This is a short story for Christmastime and it’s fiction. Any resemblance to people in my family living or dead is sheer coincidence. I’ll deny everything.
Nobody puts curry leaves in pork vindaloo, all right? I mean, that would turn it into a Tamil curry for heaven’s sake. But Malathy’s Ceylon Tamil, so what do you expect. They just chuck curry leaves into everything.
Well there are lots of reasons why I am estranged from my family and refuse to have anything to do with them any more, but if I had to pin it down to one defining betrayal, it has to be the day my mother gave my brother’s still-girlfriend our family’s recipe for Pork Vindaloo.
A hundred years in the family. Brought by sea from Travancore in South India to Malaya in my grandmother’s head, it survived a world war and struggle against Communists, and the premature deaths of everyone in my grandparents’ generation to remain the star on our Christmas dinner table.
And then, just like that, my mother the traitor simply gave away the recipe. All it took was for that cunning Malathy to ask her sweetly, after whining that although everyone says my Vindaloo is so delicious, I refuse to reveal the recipe and only cook it on special occasions, leaving everyone hankering for more.
Mother said, “Cheh! I don’t know why Marykutty is like that.” And not only did she hand over the recipe, but she actually showed Malathy how to cook it! A whole bloody cooking demonstration!
Well, I can tell you why I am like this. It’s because Mother is like that herself!
What about all those years when she minded that my aunts were passing off her recipes as their own? She could go on for days about how the onions were sliced the wrong way, the meat was cut too big or too small, the gravy was too thick or too thin, whether the dried chilli had been ground enough to just blister the seeds, not smash them. Too sour, too salty.
She should see the curry leaves stuck to Malathy’s giant chunks of pork. My poor grandmother must be turning in her grave.
I made the mistake of telling Saro how angry I was with my Mother. She made like something was wrong with me. “Aiyoh-aiyoh,” she said. “Nobody fights with their mother over a stupid recipe lah. Why can’t you see she was just being nice? After all, if she makes your future sister-in-law happy, she will be making your brother happy too, what.”
Saro doesn’t know anything, and proves it every time she opens her mouth. My brother hadn’t married that woman yet. Besides, Saro can’t cook to save her life, I should have known she would not empathise. She uses mixed curry pastes from a spice man in the market, for god’s sake. How could she understand why a Vindaloo recipe mattered so.
When I told Christina, she said right away, “Of course you must be furious! This is your family treasure, the shining dish on your dinner-party table!”
She understood. It reminded her of the day her own Nyonya mother wasted the Ayam Buah Keluak recipe on her new sister-in-law. “We are Peranakan, Sally is Cantonese. How can you simply buang a precious recipe at someone like that? Wasted, wasted, wasted. She got no feel for the buah keluak. She got no patience to soak the nuts and change the water, soak the nuts and change the water, again and again, and then take time and trouble to prepare the rempah properly. Because why, ABK is not her heritage, she never grew up knowing the fragrance of the rempah, the sound of the wet pounded spice mix hitting the hot oil, the aroma of the chicken, keluak and fried rempah coming together. Your Pork Vindaloo is in your blood for how-many generations, you cannot simply give the recipe because people ask.”
Christina hit the nail on the head. There was an explanation for my rage at Mother handing over the Vindaloo recipe to Malathy just like that. It let down every single one of that long line of women who had guarded the recipe before my grandmother brought it across the sea.
Mother knew very well what it meant in our Malayali-Catholic family of dress-wearing women with three Christian names. Our food was our only connection to who we were. If not for this Vindaloo, and a dozen other family recipes, we would have nothing at all.
Mother knew how every new bride arriving into the family had countless lessons until she could cook it just right.
We had to hear the story of Annie-Auntie dozens of times. She was Malayali too, but from some part of Travancore where cleaning the house was evidently more important than cooking.
“Pah! Everything she cooked was tasteless rot. It was not her fault, the whole Netto family were like that, they just couldn’t cook and the women were more interested in mopping their floors fifty times a day than in putting out a decent meal. When Annie married your Uncle Paul, what trouble there was! He loved his food, but she couldn’t cook. He sent her to me for lessons, and I tried, but she kept washing the dishes and wiping the table instead of watching me properly. And one day she came running in tears because Paul knocked her on the head with the ladle when he caught her boiling the pork before starting the curry. Cheh, cheh, cheh! Even Paul knew you don’t boil the meat before cooking Vindaloo! Annie just didn’t have it in her.”
Mother knew very well.
In our house we had Pork Vindaloo almost every other Sunday and that meant my sister Josie and I had to learn how to cook it again and again until each of us could do it right. There is no other curry quite as pungent to cook, or brings together such strong flavours of fire-hot chilli, mouth-watering tamarind and vinegar, and the tingle of crushed black mustard seeds.
