Ingredients
- 1/2 kilo pork, lean and fat mixed [the recipe tells you to “chop the pork fine”, which in the Thai context that means making ground pork, so you can just use regular ground pork]
- 5 cloves of garlic
- Castor sugar [Not sure what she meant by castor sugar because I doubt they had actual castor sugar back then…and in either case it doesn’t make sense why this recipe would need castor sugar. So I would just use palm sugar or granulated sugar]
- Rambutans [I don’t recommend it personally, I would go with pineapple instead :)] or oranges [Thai oranges are closer to mandarin oranges, not navel oranges]
- nam plā [fish sauce]
- Lard [if you can render your own lard from fatty pork, that would be the authentic way]
- Chilies
- Coriander leaves
- 3 tablespoons of roasted peanuts, coarsely ground
Instructions
Chop the pork fine. Crush garlic, and fry in about 2 or 3 tablespoons of lard till light brown. Add pork, peanuts, and seasoning.
[Nowadays, most recipes will call for garlic, white peppercorns and coriander roots to be pounded into a paste and then fried in the fat. You can do that if you want extra flavour. The “seasoning” refers to the fish sauce and sugar. You will need to just taste and adjust as the recipe doesn’t specify amounts! It should be sweet and salty. Make sure you really get the pork broken up into small bits, as small as you can, and adding a bit of water in the beginning will help loosen it up a bit. If you have large chunks you’ll have a hard time getting the filling to stay on the fruit and hold together.]
[Let the filling cool completely before proceeding.]
Cut each rambutan in two and remove the seeds. In the case of oranges, separate them according to their natural sections, cutting them open on the back and lay them flat on a serving dish, skin downward. Fill each piece of fruit with the pork mixture, and decorate tastefully with picked coriander leaves and chilies.
