Irish Pork and Fruit Curry: Review of Real Irish Food

A rich and slightly sweet curry with shredded pork, grapes and peaches. A copy of Real Irish Food was sent to me for purposes of an honest review. Affiliate links were used to link to items I am discussing in this post.

I can barely move. We are in Asheville for a weekend getaway, and Friday night we ended up dancing at a drum circle. Yeah I have barely worked any muscles in the region of my abdomen since my surgery earlier this summer and I think I might now be broken. This getting old business is for the birds.

But! While I can still type anyway I wanted to share this cookbook and curry with you. First, the cookbook. The publishers sent me David Bowers’ Real Irish Food: 150 Classic Recipes from the Old Country for reviewing earlier in the summer. It is full of delicious sounding recipes (and photos!); I have bookmarked, for example, Whiskey Chicken, Roast Potatoes, Gingerbread, Irish pancakes, and more. It is also an enjoyable read–I actually sat down one night and read the entire thing, cover to cover. Bowers’ voice is personable and charming. He takes great pleasure in correcting various misapprehensions about Irish food (for example: apparently almost no one in Ireland even knows what corned beef is!); my only complaint is that he also took great pleasure in pointing out all of the ways in which the Irish dish is in some way superior to the American, which got a little old. But not so old that I stopped bookmarking or reading!

I decided to either conform to expectations or turn them on their head, depending on whether you are talking about my blog or Irish food in general, and make the curry  in the book. I was intrigued by the fruit, and I was happy to see the curry had a rotisserie chicken option, which was handy as I had just returned from my parents’ house with several large bags of pulled pork. I figured that would substitute no problem for the chicken, but obviously you can use rotisserie chicken or start with raw chicken as per the instructions. Actually, I think just about any protein would work here, even tofu or chickpeas for a vegetarian option.`

We loved this dish. You can use just about any sweet or at least not bitter fruit that is in season; I can imagine apples and pears for the fall (but not cranberries without additional sweetener) or even chunks of winter squash. Come winter I might still use the apples, but add pomegranate seeds for a yummy garnish. You get the idea.