Mah Haw - cooking recipe

Ingredients

1 teaspoon vegetable oil
1/2 lb coarsely ground pork (I find Spicy Italian Sausage works well)
2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons palm sugar or 2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 medium pineapple (or 1 14 ounce can of pineapple chuncks)
6 slices long thin sweet red peppers
1/4 cup fresh cilantro leaves
Cilantro Pesto
1 teaspoon whole white peppercorns or 1 teaspoon whole black peppercorn
2 tablespoons coarsely chopped fresh coriander, roots and stems or 2 tablespoons cilantro leaves, and stems
2 tablespoons coarsely chopped garlic

Preparation

First, make the pesto by: Using a mortar and pestle or a spice grinder, crush or grind the peppercorns into a fine powder.
Combine the pepper, cilantro and garlic and work into a fairly smooth paste in the mortar or in a small blender or food processor.
If you opt to use a blender or food processor, you may need to add a little vegetable oil or water to ease the grinding.
To keep the pesto for later use, put it in a glass jar, pour a little oil on top to cover it and seal tightly.
Heat a wok or medium skillet over medium heat.
Add the oil, and swirl to coat the surface of the pan.
When oil is hot, add the Cilantro Pesto.
Stir-fry the pesto until quite fragrant, about 2 minutes.
Increase heat to medium high and crumble in the ground pork.
Stir-fry the pork until it breaks up into small lumps, renders some of its fat, and is no longer pink, approzimately 2 minutes.
Add the fish sauce and sugar and continue cooking, stirring and scraping often to brown and coat the meat evenly.
After approximately 4 minutes, when the meat is nicely browned, remove the pan from the heat and taste the sauce for a pleasantly salty-sweet balance.
If needed add more fish sauce and/or sugar and return pan to heat in order to reduce the additions.
Remove from the heat, transfer to a medium bowl and allow to cool to room temperature.
Peel the pineapple and cut crosswise into 1/4 inch-thick slices.
Remove the hard core from the center of each slice and cut into 1-inch squares.
You should have about 2 cups of squares.
To serve, mound a spoonful of savory pork onto pineapple square.
Garnish each mound with pepper strips and cilantro leaves.
Transfer to a platter and serve at room temperature as a finger food.