There’s a point when you’re cooking vindaloo, just after you fry up the ground chilli-ginger-mustard paste and the fearsome smells go everywhere, when someone in a totally different part of the house will sneeze heartily. It may even be one of the neighbours. That sneeze is the signal that your vindaloo will turn out perfect. The cook usually will not sneeze.
It’s hot, sour and turns out marvellously, frighteningly red. Not for the faint-hearted, but those who dare to try it then love it and can’t hold back from seconds even if they’re steaming at the ears.
Every Malayali Catholic family had its own recipe, and no two Vindaloos tasted the same. Everyone believed their own was best, nobody believed Vindaloo really came from Goa, there was no swapping of recipes, only a lot of sniffing at the addition of ground pepper or cinnamon or cloves, and whether the sourness was overpowering or too mild.
Mother would dismiss any failed attempt, hissing: “You call that rubbish Vindaloo? It was pickled pork, it had so much vinegar it will probably keep for a hundred years.”
Mother should have known that after my sister Josie married that Norwegian who did not care for hot curry, I became the Keeper Of The Vindaloo Recipe. This was my destiny.
She should have known I would guard this treasure, bring people to my table and let them savour the sensation of hot-sour vindaloo with steamed rice and a cucumber-tomato salad drenched in cooling, thick coconut milk.
She saw how people loved my Vindaloo and asked for more. When I invited them to dinner, so many would ask right away, “Are you cooking your Pork Vindaloo? Then sure must come!”
And if anyone asked how to make it, I would just laugh and say, “One day, I’ll write a cookbook!”
That was before Malathy got hold of the recipe.
Everything changed. It began showing up on her table and her guests would say, “Oh Malathy’s Vindaloo is excellent today.” She would coo and lap it all up. This, after adding curry leaves.
Oh, food turned bitter in my mouth when I heard the compliments heaped on Malathy’s Pork Vindaloo.
I stopped cooking Vindaloo. When friends asked about the missing star of my feasts, I made up some excuse or the other.
One day when I could stand it no longer, I told Mother she should not have given away the recipe. She was silent for three seconds before declaring that I deserved to be in a mental hospital. “It’s only a stupid pork curry, for heaven’s sake,” she said. “Anyway, I hate the stuff. I’ve cooked it so often I can’t put it down my throat.”
A stupid curry, is it? Well, all right then, why should I care. If Mother saw nothing wrong with telling Malathy, I might as well tell the whole world. Let my poor grandmother and everyone else before her turn in their graves.
Here’s the damned recipe. Take it and do what you will with it. Try making it yourself, pass it to a friend. Love it, loathe it, see if I care.
But don’t you ever put curry leaves in My Pork Vindaloo!
Pork Vindaloo
This part is all true, not fiction, this recipe works. Pictured above.
1 kg pork, cubed. I like to use shoulder, which has just the right mix of lean and fat.
Spice mix
Grind together – the paste should not be finely ground, it needs to be a little grainy with bits of the cumin and mustard seeds.
25 dried chillis, snipped and soaked in water to soften
5-cm piece of fresh ginger
6-8 pips garlic depending on size
1 dsp black mustard seeds
1 dsp cumin seeds
One big onion, sliced
2 tablespoons tamarind mixed in half a cup of water
2 to 3 tbs white vinegar
Salt to taste
1. Fry the sliced onions in 3 tbs oil until golden brown.
2. Add the ground spice mix and fry well until pungent turns fragrant.
3. Add the tamarind liquid and vinegar to taste. Don’t put all of it in, check for sourness later.
4. Add pork and salt, stir well till all the meat is coated nicely in the spice mix.
5. Add about a cup of water. Not too much because pork releases water and you don’t want to end up with vindaloo soup.
6. Bring to a boil and then simmer until the pork is tender and the gravy is thick.
7. Check for salt and vinegar.
It’s fool-proof because:
You decide whether you like the spices ground rough or fine or totally smooth.
You can’t overcook a pork vindaloo, so if after 45 minutes you think the pork is not soft enough, just add hot water and let it simmer on.
If the meat tastes right but there is too much watery gravy, turn up the heat and let the gravy thicken. And vice versa, anytime it looks too dry, add water.
Always check the vinegar and salt at the end, vindaloo needs a sour kick and if you don’t get it, add a splash of vinegar.
Vindaloo always tastes better the next day. When reheating, add a little water to get the gravy right again.
Photo credit: My friend NatZ took the top picture of a Christmas plate.
Alan John 