A culinary success, and a photographic disaster

"Slow cooking curry and spice dishes". Even the title of the book tells you the recipes are going to be wonderful:

The book was a gift from Judy when we lived in Oxford to go with the crock pot she gave us. What a good present! When in England, we often made lamb curry with spinach and raisins. This time we had 'Pork chiang mai curry'.

Now, you start by making a paste out of yellow bean sauce, green curry paste, fish sauce, chiles, onion, garlic, lemon grass etc.

This is a still from the film loosely based on this blog.
In this picture, my character, played by Ben Affleck, is crushing all the ingredients for the paste from scratch.

Cut pork shoulder into pieces and toss with the paste:

The 'tossing' scene didn't make it into the final cut of the film,
but here is a shot of Ben Affleck (actually, his stunt double), cutting the shoulder up.  

Put the pork pieces into the crock pot, and then add boiled coconut milk:

Our Hamilton Beach crock pot is being played by a younger Cuisinart model. Typical Hollywood!

After six hours cooking, we transferred the pork curry to the fridge, because pork shoulder is very fatty and we wanted to be able to remove the solidified layer of fat the following day. That was a success:

At this point, normal photographic service is resumed.

Then, chop up lots of cilantro:

Warm through, add cilantro, serve over noodles with peas as a side:

This was a truly perfect meal. The pork was so tender - completely falling apart, and the coconut milk sauce was a lovely nutty colour with a very complex taste. Oh, I forgot to post pictures of the table which I set:

Luckily, we got a shot of us enjoying the wonderful dinner:

Next up, Mexican Cooking!