Spicy Pork Balls

Preparation info
  • Serves

    4

    • Difficulty

      Easy

Appears in

By Tom Parker Bowles

Published 2013

  • About

This Thai dish is good for snack or starter. It’s hard to find minced free-range pork from the butcher, but do search it out. It’s far preferable to the insipid supermarket stuff. The herbs, as ever, lift the dish from the everyday to the exquisite, while the iceberg lettuce, much maligned, adds cool crunch.

Ingredients

  • 2 chillies, preferably Thai bird’s-eye, finely sliced
  • ½ lemongrass stalk
  • small handful of coriander

Method

Crush the chillies, lemongrass, herbs and black pepper in a pestle and mortar or a blender. Mix well with the minced pork.

Shape the mixture into about 20 small balls (wet your hands so the mixture doesn’t stick).

Heat the oil in a frying pan over a medium heat and fry the balls all over for 8–10 minutes, until cooked inside. Cut one in half; it should be evenly coloured with no