Saag Pork (Spinach and Pork Curry)

I don't make pork curries very often. I don't really associate pork with Indian cuisine and it always feels slightly incongruous to me. I tend to default to legume, vegetable, and/or chicken curries. Sometimes I'll do beef, lamb, or fish depending on what I have on hand or what's on sale at the grocery store that week. But pork just doesn't really figure into things.

That said, Iyer does have a decent-sized pork section in the meat chapter of 660 Curries. And I had some pork tenderloins in the freezer. I got them with a completely different recipe in mind, but I keep not quite getting to it, so I figured I might as well just turn them into curries and try to do the other recipe some other time when I have a bit more bandwidth for meal planning.

I appreciated that this was an incredibly simple recipe that required very little prep and cooked quickly. Plus it used up the leftover tomato in the fridge. And gave us some greens to help balance the meal. So, a win all 'round!

Saag Pork

Slightly adapted from 660 Curries by Raghavan Iyer

Ingredients

• 500g pork tenderloin, cut into 2cm cubes
• 1/4 c. whipping (35%) cream
• 2 Tbsp. garlic paste
• 2 tsp. bin bhuna hua garam masala
• 1 tsp. coarse sea salt
• 1-2 Tbsp. canola (or other neutral) oil
• 1 tsp. cumin seeds
• 1/2 c. tomato sauce¹
• 300g chopped frozen spinach

Directions

1. Combine the pork, cream, garlic paste, garam masala, and salt and mix well.
2. Cover and chill for at least half an hour or as long as 2 hours.
3. Heat oil over medium-high heat.
4. Add cumin seeds and sizzle for 15-30 seconds.
5. Add the pork along with its marinade and cook, stirring occasionally, for ~5 minutes.
6. Add the tomato sauce and reduce heat to medium.
7. Cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, for ~15 minutes.
8. Add the spinach, cover, and cook until heated through (~5 minutes).
9. Stir and cook, covered, for another 10 minutes or so.

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¹ I didn't have any ready-made tomato sauce, but I did have some leftover canned diced tomato. I just used that and added a little bit of salt, pepper, basil, garlic, and bottle masala to approximate a sauce. ^Back