Yesterday's dinner, today's lunch

I tried a new dish yesterday, peppered pork braised in yoghurt.  It is a recipe I found from home (Malaysia that is).  However, as usual I altered the recipe due to many reasons, mainly lack of certain ingredients.  Anyway, the actual recipe calls for mutton, in which lamb would be a better substitute, but all I had was pork.  Pork in the US has a STRONG smell, unlike the ones in Japan or Malaysia.  I am not sure why, perhaps it is the process of butchering the pig...hahaha!!!

This recipe uses a a few different spices such as cumin, cloves, cardamon and of course black pepper.  I figure with such spices, I will surely get rid of that smell from the pork.  And since I ran out of cardamon, I had nothing to substitute, instead I altered the taste by using coriander powder instead.  I set to work and got all the ingredients together and marinade the pork in the fragrant spice mix and yoghurt right before I had to pick up the kids from school.

Anyway, I braised the meat together with the yoghurt and a little chicken stock (for extra flavor), and then pan fry them with some butter.  This dish turned out alright, though I think mutton/lamb would have tasted great.  Nevertheless, the kids ate it just fine, which is a good indicator.  Haruka was hesitant in the beginning because she doesn't like hot-spicy food.  But this dish is spicy but not hot.  Yuta loves spicy food, so I knew he'll be OK with this dish.

But of course, I usually make more than 4 servings so that I'll have something for lunch (talk about lazy!)  Since my husband is a stickler on not having the same thing twice in a row, I transformed it in to a fried rice....hahaha!!!  Actually, I think the fried rice tasted pretty good.  For dinner, I had paired the peppered pork with saffron pilaf with raisins.  That was good too.  But like many other spicy food, the second day usually tastes much better.  I think it is because the spices and meat had a chance to marry!

All these because I was inspired after reading a manga title Chef of Nobunaga.  It is a good food manga. Lots of good food and substitutions used in the manga (no peppered pork braised in yoghurt).  Of course, the manga is fiction but some of the food prepared are definitely mouth watering.