Just love the food from Nepal. We have a superb local Nepalese restaurant local to us and the food there is another level. We only visit it on special occasions due to the cost but the food is superb! For my birthday I asked for a cook book containing the food of Nepal so here is my first attempt.

At first glance looks a complicated dish but when you break it down naturally due to its location if you’ve built up your larder around Indian cooking you will have the ingredients, the only two items I needed to pick up were the bamboo shoots & the pork.

Ingredients- 3 tbsp of vegetable oil, 4 bay leaves, 1 tsp of cumin seeds, 1 tsp black peppercorns lightly crushed, 3 red onions finely diced, 1/2 tsp salt, 500g or a small tray of diced pork, 2 heaped tbsp of garlic and ginger paste, 2 green chillies diced, 1/2 tsp of turmeric, 1 tsp of ground cumin, 1 tsp of garam masala, 1 tsp of ground coriander, 1 tin of bamboo shoots, 2 tomatoes finely diced, 250ml of chicken stock & a handful of chopped coriander.

Method – heat the oil, when the oil becomes visibly hot add the bay leaves, cumin seeds & peppercorns for a few seconds until they pop and hiss.

Add the chopped onion along with the salt and cook over a medium heat for 10 minutes or so until the onions are nice and soft.

Add the pork and sauté it for 5-7 minutes until it takes on colour and caramelises.

Add the garlic & ginger along with the chillies cooking for 2/3 minutes.

Stir in your ground spices giving them a big stir to coat everything followed by the bamboo shoots and chopped tomatoes cooking for a further 10 minutes.

Once the tomatoes have softened add the chicken stock bringing it back to a gentle simmer. Cooking it for a further 10 / 15 minutes so the sauce cooks down to a thick gravy.

Add the chopped coriander and remove from the heat.

As it was a beautiful night the dish was eaten outside as us Brits love the sun as soon as it comes out. The dish was served with steamed white rice and a glass of red !!!

I have to say, this was an absolute joy to make and we had three clean plates including my 11 year old son. No spice / heat, just amazing flavours.

Thank you for reading my ramblings.