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Khmer Pork, Coconut & Pineapple Curry

Serves 4
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Traditional Cambodian Curry. I love most Currys with coconut milk, lime, and hot peppers. This one adds pork and pineapple so I could not resist
For yellow curry paste (:kroeung)
  • 25g peeled galangal (new ginger), roughly chopped
  • 1 tsp ground turmeric or 25g fresh turmeric, roughly chopped
  • 20g garlic, roughly chopped
  • 4 fat lemongrass stalks, core chopped
  • 50g shallots, roughly chopped
  • 2 kaffir lime leaves, finely shredded
  • 1 strip pared lime zest (from a kaffir lime, if available)
  • 1 tsp Cambodian or Thai shrimp paste
  • 5 birds eye peppers
For Curry:
  • 800g  boneless pork shoulder
  • 1 small pineapple or 200g prepared fresh pineapple cubes
  • 3 small round green Thai aubergine or 100g purple aubergines
  • 3 tbsp vegetable oil
  • 40g fresh coconut, grated
  • 300ml coconut milk
  • 2 tbsp fish sauce
  • 2 tsp palm sugar (or sugarcane sugar)
  • leaves from 1 small bunch of Thai sweet basil

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Prepare and set aside:

Pound or blend all curry paste (kroeung)ingredients. Add 1-2 tbsp water to get paste moving, if necessary.

Cut pork into 1 inch pcs.  Heat 2 tbsp oil in a wide-based pan or wok, add half of pork pcs at a time and brown lightly on all sides.

If necessary, peel pineapple, cut it into 4 wedges lengthways, slice away core and cut fruit into small 1/2 chunks.  Set aside

Cut round green aubergines into wedges or purple aubergines into pieces similar in size to pineapple.

Making the curry:

Add remaining oil and curry paste to pan or wok and fry gently over a medium heat for 2-3 mins until it starts to smell aromatic.  

Return pork and to pan with 300ml water, part-cover and leave to simmer gently for 1 hr or until pork is fork tender

Uncover, add pineapple, aubergines and coconut milk and simmer with lid off for a further 10 mins.

Add fish sauce, sugar and then stir in basil.  Season to taste with salt and serve. If you enjoy tamarind sauce add at the end with these ingredients

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I learned of this recipe from Chai leng Dunster website http://gcl.dunster.nl/2011/09/22/khmer-pork-coconut-pineapple-curry/ . She adds 1 tbs tamarind sauce and 40g of grated coconut both of which I omit. I find the tamarind's sourness detracted from the recipe and the shredded coconut was too distracting a texture. I also added significantly more spicy peppers than she did.

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Chef's notes

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