Pork Cutlet curry with rice カツカレー

This is another Japanese invention of "Yoshoku" 洋食 or Japanese-style Western (not cowboy Western) dish. Japanese like anything "curry" and put curry sauce even on noodles such as udon. This dish,"Katsu curry" is Japanese-style curry with rice which is topped with a cutlet of pork chop or "tonkatsu" トンカツ. This is a rather high-fat and high-calorie dish. I decided to make this dish one weekday evening since I had leftover curry sauce I made on the prior weekend and frozen pork chops in our freezer which, I deemed, were "aged" enough.

Curry: I made the curry sauce in a similar maner as I posted before using S&B brand mild curry roux. the only difference was that the amount of sauce I need to prepare (we had guests) was more than one package of the roux could handle. I supplemented the packaged amount with my own brown roux (olive oil and flour, onion, and Japanese curry powder). The vegetables included potatoes (small red new potatoes), carrots, and onion. It originally contained chicken thighs.

Pork cutlet: (This was made from pork chops I had sliced from the whole loin of pork and froze immediately some time ago). After I seasoned the pork chops with salt and black pepper, I dredged with flour, coated with egg water and Japanese panko crumbs. This time, instead of deep frying I shallow fried (half inch of peanut oil) (left in the image below). I cooked them on medium-low heat for 5-6 minutes on each side or until done. According to a French cook, Madeline, if you freeze pork for 21 days or longer, there is no more danger of contracting cysticercosis or pork tape worm even from undercooked pork. Althouhg my pork chops were safe by the Madeline's criteria, I was not taking a chance here and made sure the pork was fully cooked.

There are many different ways to serve the pork cutlet in this dish (on the top of curry and rice, additional curry sauce on the top, with shredded cabbage underneath, etc) but I just put the rice with side of regular Japanese condiments of pickled cocktail onion or "rakkyo" ラッキョウ and mixed pickled vegetable, "fukushinzuke" 福神漬け as you see above and then placed the cutlet of pork chops (pre sliced) on the side (the first picture).

My wife did not see the point of combining curry and rice with pork cutlet. She prefered eating the cutlet separately. So, I added Japanese hot mustard and "Tokatsu" sauce on the rim of the plate as well.

We had this with a very unususal and good Italian red from Umbria called Sportoletti Rosso Villa Fidelia 2008. This is a Bordeaux blend (Merlot and Cab Saub) of Italian wine. This one had lots of fruit upfront and was remarkably good. It tasted like a Bordeaux blend from Napa (coming from us, this is a compliment). This one also got 93 from Wine Advocate. I wonder, though, whether this is meant for export (especially to the U.S.) rather than for domestic consumption in Italy.