Goan Vindaloo Fries

If you want to go to a place to resurrect your life and feel a-new again then the Eastern Sierra Mountains are that place. The jagged peaks and stunning wilderness Ansel Adams photographed and John Muir wrote essays about have a special place in my heart. I spend as much time as I can every year getting away to this pristine wilderness. I’m so blessed to live in the wilderness of southern California but the vistas and mountain passes of the Eastern Sierra are something special. What do I love as much as the beauty of the Eastern Sierra Mountains? A piping hot bowl of Goan Vindaloo at the end of a day of hiking, of course! Or a platter of spicy Vindaloo fries.

Unless you come down with the terrible stomach flu on the first day that you are on holiday in the Sierra. I mean when we planned this trip to the Eastern Sierra I planned on hiking ten to fifteen miles every single day. I thought I would come back from vacation totally yoked and perhaps lose a few of that Covid-19-LBS. What I didn’t expect was to spend an entire day puking my guts out instead of hiking.

After three days of spending most of my time in the bathroom instead of on my favorite Eastern Sierra hiking trails, I’ve resurrected just like these vindaloo fries. When you cook at home every single meal and like to try out new recipes, okay maybe sometimes you create a dud. But Pork Vindaloo is one recipe my boyfriend has been stirring up in the kitchen since he was in middle school. He is a Vindaloo vet. So how did it all go so wrong? Well, we just happened to buy bad potatoes.

Did I pick up a virus from the Brewery in Mammoth Lakes or was it the Potato Flu? Well, we will never know, although someone else in our party also had a sickly twenty-four hours, and we never ate the same foods. We certainly did not all indulge in Goan Vindaloo, so it’s kind of a mystery, just what the hell happened to my body?

A Bad Potato Mystery

Have you ever purchased a rotten potato? Well, we did, well before the vacation began. I purchased a few Russet potatoes from our market back home in the pre-camping shopping spree.  Now I don’t actually think I had the potato flu, although we did end up cooking with a whole batch of rotten potatoes the night before the Malicious Mountain Malady. The next morning found me retching all day in camp instead of hiking up mountain peaks. Not exactly how anyone hopes to spend their vacation days but what are you going to do? As I lay in bed clutching my stomach and dreaming of the day I would feel better and be out hiking mountain peaks again, I kept thinking, things could be worse. I could be tent camping right now.

When I recovered and I could eat solid foods again we had so much leftover Goan Vindaloo. We just hate to waste food. But the Goan Vindaloo was just not right. It was those damn potatoes! They were just impossible to cook. They never got soft as they floated in so much delicious balsamic gravy! It was so weird. So what could we do? 

Well, we started with removing the weird potatoes from the vindaloo gravy. I kind of patted them down a bit to remove some of the sauce then we fried them up up to a crisp brown. OMG, were those vindaloo-soaked potatoes delicious! I saved the potatoes!

We then fixed the weird vindaloo by adding a ton of pepper and some Worcestershire and basically turning it into a Pork Jal Frezi. As I emerged from my sickness cocoon and finally after so many days, once again found myself with an appetite, why yes we did have a delicious dinner on the camp stove. And thank God we did because I lost precious hiking hours in my bout of sickness with the flu. I needed to pack that Cataluola puppy in the Jeep and hit some Eastern Sierra trails stat!

Goan Vindaloo is a gift from the western coastal sunshine state of Goa India. It’s a bright vibrant dish bursting with balsamic vinegar and that cinnamon-scented garam masala. And it’s not normally chock full of bad potatoes. It’s highly inspired by the Portuguese inspiration you find all over the seaside villages such as Morjim in Goa.

As an outdoor enthusiast who usually hikes many miles a day on holiday when I am not ill, I can always go for a plate of fries after a twelve-mile hike up to a twelve thousand-foot mountain pass. Or I could totally inhale a platter of vinegary Goan Vindaloo.

Goan Vindaloo Fries

2 large russet potatoes, preferably not bad potatoes

3 cups Canola oil

2 teaspoons garam masala

3 teaspoons balsamic vinegar

1 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon Kashmiri chili powder

3 teaspoons potato starch

1 teaspoon grated garlic

1 teaspoon grated ginger

1 teaspoon salt

Mint Chutney and Plum Chutney to serve.

Cut your potatoes into small bite-sized pieces. Boil for 12 minutes. Set aside and drain. marinade the potatoes in vinegar, garam masala, cumin, chili powder,salt, garlic and ginger. When you are ready to fry those potatoes, just put them in potato starch. Fry in the canola oil and serve with the chutneys.