The Indian subcontinent · Volume 19, The Ash Pot, the Bamboo Basket and a Border the Map Draws Wrong
Doh nei-iong
Meghalaya, Khasi
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 1 hour 15
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Khasi pork with roasted black sesame, a real recipe with genuine quantities, built on nei-iong, the black sesame paste that gives the dish its name and its colour.
As tradition built it
Serves 4 to 6. About 1 hour 15 minutes.
Ingredients
- 4 tbsp black sesame seeds
- 1 kg pork, with some fat, cubed
- 2 tbsp mustard oil
- 3 green chillies, sliced
- 2 onions, finely chopped
- 8 to 10 garlic cloves, chopped
- 1/2 thumb ginger, pasted
- 1/4 tsp turmeric
- 2 tsp black pepper
- Enough to just cover water, to just cover
Method
- Roast the black sesame seeds in a dry pan until fragrant, cool, then grind to a thick paste in a spice grinder or mortar.
- Cut the pork with some fat into cubes.
- Heat the mustard oil, add the green chillies, onions, garlic cloves and ginger paste, and cook until softened.
- Add the pork and brown on all sides, then the turmeric and black pepper.
- Stir in the sesame paste, add enough water to just cover, and simmer, covered, for 45 minutes to an hour until the pork is tender and the sauce has thickened around it.
What a modern chef changes
Sesame toasted in two stages, and a sous vide pork at 68°C
Method
- First, toast the sesame in two stages, a portion ground fine for the sauce's base and a portion left coarse, folded back in at the end, so the finished dish carries both a smooth thickened body and a distinct toasted texture rather than one uniform paste.
- Second, sous vide the pork separately at 68°C for several hours to an even, fall apart tenderness, then finish the pieces hard and fast in the reduced sauce so they take on colour and glaze without overcooking further.
- Third, render the pork fat trim separately, clarify it, and use it in place of some of the mustard oil for a cleaner, more concentrated pork flavour under the sesame.
- Fourth, finish with a scattering of raw, coarsely crushed black sesame over the top, echoing the base ingredient in its rawest form as a final textural note.