A Single Man’s Kitchen
By Jeremy Goodwin, Sept 22, 2006

Morsels from Musgovia

I am always happy to receive email from readers, because the feedback gives me insight into what really engages your interest. Walking around town recently, I was the recipient of many positive comments on the article about my brother and his newfound love.

I would like to assure you that part two is forthcoming shortly. The New World wedding takes place on September 19, and I am being forced into a tuxedo at 9am—a cruel and unusual punishment. In a knee-jerk response to having a wedding for breakfast, I will be forced to write something scathing about the proceedings. 

One of the other reader’s comments that I received recently struck a chord; it included the question of why I do not regularly write restaurant reviews of San Miguel restaurants. The honest answer is not necessarily a pleasant one and reflects my overall disappointment with the quality of food in many of the eating establishments in San Miguel. 

For example, recently I was fortunate enough to have convinced a devastatingly attractive, witty and intelligent woman to waste her entire evening in my company without my having to cook anything. We were stuck for the choice of a restaurant offering a modicum of privacy and food quality homologous to the quality of the company and settled on a place with tablecloths and a trendy name. Although the appetizer was delightful in taste and texture, the entrée was a badly cooked steak with freezer burn and sporting a brown goop over the top, especially memorable because the dominant taste was raw cornstarch. The accompanying nopalitos (prickly pear) were attractively presented yet almost inedible because they were so slimy. Even an Englishman like myself can cook prickly pear without it mutating into something with the texture of a bar of soap yet simultaneously, inexplicably, absolutely devoid of taste. In spite of the tragic excuse for a meal, overall I thought the evening went extraordinarily well, although I f
ound myself trying to wash the taste of the sauce out of my mouth hours after we had left the restaurant. 

I am not trying to assert the view that there is no decent food in San Miguel. On the contrary, there are establishments that I habitually visit for a particular item on the menu, but there are also many, often very well-known places, where I would hesitate to taste anything from the menu a second time.

A much more attractive option for reviews would be to sample all the street food around town. I have had some of the best meals in SMA from a cart on the side of the road, and if you have never slurped down a Jardín burger at 4am while dodging roving bands of feral mariachi, you may have missed out on an essential ingredient of living in San Miguel. There are lots of tasty choices, if not consistently the healthiest, to be found around town, and unlike the failings in an expensive restaurant, the food can be discarded without hurting your budget should they not prove to your taste.

For me the street vendors are often a source of genuine local flavors, with offerings worth reproducing later in my own kitchen, usually consisting of a few simple and fresh ingredients and easy to prepare. The one exception, and one of my all-time favorites, is barbacoa; the classic taste and texture found on the roadside continue to elude me in my own kitchen. 

Unless I am specifically trying to replicate a dish, I do not let the lack of the correct ingredients bother me too much, preferring to cook in what is among chefs jokingly called Musgovian-style food (this must go, or it is getting old). With the bizarre variety of ingredients and multitude of potential cooking styles found in my kitchen, true international fusion is quite common, although to be honest not always successful. 

Recently, while thinking about the contrast between Sri Lankan and Punjabi food, the idea of a good hot curry for dinner started to form in my mind. Not wanting to have to go shopping after a hard day’s typing, a Musgovian curry was about to enter the world, and for once it was something of a success. The first unusual element was pork. There are not many pork dishes in Hindu and Muslim societies, and even fewer with pineapple. I noticed that there were some almost ripe tomatillos languishing in the vegetable basket, having escaped becoming a salsa verde the previous night, and I decided to throw them in the mix. I have always had a fondness for the humble tomatillo, not just its subtle lemon taste, but for the nutritional aspects too. A medium-sized, raw tomatillo has only 11 calories but carries almost 100 mg of potassium, 4 mg of vitamin C, 2.5 mg of calcium, 2.4 mg of folic acid and 39 IU of vitamin A. With this unusual combination of ingredients, and using the cooking style of the Punjab but leaving out 
the milk or yogurt, here is a light and delicately flavored curry that takes less time to cook than the accompanying rice does at this altitude.

Musgovian Curry for four 

1 pound pork loin, cubed

5–6 medium tomatillos, chopped

1 large onion, diced

1–1½ cups pineapple, cubed

2 cups mushrooms, cubed

2–3 tablespoons Madras curry powder

1–2 chile peppers (optional)

2–3 cloves garlic, pressed (optional)

½ cup sweet white vermouth

2-3 tablespoons olive oil

Salt to taste before serving

 

In a large skillet, heat the oil until it is almost smoking and throw in the cubes of meat to brown for 2 to 3 minutes over a high heat. Add the curry powder, garlic and chiles (if used) and continue to brown the meat for a further 5 minutes.

This step activates the spices in the curry powder and increases the heat of the dish.

Deglaze the pan with the vermouth and add the pineapple and tomatillos, then reduce the heat to a simmer and cover with a tightly fitting lid. Cook over a low heat for about 15 minutes, and then check for moisture, since the pineapple and tomatillos will have given up a fair amount of water. If the pan looks a little dry, add ¼ cup of water, pineapple juice or vermouth. 

Add the mushrooms and stir them into the curry until they are well coated with sauce, then cover and simmer for another 10 to 12 minutes. Test the meat for tenderness, and cook a little longer if necessary. 

Serve over basmati or brown rice with slices of tomato and mango chutney.

Jeremy Goodwin is an author, freelance food writer and owner of The Best Kept Secret. He may be contacted at Jeremy@dcnet2000.com