The thing I love about Food Network Friday is how we can interpret the recipe at will. Sometimes I’ve stayed fairly close to the original and at times I’ve played it a bit loose, and that’s all good. However, even I am a bit embarrassed about how far removed my version here is from the original. I only glanced quickly at the original and my mind raced to how I would do it, and I thought “roast pork in curry = roast aubergine”. Then I didn’t read any further because in mind the job was done. Ha.
When I came to actually make the dish I realised I hadn’t fully taken it on board. It’s an interesting recipe because it contains influences from Thailand, Italy, China and Mexico. It also feeds 4-6 people with 7lb of pork, which sounds a lot like something I watch on Man v Food. I couldn’t quite get my head round serving corn tortillas and salsa with Thai roasted aubergine so I altered the dish rather a lot! I did make the sauce differently from how I normally make Thai sauce so I suppose the fundamental reasoning behind FNF wasn’t lost.
I couldn’t find yellow curry paste so I used green, but I did include the Chinese black beans, sesame oil and kaffir lime leaves. I used part aubergine and part tofu for the pork just because I found some in the fridge that needed using. I used all the same ingredients in the rice, but I cooked it first then threw in the other ingredients. And I left out the tortillas and salsa. Other than that I followed the recipe exactly!
This was a really tasty dish but extremely far removed from the original. So if you’ve been holding back on joining in on FNF don’t let closeness to the original stop you. I didn’t really do this one justice so I’m particularly interested to see how everyone else interpreted this one.
Cooking the Vegan Books 
Liz, this looks delicious! I didn’t use tortillas either. It was just too odd for me. But we loved the dish. Even without the kaffir leaves. You did do it justice- love that you did your own twist!