Mother’s recipes – Pork Bafat

My dear mother has left this world many years ago but her presence is felt in my kitchen. Be it her recipes, her way of washing vessels, her way of entertaining the guests – always the best for guests –  brings back in my life every single day and I like it. 

I cooked Prok Bafat the other day and the aroma that filled the house brought her back in my life. Here is her recipe if you want to remember my mother

Ingredients to make Pork Bafat

1 kilo pork

Bafat powder

3 onions cut into pieces

6 green chilies

a piece of ginger sliced fine

two or three cinnamon leaves and a few cloves

3 tablespoons vinegar

Method to cook Pork Bafat

Cut the pork into tiny pieces. If the skin is hard boil it for a while and then cut it as cutting that way becomes easy. Add all the above ingredients together and cook it on slow fire with salt and a bit of water. After the pork is cooked, add vinegar. 

Prok tastes better as it matures over days. 

My mother always added green vegetable bananas cut into pieces. I did not have them and so I did not add. She also used to add sweet potato. One needs to be careful with the sweet potato as it gets stuck to the vessel. Sweet potatoes absorb the meat flavour and get totally transformed.

Pork if cooked in an earthern ware vessel taste far better. I have such a vessel which is reserved for cooking pork.  One needs to be careful while using gas as a strong flame can crack the vessel. If has two advantages in that pork cooked on slow fire tastes better.  

Prok is normally eaten with ‘sannas’ another of my mother’s specialities. I shall write a blog on that later. 

No matter how advanced I am in my life having acquired knowledge as years gone by,  I will never forget what my mother has taught me.