. If you are adding the packeted coconut cream, dilute appropriately)
2 green chilis cut in half
Sea salt to taste
Method
1. Wash the meat, trim the nasty bits and cube it to bite size pieces.
2. Add all of the powders into the marinade including the tamarind juice, mix and keep aside.
3. Cut the curry leaves into two parts each and so the pandan leaf and set aside.
4. Peel and slice the onions.
5. Peel ginger and garlic and mash it into a pulp in the pestle and mortar.
6. Heat the coconut oil in a pan or pot and add the sliced onion and fry. Then add the ginger and fry and finally add the garlic and fry. Fry all until golden brown.
7. Wash and cut the green chilies in half and add to the fry. 8. Add the curry leaves, pandan leaves and lemon grass to the fry.
9. Add the meat, give it a good stir and fry until very dry. Do not cover.
10. Add the thin coconut milk to cover the ingredients. Give it a good stir. Cover with a lid and cook until well done . (Add coconut milk to desired amount of gravy).
11. Once done, add the thick milk and leave to simmer on low flame.
12. Once the gravy is thickened check for seasoning and remove from fire. 13. Serve with steamed rice and other accompaniments.
I used to love having left over meat curry with bread and butter the following morning for breakfast. Since becoming a vegetarian, much of my eating habits have become things of the past 😊. Wild boar curry or pork curry which can be prepared in the same way as the wild boar curry, goes well with Sri Lankan yellow rice also known as kaha bath. and with steamed rice and other accompaniments like brinjal curry, potato tempered, salaadhey and seenisambol.
Wild boar curry is good to be had with all sorts of flat breads, including Sri Lankan pol roti. It is good with Sri Lankan string hoppers, hoppers and pittu. Not forgetting how delicious it is with pancakes and waffles.
*Val Uuru Mas Kariya
Leafblogazine does not condone hunting of wildlife and game in regions where it is explicitly deemed illegal by the local wild life and conservation authorities.
