I love food.
I’m also a screw-up.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a good cook. I’m just not afraid of trying counter-intuitive (horrifying) combinations of ingredients. When I was 14, I knew that spicy and sweet went great together, which is why I made the mistake of putting salsa, whipped cream, and cinnamon on a toaster-burnt “waffle.”
I went college. I learned that fusion existed.
Fusion (n) /ˈfjuː.ʒən
Combining culinary aspects of multiple cultures. Doing so while wearing appropriately hip attire is a nifty way to charge customers more money for food than it’s possibly worth.
Tonight I was in the mood for Indian food. Because I’m a reasonable human being, there was a big bag of roast pork in the fridge.
SHOPPING
Here’s what I picked up at the Indian food store:
A bottle of tomato sauce. It had a bottle top under the cap. Also, it tasted pretty much like ketchup. Still, I had to use a bottle opener to get at it, which made me feel cool.
A jar of “South Indian Tangy Tomato Pickle.” Mine had an extra tag on it with a picture of a tidy looking faux chef on it. I imagine he was looking at me saying, ‘Hey asshole, you look like you’ve got money to burn. I’m a fucking chef, so you know this shit’s worth blowing an extra dollar on.’
One of those long green spicy peppers. If you choose an especially small one, the clerk’ll give it to ya’ for free, as it won’t register on his scale.
Prepared mulligatawny soup. Because tamarind, bitchez.
A bunch of other crap to bring the total above $10.
PREPARATION
Chop up about half a cup of your already cooked pork. Mine was lightly infused with apples and ginger, but wev.
Slice half a small onion into thin rings
Mince a cube of garlic
Slice up the lower half of your free pepper
Heat a generous amount of canola oil in a pan
Cook the onion, garlic, and pepper for a few minutes
Chuck in the pork for a few more minutes
Add a few tablespoons of the tomato sauce. Or ketchup. Or catsup. Like I fucking care.
After a few minutes, add two tablespoons of the pickle.
Once everything’s heated through, taste the shit. It won’t be right. Add at least a teaspoon of cilantro (dried, because this is McRib, asshole), and more cumin than is absolutely necessary (1 tablespoon).
Taste it again. It’ll be less awful. Maybe add some more cilantro and salt and pepper. Yes, pepper. That’ll fix everything.
Serve over rice. Or on a stale bun. Or convert it to an aerosol form suitable for crowd control. I really don’t give a shit.
THE VERDICT
Despite containing actual pork, the sweetness and acidity of the massive amounts of “tomato sauce” and pickle make this taste a lot like a school lunch. It’s strangely evocative the kind of pulled pork you’d get at a roadside stand in East Tennessee, provided the stand was about to go under. The pickle and hot pepper at a certain South Indian flare. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.
